“We start from scratch to imagine what would have happened if we were not born on Earth,” says Sperl, “but if we learned to build a home on the Moon.”

Sperl is using the solar furnace to study the properties of Moon dust to see if it can be melted or baked into bricks. “You have plenty of Moon dust and plenty of sunlight and we’re trying to make the best use of that as possible.”

In his office Sperl shows me test tubes full of fine grey powder, ground so that it is identical to real Moon dust. He suggests I avoid touching it.

“It’s nasty stuff – imagine a mixture of beach sand with volcanic ash,” says Sperl. “It’s very rough edged and if you look at the footage of Apollo astronauts you can see it gets everywhere, so you want to avoid working with it.”

‘A lot of responsibility’

This grey dust is not an immediately promising construction material for a robust and radiation-proof airtight structure to protect a lunar community.

“It makes me feel a lot of responsibility,” admits Sperl. “We’d better make sure that what we send our astronaut colleagues into is rock solid so they can survive in that harsh environment.”