One open interface.
Everything connects.
HEX is an open hexagonal container standard for space — the "ISO box for the Moon." Hard engineering, not science fiction: it can be built with today's technology. Here is how it works, and why the shape is a hexagon.
Geometry, not aesthetics.
On a planetary surface you cannot leave gaps — modules have to tile seamlessly into walls, floors and clusters. Of all shapes, only the triangle and the hexagon tessellate cleanly. The hexagon wins: maximum packing density, minimum material per unit strength, and natural growth in every direction. It's the same reason bone, graphene and honeycomb are hexagonal.
It also fits the rocket. A habitat is, in the end, logistics — cargo that has to fit a launch vehicle and then tessellate on the ground. The hexagon does both. Sized for Starship-class mass and volume, several modules ship in a single flight.
Tiles flat across any surface — no gaps, infinite growth.
Maximum pressurised volume for minimum structural mass.
Shaped and sized so several modules fly in one launch.
Each opened face is one sealed coupling.
A HEX container's hexagonal face becomes a flat male/female docking adapter. Structure, power, data, thermal and breathing air all pass through that one sealed coupling — never six loose ports. The six corners carry the structural load; the face carries the connection. To grow a cluster, adapters are added only on the faces that need to connect.
The same adapter comes in three escalating door types — shown as future options, but designed in from the start:
A wide opening for regolith, equipment and supplies. No pressure seal — it ships first.
A pressure-tight, shirt-sleeve passage between units; couples power, data, thermal and air.
The boundary to the surface: EVA, dust mitigation, emergency isolation — container becomes habitat.
A horizontal standard, vertical modules.
HEX is one interface — and on top of it, the same hexagon becomes whatever a mission needs. Five "plug-in cards" on one platform:
Logistics
The baseline container — move regolith, equipment and supplies; the ground-support and transport unit.
Payload bay
A standardised, pressurisable research module — a payload bay any university or institute can fill with experiments and fly.
Habitat
Pressurised living space, assembled from HEX modules and proven first in Earth analog stations.
Compute
A configuration for off-world data and compute — one of the fastest-moving capital waves in space today.
Energy
Energy and ECLSS support — because nothing on the surface runs without real power infrastructure.
Built like Antarctica — phase by phase.
We already build in the harshest place on Earth exactly this way. Germany's Neumayer Station in Antarctica is standardised cargo containers inside a protective shell. HEX does the same for space: bring the structure, connect the adapters, and cover it in regolith for radiation shielding — which also avoids the secondary-neutron problem you get from materials like lead.
And unlike one-off habitat concepts, HEX is built in phases: power and rovers first, then a pressurised module, then a full closed-loop life-support system. Modular means each step is useful on its own — no single, fragile "one-trick" habitat.
Power & mobility
Rovers, solar arrays, tank farms — real surface infrastructure first.
Pressurise
The first sealed HEX module — a working volume on the surface.
Closed loop
Full ECLSS — oxygen, water and resource recycling, built to last.
The spec is free. That's the strategy.
A standard only becomes a standard if everyone can adopt it. We publish HEX so institutes, agencies and companies build on it freely — and the more who do, the more valuable the things only LUMO holds become: certification, the trusted brand, and the operating layer. The same move that made a free shipping-container standard the backbone of world trade.