This paper provides a "minority report" of the first Lunar Proving Ground (LPG) Workshop that was held at the JHU-APL July 12-13, 2023. The Lunar Proving Ground (LPG) Workshop addressed the need to test equipment and hardware under lunar-like conditions before deploying it to the Moon. The Workshop's script asked broad questions of the participants, such as: What is an LPG? What are the LPG's capabilities? Is it centrally located or decentralized to several locations? This essay conveys my observations of these questions and more. A recurrent theme concerns what efforts it will take to design, build, and operate the LPG. T The Workshop -- The Lunar Proving Ground Workshop was successful insofar as it was very well organized and ran smoothly. However, the proof of true success will be whether the Workshop leaders can put together a coherent story explaining it. They must also explain why an LPG will be essential to enable future lunar exploration and development. Context -- The context encompasses the hundreds of specialized testing facilities available throughout the science and space communities. However, for some lunar surface testing needs, the necessary facilities do not yet exist. The question stands on whether to build such bespoke facilities as part of one or more LPGs. Or, shall we leave them to the technology developers to build what they need for individual projects? Given that these ambiguities will persist for years into the Artemis program, it becomes even more important to "put stakes in the ground" for a testing facility or facilities. This paper describes and characterizes these efforts to make a start on developing a lunar proving ground. It encompasses the key planning, policy, and technical challenges that the LPG project must overcome to succeed.
Cohen et al. (Sun,) studied this question.