Moon architecture

What will future lunar bases look like? - New Scientist Space

It takes me back to my childhood, reading about actual plans being made for lunar shelters and permanent bases. In the 1960's, there seemed no reason at all to imagine that the manned space program would come to a screaming halt for 50 years, at least as far as the moon is concerned. Books I read then were full of designs and ideas for all types of rockets, spacesuits, emergency re-entry gear, and so on. It seems to me now that a lot of ideas are being re-invented, or perhaps it is just that they are only now moving from concept to actual material prototypes.

Anyhow, this New Scientist article talks of some ideas at the moment, and re-publishes a photo of a little mock up of an inflatable shelter design that I have seen somewhere before. As the article says:

The team is now weighing several options: an inflatable home that could be packed for launch and then inflated on the Moon's surface using oxygen transported in tanks, a rigid structure, or a combination of both. ...

All that’s needed to shield astronauts from deadly onslaughts of high-energy protons spewed from the Sun during solar flares, Thomas says, is a 5-centimetre layer of water. This could be integrated into an inflatable structure using a bladder-like layer filled with water, sandwiched into a rigid structure, or simply stacked on top of the habitat in tanks.

Used packing materials and other waste could be piled against the structure to provide even more protection. Meteorites larger than dust-sized grains could be deflected by aluminium or Kevlar shields like those used on the International Space Station.

I don't know. One of the prime things I would be looking at would be long lines of sight inside, rather than moving from one time cramped bubble of a spaceship into another tiny cramped bubble of a shelter for a couple of weeks.

I would have thought that an easy to erect, low slung geodesic dome framework supporting an inflatable shell would have a lot going for it. Being able to bury it with a foot or two of lunar dirt would be a good idea, and again (I imagine) a geodesic frame would be good at distributing the weight evenly all around the perimeter. As to how to get the dirt over it: some sort of mechanical aid would be needed, and one thing I don't know is how easy it may be to dig up the first inches of the lunar surface. (Given the footprints left around the Apollo landers, it isn't rock solid, but how compacted after 10 cm?)

This probably would count as my ideal fantasy job if I had my life to live over: actually being paid to come up with concepts for lunar shelters, knowing that they will be built and used.