The Moon Society has submitted a formal response to NASA’s Request for Information (RFI) on Capability Demonstrations & Supply Chain Challenges for NASA Moon Base Development (SAM.gov Opportunity ID 4a7c73f7f9f946bc90037f1849ae07f8). The response was filed on April 23, 2026 by board member and former Vice President James Burk.
The RFI explicitly invited partner stakeholders alongside industry and academia. The Society responded in exactly that capacity — not as a hardware prime, but as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit bringing roughly twenty-six years of community, archival, and convening capacity to the Moon Base program. Every offer is structured to be additive to existing NASA and contractor efforts, to require no new hardware development risk for NASA, and to be executable within the two-to-four-year window the RFI targets.
Five offers to accelerate Phase One
- Lunar Development Forum. Formalize the annual Lunar Development Conference as a NASA-recognized engagement venue where small and nontraditional entrants can reach NASA technical staff.
- Open Moon Base Knowledge Commons. Expand Lunarpedia and the Moon Miners’ Manifesto archive into a curated, openly licensed knowledge base keyed to NASA’s Architecture-Driven Technology and Science Gaps.
- Academic & Maker Payload Coordinator. Provide a pre-vetted pipeline of low-cost university and community-lab payloads for CLPS-class landers and LTV-class rovers.
- Architecture Gap Whitepaper Series. Commission short, expert-authored whitepapers on specific NASA-identified gaps — ISRU, power, surface mobility, dust mitigation, long-duration life support, and settlement-scale logistics.
- Test Facility & Skilled Trades Network. Catalog underutilized university and community test capacity and partner with community colleges on the welding, machining, and fabrication trades that constrain the lunar supply chain.
The Society proposes to participate through cost-shared cooperative agreements or Space Act Agreements, contributing member dues, foundation support, and in-kind volunteer effort. As the response puts it: a permanent lunar outpost is the kind of national undertaking that requires, in addition to hardware and launch services, a durable infrastructure of public knowledge, academic engagement, workforce development, and informed public support.
The full public version of the response is available below.