Conceived by design firm Architecture and Vision, the Moon Base Two is an inflatable lunar habitat that'll keep up to four astronauts safe and sound as they work for six months. While an inflatable base probably isn't what most people have in mind when they picture the glorious future of colonizing the Moon, the Moon Base Two would serve as a temporary home for crews as they construct something more permanent, or as a short-term settlement for scientific experiments.

The Moon Base Two is also pretty attractive because it goes up all at once. It's designed to ride piggyback on the Ares V rockets NASA is working on to replace its aging shuttle fleet. The lunar settlement is based upon work done by Architecture and Vision in 1999 on the Moon Base One, a similar (though a little less impressive looking) inflatable enclosure.

Check out the gallery below for more of Architecture and Vision's Moon Base Two.

Architecture and Vision, via io9