![esa report moon village esa report moon village](https://www.esa.int/var/esa/storage/images/esa_multimedia/videos/2016/02/esa_euronews_moon_village/15829110-4-eng-GB/ESA_Euronews_Moon_Village_pillars.jpg)
These are accepted roles for government investment on Earth and can be expected to continue in space. Government investment will continue to be required for planetary science and other space related research, to train and develop people (human capital), and to develop and maintain infrastructure. As government investment results in improved infrastructure and better technologies, and thus costs and risks drop, more opportunities will appear for more participants. Most likely commercial successes will drive increased government investment. This is not to say that government investment in space would cease. Further development will no longer be dependent on government subsidies from Earth. When the space economy becomes self-sustaining, profits from operations on the Moon and in cislunar space will become sufficient to sustain continued operation. The capacity for ISRU creates the basis for a space economy where products and services are traded for resources, increasingly sophisticated products can be produced from mined resources, and life can be sustained indefinitely. ISRU and the mining and use the resources of the Moon, asteroids, comets, and other celestial bodies enables the opening of the space frontier for permanent occupancy and settlement. Activities in space will remain limited to exploration until ISRU becomes possible on an industrial scale. There would have been no pioneers on the American frontier if they had to carry everything with them.
![esa report moon village esa report moon village](https://resources.stuff.co.nz/content/dam/images/1/o/r/r/k/x/image.related.StuffLandscapeSixteenByNine.620x349.1orp7m.png)
Key to opening a frontier is the capacity to “live off the land” for in situ resource utilization (ISRU). This spirit imbued the “Moon Village Workshop” held at ESA’s Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) last month that was followed by ESA’s Moon 2020–2030 Symposium. The International Lunar Decade (ILD) is a framework for international collaboration from 2020 to 2030 to achieve the ultimate goal in space: to open the space frontier.