When does the novel "Artemis" take place?

Question

I've just finished reading Artemis by Andy Weir.

The story narrated in the novel takes place into our Moon, in the fictional and eponymous city of Artemis.

I don't recall having read a specific year when the story is supposed to be set, but I don't exclude to have missed this info if it was indeed stated in the novel.

The technological level seem to place this in a somewhat not very distant future, but this is just my personal impression.

Do we have some kind of official info about this? Both in the novel or in other official sources (author's interviews and the like)?

Answer 1

2080(ish)

COWEN: So this is the year 2080. So, I’m a potential tourist. Talk me into — what’s the killer experience on the Moon? If it’s low-gravity sex, I can have that in space. If I want to look back on the Earth, I can go into low orbit. On the Moon, it’s hard for me to go outside for long or without considerable danger. What’s the killer app up there?

WEIR: Well, the main thing is tourism because Artemis is right next to the Apollo 11 landing site. So it’s a site of historical significance that people like to go to. Also, just dicking around in one-sixth gravity is fun. [laughs] And I wasn’t making a sex joke there; I mean bouncing around and having fun.

COWEN: Sure. Now, in your story, there’s a Cantonese meal served at one point in the narrative. A lot of the people are eating this algae gunk, which is cheap and not very tasty, but you can get Cantonese food. How is it that you thought about how much that food would cost? And in 2080, what does a good Cantonese meal on the Moon cost?

WEIR: Well, it would depend on what a good Cantonese meal weighs. Because I worked out with my economics stuff, I worked out the price of transporting mass to the Moon, and it works out to be — in 2015 dollars, it works out to be about 160 2015 dollars to the kilogram. And so, to that end, in Artemis, the kind of de facto monetary unit is called “slugs,” which means soft-landed grams.

_{^{Andy Weir on the Economics of Sci-Fi and Space}}

and

Q. In these other roles, right. No, that’s a good point. Okay, so towards the end of this I want to get now to the tough questions. When will humans live on the moon?

Weir: Well, I went ahead and made my prediction in the 2060s for the beginning of construction of Artemis. “Artemis” takes place in the 2080s, so I gave us about 50 years to get to the point where we’ve driven commercial space travel, the price is down far enough that there could be a legitimate tourist industry.

_{^{The Martian’ author Andy Weir on Recode Media}}

and

"Are such advances reasonable? Well, "Artemis" takes place in the 2080s, which is over 60 years from the time of this writing. Consider the advancements in the aviation industry from its beginnings in the 1930s to the 1990s. Yes, it's possible. When enough money is up for grabs, anything's possible."

_{^{'The Martian' author Andy Weir solved moon economics to make his new book 'Artemis' believable}}