Abstract#

The MoonDAO Open Space Academy is an open-source web app built to make space engineering and lunar settlement design easy for everyone. Instead of reading through dense technical PDFs and complex manuals, members can use simple interactive tools right in their browser. Anyone can quickly test and simulate crew living spaces, life support needs, and DeSci funding models. While immediately supporting MoonDAO's Settlement Design phase, this platform provides long-term simulation infrastructure for future mission testing, crew selection, and base operations, serving as a free public good for ongoing community onboarding and hands-on learning.

Problem#

1. High Barrier to Entry for Space Science and Engineering

Right now, lunar architecture rules, life support parameters, and space engineering standards are locked inside dense PDF reports and hard-to-navigate technical papers. Most MoonDAO members and new contributors lack a simple, visual way to interact with this data, test mission scenarios, and understand the real operational challenges of building and maintaining a lunar base over time.

2. Lack of Interactive Visual Tools for Long-Term Onboarding and Engagement

As MoonDAO advances through Settlement Design and prepares for Earth-based simulations, manufacturing, and eventual lunar construction, the community needs flexible software tools to connect everyday members with technical progress. Without accessible web applications, community participation in engineering and decentralized science (DeSci) remains stuck in theoretical text chats, making it harder to attract, retain, and empower new talent across the entire roadmap.

Solution#

Building a clean, fast web app that turns complex space engineering data into three simple visual tools right in your browser:

• Module 1: Lunar Habitability Calculator

• What it does: Users move simple sliders to set crew size, stay duration, and radiation exposure. The app immediately calculates the required living volume, layout distribution, and radiation shielding based on NASA standards.

• Module 2: Life Support and Resource Simulator

• What it does: A visual tool showing how a lunar base recycles its vital resources. Users can adjust recycling efficiency for water and oxygen to view real-time resource consumption and base autonomy.

• Module 3: DeSci Model Visualization Hub

• What it does: An interactive visual map showcasing how decentralized science projects operate, how funding flows into space research, and how scientific IP can be managed open-source.

Integration with MoonDAO's Settlement Design Roadmap (Phase 4 & Beyond): Rather than operating as a standalone tool, the Open Space Academy directly supports MoonDAO Phase 4: Settlement Design. The platform's calculation engine produces standardized JSON exports (containing crew parameters, volumetric layouts, and closed-loop life support flow rates) mapped directly to MoonDAO's Settlement Architecture and Component Specifications. These structured simulation outputs can be directly consumed by future Phase 5/6 hardware modeling efforts and Earth-based simulation frameworks, ensuring seamless data continuity as MoonDAO advances toward full lunar mission readiness.

Alternative Solutions Considered: Building a heavy 3D application using Unreal Engine or Unity was considered and ruled out. It would force users to download large software files and require high-performance computers. My goal is instant, zero-download access directly on the web.

Open Questions & Future Directions: Community feedback during initial testing will guide which extra features to prioritize. Future updates can expand to include surface power systems, thermal management, and long-term base operations.

Benefits#

• Long-Term Utility Across MoonDAO's Roadmap: While immediately helping Phase 4 (Settlement Design), this app stays useful for Phase 5 (Earth Simulations & Crew Selection), Phase 6 (Pre-flight Testing), and Phase 7 (Lunar Construction), serving as a simple reference tool all the way to 2030.
• Easy Onboarding & Target Audience (v1.0): Provides MoonDAO with a permanent interactive tool tailored for undergraduate aerospace engineering students, space architecture groups, and analog astronaut training programs. It introduces new members, researchers, and space enthusiasts into the MoonDAO ecosystem through practical, hands-on mission simulation rather than abstract jargon.
• Better Community Proposals: Allows any member to easily test ideas, double-check numbers, and build stronger, data-backed proposals for the lunar base.
• Clear Public Updates: Includes four short video progress updates across the 90 days, giving MoonDAO great content to share on social media.
• Open Source Leadership: Shows that MoonDAO is actively building free, open tools for the future of space exploration.

Revenue Generation & Estimates:

The first version is built as a free public tool to bring in as many new members as possible. As the app grows, it can create steady income for the MoonDAO treasury in a few simple ways, starting with a focus on real early users:

The initial release (v1.0) is deployed as a free, open-source public good to maximize user onboarding and community participation. To ensure financial projections are grounded in verified market adoption rather than premature assumptions, revenue generation follows a phased rollout focused on a specific early-adopter niche:

• Initial Target Market: Undergraduate Aerospace Engineering research laboratories, university CubeSat and rocketry competition teams, space architecture student societies, and participants in Earth-based analog astronaut habitats.
• Advanced Tools & Pilot Sandboxes: Offering custom simulation environments, dedicated workspace instances, and direct technical support for early-adopter academic labs and space startups. Onboarding an initial pilot cohort of 2 to 4 institutional partners at a modest rate of $500 to $1,000 per year yields $1,000 to $4,000 yearly.
• Workshops and Certificates: Hosting structured online workshops and issuing completion certificates for interactive lunar habitat design courses tailored for aerospace students. A conservative initial target of 20 to 30 participants per year at $30 to $40 per course adds $600 to $1,200 yearly.
• Research Partner Services: As Module 3 develops, introducing minor platform matchmaking fees when connecting decentralized space research projects with prospective funding entities.
• Go-To-Market (GTM) Strategy: Initial adoption will be driven by live demonstration workshops hosted for university aerospace student leagues, direct outreach to space architecture Discord/Telegram communities, and offering free trial sandbox sessions to generate formal Letters of Interest (LoI) from academic coordinators.

Total Realistic Revenue Estimate (Validation Phase): $1,600 to $5,200 per year, serving as a baseline that scales higher as the tool gains institutional adoption along MoonDAO's roadmap toward 2030.

Risks#

Scope Creep:

• Risk: The temptation to build overly complex fluid dynamics or heavy 3D graphics, which could delay the 90-day delivery schedule.
• Mitigation: The scope is strictly limited to three interactive, two-dimensional parametric modules running directly in the browser.

Parameter Accuracy:

• Risk: The possibility of inaccuracies or inconsistencies in habitability calculations and life-support mass balances.
• Mitigation: All calculation logic and parameters are directly mapped, documented, and cross-referenced with public NASA engineering standards.

Objectives#

Objective #1: Develop, test, and deploy a stable, functional Web App for the MoonDAO Open Space Academy containing all 3 simulation modules within a 90-day sprint.

Key Results for Objective #1:

• Live Web App: A fully functional web application with all 3 simulation modules deployed and publicly accessible by Day 90.
• Open-Source Codebase: Public GitHub repository published under the MIT/CC-BY 4.0 open-source license.
• Community Progress Content: 4 short video updates (walkthroughs/demos) created and shared across official MoonDAO social channels during the 90-day sprint.
• Live Community Demo & Townhall: 1 live presentation and demonstration session hosted during a MoonDAO Townhall by Day 90.
• Community Onboarding & Engagement (ROI): Host 1 live interactive Lunar Mission Simulation Workshop using the platform by Day 90, onboarding at least 40+ participants (students/enthusiasts) and bringing 15+ new active members into the MoonDAO Discord.
• Platform Adoption Metric: Achieve at least 100+ completed habitat simulation runs logged through the platform via privacy-friendly open analytics within the first 30 days post-launch.

Member(s) responsible for OKR and their role:

• Rodrigo - Rod Cosmos (Solo Developer & Lead Creator) — Full end-to-end responsibility for product design, software engineering, documentation, and video content.

Novelty and Prior Art#

Nature of Delivery: In strict compliance with MoonDAO's transparency guidelines, this project does not claim to create new physics models or unpublished engineering standards.

Prior Art & Synthesis: All calculation rules, volume requirements, and life-support parameters will be carefully selected, curated, and structured from official, public NASA standards (specifically NASA-STD-3001 and NASA/SP-2010-3407).

Novelty & Core Value (Human Curation & Expert Engineering vs. Generic AI):

Feeding NASA documents into a generic AI model only yields unstructured text summaries and isolated estimates. An AI cannot map out how engineering parameters depend on each other or build a reliable simulation engine.

The unique value of this project comes from the human effort, expert curation, and system architecture applied during development:

• Expert Parameter Curation: Instead of dumping raw PDF pages into an AI prompt, the project relies on human expertise to hand-select, cross-reference, and structure the exact engineering rules needed for lunar base planning.
• Custom Mathematical Architecture: Unlike text chatbots, the app will feature a deterministic calculation engine built through human software design, ensuring that variables (like crew size, living volume, water recycling, and radiation limits) interact simultaneously through accurate formulas without hallucinating numbers.
• Purpose-Built Visual Sandbox: The human curation also focuses on UI/UX design, translating dense standards into intuitive sliders, graphs, and visual workflows specifically tailored for MoonDAO members to validate mission proposals.

Comparative Prior Art Analysis: Existing options are either dense NASA PDFs, unverified text outputs from generic AI tools, hard-to-use desktop engineering software (like BioSIM), or heavy 3D game engines. None offer a web-native, expert-curated calculation engine combining habitability, life support (ECLSS), and DeSci models in a single browser tool.

Unique Value: The MoonDAO Open Space Academy will bridge this gap by providing an expert-curated, zero-download parametric sandbox built specifically for community members to validate and parameterize space missions without relying on unstructured or unverified AI text prompts.

Lunar Bridge#

The MoonDAO Open Space Academy connects directly with Phase 4 (Settlement Design) of MoonDAO's official roadmap, while laying the software foundation for future phases (Earth simulations, crew selection, and base operations) leading up to 2030:

1. Pre-Feasibility Tool for Proposals: The platform acts as a practical validation sandbox for the community. Members who want to draft lunar settlement proposals within the DAO can use the Web App to easily parameterize and justify basic requirements for living volume, mass balance, and life support.
2. Software Infrastructure for the Mission: Serves as a digital public asset that establishes MoonDAO as a pioneer in funding and creating open-source tools for decentralized space science and engineering.

Intellectual Property (IP) & Licensing#

• Open Licensing: All source code, UI components, and calculation algorithms will be made publicly available under universal open-source licenses (MIT / CC-BY 4.0).
• Community Asset: The public GitHub repository will belong entirely to the MoonDAO ecosystem, allowing any developer, researcher, or community member to audit, clone, use, or expand the modules in the future.
• Conflict of Interest Disclosure: The author is the founder of Gamma Cosmos. This proposal is submitted independently for MoonDAO. All code, IP, and digital assets created under this funding belong 100% to MoonDAO under MIT/CC-BY 4.0 open licenses, with no proprietary lock-in, commercial conflict of interest, or hidden revenue retention for third-party entities.

Team (Table A)#

Project Lead: The Project Lead and representative for the project within the MoonDAO Senate. The Project Lead is responsible for:

1. Present at monthly town hall meetings.
2. Creating weekly written updates to the community on the progress of the project in the "what did you get done this week" channel on DIscord. Not posting a weekly update will result in a 5% penalty to the project's retroactive rewards.
3. Adding team members, removing team members, and making decisions about the use of the budget throughout the lifetime of the project.
4. Managing the Multisig Treasury for the project as well as the payments for each of the members.
5. Creating the Final Report and returning unused funds to the MoonDAO Treasury.

Initial Team

Team Bios

Project Lead: Rodrigo (Rod Cosmos) @rod_cosmos: Digital creator, full-stack web developer, and founder of Gamma Cosmos. Specialized in building interactive digital experiences, science education tools, and web applications. Holds experience in parametric simulation, UI design, and science communication across multiple media platforms. Social links: LinkedIn / Instagram

Proven Track Record: Rodrigo (Rod Cosmos) has a documented history of designing and deploying web applications, scientific education platforms, and interactive digital interfaces, such as Gamma Cosmos (gammacosmos.com/en). Live platforms and interactive web tools demonstrate complete technical capacity for a solo 90-day delivery.

Timeline (Table B)#

Post-Deployment Sustainability

To ensure the MoonDAO Open Space Academy remains a reliable, long-term asset beyond the 90-day development sprint, post-launch operations are structured to be lightweight and self-sustaining:

• Hosting & Infrastructure: The web application is hosted on a scalable, zero-baseline cloud environment (connected to the GitHub repository), ensuring continuous public access with zero recurring server costs for the MoonDAO treasury.
• 30-Day Post-Launch Maintenance: The project lead will provide 30 days of active post-launch support to monitor usage, resolve critical bugs, and refine simulation UX based on initial community feedback.
• Long-Term Ownership & Maintenance: Deployment credentials and administrative access will be shared with designated MoonDAO technical leads/stewards. The core project lead will remain available within the MoonDAO community as the primary maintainer to handle routine platform checks.
• Future Updates & Extensions: All simulation modules, mathematical logic, and datasets will be documented in the open-source repository. Future updates or parameter expansion can be implemented either by the project lead during subsequent project phases or contributed by MoonDAO community members via pull requests.

Budget (Table C)#

These are fixed costs to make your project happen. This might also include bounties that you'll make inside of the DAO (it's recommended to have some amount allocated for bounties or competitions), or specific work that must be contracted out to complete the project. Please provide links to quotes where possible. The total may be expressed in any token, however funding amount will be sent in ETH or MOONEY based on current prices at the time of the transaction being created. Proposal budgets must be less than or equal to 1/5 of the total quarterly budget.

ETH wallet address: 0xed00368f19301B8f546Ba88866d5cA20973c4e2D