Moon Skyscrapers and Underground Cities: How Future Lunar Settlements Might Look

NASA’s roadmap for a lasting human presence on the Moon has gone from sci‑fi fantasy to a concrete schedule. In May the agency rolled out a detailed plan for a base near the lunar South Pole, and the final phase promises a "sustained human presence" – in other words, people actually living and working there.

That announcement set off a flurry of contracts for lunar rovers, delivery pods and even three companies that will try to land four new missions on the Moon by late 2028. With the launch window closing in, engineers and architects are already sketching what a Moon city could look like.

Can we put skyscrapers on the Moon? George Sowers, a professor at the Colorado School of Mines and former member of NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Committee, thinks we can. "Why not? Absolutely," he told Newsweek, noting that the lack of wind, earthquakes and a thick atmosphere would make tall structures easier to assemble – if we can use Moon‑grown material.

Hao Chen, an assistant professor at Stevens Institute of Technology, says a lunar skyscraper would be more of a vertical habitat than a statement piece. "Think modular, pressurised habitats stacked like building blocks, built primarily from processed lunar regolith," he explains. The Moon’s one‑sixth gravity means the structure wouldn’t bear the massive loads we deal with on Earth, but every floor would still need to keep air, water and temperature under control while shielding occupants from harsh radiation.

Speaking of radiation, most experts agree that underground living makes more sense than reaching for the sky. The Moon has no protective atmosphere or magnetic field, so any surface‑level habitat would be bombarded by solar and cosmic particles. That’s where ancient lava tubes come into play.

These are massive tunnels left behind by volcanic activity billions of years ago. Because they formed in low gravity, they’re likely far larger than anything we have on Earth – some could be kilometers long and wide enough to fit an entire town under a single basalt roof. Sowers points out, “If you’re inside one of those lava tubes, you’re shielded from space radiation.”

Architect Scott Specht of Specht Novak agrees. “The best home for humans on the Moon is the inverse of a skyscraper – an underground facility,” he says. Radar and gravity data already hint at intact tubes that could be turned into habitats with relatively modest engineering: a lift or shaft down, a pressurised module for breathable air, and solar panels on the surface to harvest power.

Former SpaceX engineer Nathan Silvernail adds a practical spin. He envisions using processed regolith to make bricks, mixing them with a binder shipped from Earth, then extruding walls and doors right inside the tube. "It wouldn’t take much, at least by aerospace standards," he notes, especially if nuclear reactors supply steady energy for life‑support systems.

Beyond the Moon, the technology could come back to Earth. Chen believes that treating buildings as closed‑loop ecosystems where air and water are precious could reshape sustainable architecture. Autonomous robots that shape regolith on the Moon might one day be repurposed for disaster‑relief construction on our own planet.

And there’s a design lesson, too. Specht reminds us that a buried habitat has no façade, no skyline to admire. "If the Moon teaches architects anything, it’s about the interior – the lived experience when there’s no view at all," he muses.

So whether the first lunar city looks like a stack of steel‑and‑regolith towers or a network of cozy caverns under a basalt lid, one thing is clear: humanity’s next big neighbourhood will be built very differently from the ones we know today.