Long-term planning

NASA plans to establish a long-term human presence on the moon by 2020, enabling settlement on an outpost to be built at the rim of the Shackleton crater near the lunar South Pole by 2024. For these plans to be successful, a reliable stream of materials (fuel, food, spare parts, exploration equipment, and oxygen) would have to make its way between Earth and the moon. A possible solution is to continually build up supplies with each mission- instead of isolated mission, each mission is an "integrated supply chain". The article then goes on to explain what each mission should bring and set up on the moon.