Infrastructure Stack · Layer 02
Power
Generation, storage, distribution and resilient energy systems capable of operating through the extreme lunar environment.
Why it matters
Surviving the fourteen-day night.
A lunar day lasts about two Earth weeks, and so does the night. Temperatures swing by hundreds of degrees. Anything that intends to stay must generate, store and distribute power through roughly 354 hours of darkness.
Power decides whether hardware survives its first night. It is also the layer most likely to become shared infrastructure, supplied to many users rather than built once per mission.
Power providers will supply energy.
Inside this layer
6 building blocks
Generation
Producing electricity on the surface at the scale sustained operations require, not just enough for a single lander.
Storage
Batteries, regenerative fuel cells and thermal storage that bridge the lunar night without prohibitive mass.
Distribution
Cabling, power beaming and standardized interfaces so one source can serve many users.
Nuclear surface power
Fission power for continuous baseload through the night and inside permanently shadowed regions.
Solar systems
Arrays sized and oriented for the low polar sun, where ridgelines of near-persistent light become unusually valuable.
Power management and transfer
Regulation, conversion and the power electronics that survive radiation and temperature extremes, and move energy between assets.
Connect the stack
Dependencies
These aren’t isolated technologies. The opportunity lies in understanding how those systems connect.
This layer depends on
This layer enables
Questions we are watching
Open questions
- Does lunar power become a utility business, and who is first to supply it to other users?
- How do surface nuclear timelines line up with the missions that assume the power will be there?
- What is the standard power interface, and who defines it?