Making Money on the Moon
Want to get in on the ground floor of the moon?
As NASA moves forward with its $100 billion plan to start human settlement of the moon by 2030, it is making room for private enterprise on our original satellite.
Alan Boyle at MSNBC explains:
The prospects for private enterprise on the moon — ranging from astronomical telescopes to gee-whiz television to medical isotopes and fusion fuel — were listed during a weekend session at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science….
The first thing that anyone’s going to make money off of, from the moon, is probably going to be information of some kind," [Paul Spudis, a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory,] said. That could take the form of interactive television, virtual-reality tours or remote control of lunar probes, leading to "a huge entertainment/educational market that will develop around the lunar return," Spudis said.
Worden touted the idea of lunar surface observatories: "There is already a reasonable investment that’s been made by a private group for putting telescopes on the moon for scientific purposes, much in the way that private investors have built many of the large telescopes in the world," he said.
That group is the International Lunar Observatory Association, which is still being organized by Space Age Publishing’s Steve Durst. The concept calls for sending a 10-foot-high (3-meter-high) probe, equipped with a radio dish antenna as well as communication and power-generating equipment, to the lunar surface. In a telephone interview, Durst told MSNBC.com that the likeliest site would be Malapert Mountain near the lunar south pole.
Based on two feasibility studies conducted by California-based SpaceDev, the mission could be done for $50 million, with a target date in the 2010 time frame, Durst said. A "founders’ meeting" for potential funders is being planned for this November, he said….
As the pace of NASA’s plans accelerates, Durst hopes the International Lunar Observatory will serve as a relay for communications traffic between Earth and the moon. "We’re looking at commercializing that capability," he told MSNBC.com.
What I’m waiting for — though admittedly I’ll be waiting a long time — is the first scheduled Virgin Galactic flight to the moon, as I’ve always wondered what spring really is like on Jupiter and Mars.
