Another development that began in 2016 but saw considerable developments in 2017 was Johann-Dietrich Wörner, the Director General of the European Space Agency, plan for lunar cooperation called the Moon Village. While a difficult concept to pin down, the general idea is that the Moon can handle large numbers of players with different goals who can cooperate in various ways such that the result is more than any one player can afford to do on their own.

Earlier this year ESA and others created an independent organization called the Moon Village Association (MVA) whose mission is to provide a forum for further developing the idea and for cooperation among organizations inside and outside of Europe. The Association has four main working groups: economics & finance, site(s) selection, systems architecture, and association participation mechanisms.

Michael Mealling, President of the Moon Society, attended the first public meeting of the Association at the International Space University in Strasbourg this fall and is a regular participant in the economics and finance working group. It is expected that the MVA will have similar meetings in 2018 in which the Moon Society will participate as an affiliated organization.