2020AD: Space tourists will be FOUND ON MOON A group of former NASA employees are planning to send two people to the Moon for $1.4bn as part of a new space tourism venture. The newly launched Golden Spike Company wants to use existing rocket tech to get the mission off the ground before 2020. The firm said the time was ripe for their business because of the private …
No, that would be stupid. The whole point of the exercise is to spread the development and fixed costs among as many customers as possible. The military already has two dedicated lifters with longer and better records than SpaceX. They want the costs, which depend on having non military rockets.
Its not a secret stellite. It's just a kerosene rocket.
Not too sure that will ever happen. For a start, exploiting the moon for commercial gain without first consulting the rest of the world, and putting a couple of untrained people on the moon to do what they like is likely to lead to all sorts of trouble before you even start.
Financial issues? Solved if they are paying the costs.
Technical issues? Hell, we did it 40+ years ago, there's no reason we can't again. But it's still not safe.
Safety issues? The chances of a remote-controlled moon visit are slim - the burden of a mission is the human-survival element, not who holds the joystick, and that's where most of the cost/problems come from (which is why we stopped doing human visits and starting doing remote-controlled visits in the first place).
Political issues? That's going to be the killer.
In the back of my mind, I'm picturing some rich Russian going up to the Moon and scuffing Armstrong's footprint and replacing the US flag with a Soviet one, but that's probably at the extreme end of the scale. There are any number of ways it could go wrong without there being a single technical hitch. And we've never had a space mission without a single technical hitch, ever.
1) Consulting the world? I was unaware the moon sported a thriving ecosystem, or that the rocket would be chock full of diamonds on the return journey. I thought it was a boring dusty place. It's not like the mission is setting up a mining colony (although that would be cool).
2) Financial issues/technical issues? Fair enough.
3) Not safe? Please sign this waiver after signing your cheque. Or sign them the other way around, we're pretty relaxed about that.
4) Political issues? Given the mess the Chinese and Russians make of their own back yard, I can't see them giving a rat's ass about some dusty footprints on the moon. If they manage to get your Russian billionaire that close to the Apollo 11 landing site, then fair play, but by then it's much too late for the 'merkins to get all huffy.
5) Things will go wrong? No sh*t Sherlock. You pays your money and you takes your chance.
Not safe? Please sign this waiver after signing your cheque. Or sign them the other way around, we're pretty relaxed about that
Went skiing when living in the US 12 years ago and when I hired ski-equipment I had to sign a declaration which stated that I understood that skiing was dangerous and could lead to serious injury or death! Think the US legal system has already worked out how to deal with the "not safe" issue.
This post has been deleted by its author
"I was unaware the moon sported a thriving ecosystem, or that the rocket would be chock full of diamonds on the return journey."
I was thinking more along the lines of international agreements that no nation can claim any part of outer space as their own (own "an acre of Moon land"? I think the UN would disagree), leaving a sterile place sterile, not corrupting it for unnecessary purposes, but even things like not having to prove that said billionaire hasn't stuck something on the moon that another nation doesn't want on there.
When you have the backing of a major world government, and get there first, you can ignore some of those, especially if it comes under the remit of science. When you're an Earth-bound commercial entity reliant on your government to grant licenses for you to even try to get into space, let alone send passengers, and those governments are signed up to certain international "space is not a place for anyone to own, or militarise" treaties, and you run the risk of putting some idiot into space at great ecological cost to the Earth (if nothing else) for no reason than to say hi to his mum, then you have a bigger problem.
No nation can claim any part of outer space as their own, true for the time being although I can see that changing or being ignored once we start getting serious about leaving this planet. However as I understand it there's nothing to stop an individual claiming any part of outer space further I don't believe you need to own something to go there, otherwise I'd never go abroad or to my Mum's house.
"international agreements that no nation can claim any part of outer space as their own"
I think some sort of general consensus on those lines already exists (similair to agreements regarding Anatartcica?) which of course is easy to come by when 'owning' an acre of moon or an asteroid is a moot point. I wonder what will happen when it becomes a real possibility.
That sounded like a great deal until I realized that the flight actually goes to near the moon, but there is an hourly shuttle service to get you to the actual moon.
*shuttle service, ha ha ha you can't make this shit up
**appears that the shuttle service is no longer viable due to cancellations, so I guess the only moon flight option is easy (ram)jet
Great, if they can make it work commercially. However, I think the plan to have the nearest available technical expertise 240,000 miles away needs a bit of a rethink. As Lee mentioned above, things can, and will, go wrong, and when they do the end result will be an untrained passenger fumbling around trying to make sense of the instructions radio'd to him/her from Mother Earth. Suddenly people's lives hang on the end of a tech support call.
I predict the potential market for this idea will demand on-board technical skill.
My first impression after looking at their proposal and reading subsequent discussion in various space forums is that this will be the latest in a long line of here today gone tomorrow space ventures that makes a lot of big, appealing claims, drums up a load of media hype and then is scarcely heard from again.
I'm as annoyed as any space nerd that we haven't been back to the moon in 40 years but the idea that these guys are going to start from scratch and get a fully developed lunar transport architecture along the lines of what they're proposing is something that only people who know bugger all about space will swallow. There isn't even a current working US based system to get humans into orbit at the moment and they're going to develop a lunar transfer vehicle and a lunar lander as well? By 2020? Pull the other one!
People will get back to the moon one day but it won't be Golden Spike that gets them there and it certainly won't be happening before 2020!
OK, raising the money is easy:
Kickstarter: Send Beiber and one other annoying "reality" personality to the Moon:
$100 level: We put your name on the scroll we send with them
$500 level: You get to suggest who to send (for each $500 you get one vote).
$10000 level: You get to personally help "verify" the return rockets....
It's a lot of money, and what do you get?
4 days of in-flight meals and not a lot to do on the way there. After all, there's no room to move because room=payload. Also, I expect entertainment options would be limited - every kWh = payload.
How long on the moon? Do they get to go outside? Are they expected to do anything whilst they're there (like pick up moonrocks or anything)?
4 days of in-flight meals on the way back again.
That's a bit over a week in travelling for what is only likely to be hours on the surface. Yes, I know Cernan and Schmidt stayed on the moon for 3 days or so, but that was a fairly proven system and no comforts. I don't imagine many billionaires will want to do without their comfy beds for 10 days.
It's a nice idea, but I don't think the people who can afford to do it will want to and vice-versa.
"It's a lot of money, and what do you get?"
True.
Things seriously rich people do include.
Booking 2 weeks in ice hotels at the North Pole.
Climbing Everest
Taking a trip in a Bathysphere, which at least one of the Directors has done.
Flying to the edge of space in Russian fighter planes.
Staying at the ISS (that takes 18 months prep in Russia for starters)
So yes it is possible they have a market out there. Can this company execute their plan?
This post has been deleted by its author
Market fail. No one wants what your selling. Difficult when running say a water supply utility, not so difficult for trips to the Moon.
Technology fail. It's simply impossible to go to the Moon. Just accept that my opinion of this is that it's BS. I think their architecture is viable provided all the bought in sections are standard straight off the line hardware.
Company fail. Tech can work but this company cannot get it's act together.
NASA's recent (as in the last 30 years) history of implementing major human spaceflight launch systems has not been one of 100% success. The last group of ex NASA types who got into a private company en-masse was Kistler.
The VC's who put $900m into that company will probably not be going anywhere near this lot.
The fact tech startups have 3 failure modes may explain why Warren Buffet tends to stay away from them.
I wish them every success. I hope they do achieve it but just keep in mind NASA's cost analysis of Spacex against how much Spacex really spent. There's a reason those figures were a minimum of 4x out.
Phil Plait's been pimping the hell out of this scheme over at Bad Astronomy -- though, to his credit, he was quite forthcoming about his friendship with one of the guys who runs the thing.
That said... oh, Christ, not AGAIN...!
Honestly, sometimes I think that if I had a buck for every one of these sending-rich-private-citizens-to-the-Moon schemes, I could... well, I could afford to go to the Moon.
"...we’re about American industry and American entrepreneurial spirit leading the rest of the world..."
D'ahh, Christ on a pogo stick. This bullshit again? When are the clowns who write those press releases going to get some original ideas... or at least make up some new phrases? "Entrepreneurial spirit" is becoming one of my least favorite phrases in the English language.
The moon's a rock with low gravity that can't support life.
Musk's aim is Mars for $500k. Mars has the resources to support life (with a bit of technological help). A bit more interesting.
I'd rather just go to space, look at the Earth and say "Nice!", float around a bit , come back and wait for the Marsflower.
You really think it's boring?
Well, check out some of the photography from the Apollo expeditions, especially the last three, which visited the foothills of the Apennine mountain range, and Hadley Rille, a canyon wider and deeper than anything on Earth. Go there yourself and check out those panoramic scenes and then, when you have a moment, look up into the sky and check out the Earth. Then, get back to me on whether or not it's boring.
In the 1970's, nasa specialists, one of the advocates of "One Way Trip to Mars" for decades, informed NASA that he could get to the moon and back for Titanium mining for $2 million per mission. That's with the endorsment of his chief too. Merely, $2 million, with existing Apollo infrastructure. The Joint Chiefs were so pleased that they described to him a nice wall he should stand in front of, the kind used for those who commit treason, if he moved forward. Opportunity lost.
One might ask, why just $2 million? Because the inflated price it took not only for government procurement, at its horrible inefficiency, but also to maintain control of the technology precisely because private enterprise could do it more efficiently, and the US was in a cold war in which cheaper technology could not afford to be copied. There really are strategic secrets out there! Keeping it under government control would ensure that soviets would go head to head with the US in copying the technology as implemented, at horrible expense and sacrifice, since many of their best rocket scientists also blew up a few years before,though they weren't as bad off as the Chinese. In a sense, despite the superior theoretical foundations of the soviet scientists, and many simple, practical innovations, having their technologists copy American technology component for component was deadly poison, akin to thinking and working with a hammer hitting your head. Now, with that desire to copy blindly gone, until these private efforts are fully realized and successful, I'm sure the waiting list is great to use Russian and Chinese launchers. :) Or, you can ask the scientist, well, before he passes on, or other American innovators, who have risk-taking as their only saving grace, not their dumbed down public education. Today, all things being the same, 1970's $2 million per mission would be in today's dollars, and still, potentially profitable because eventually, we'll run out of Titanium Dioxide for the bleach white effect in the frosting of cinnamon rolls, and other important activities. Time to munch a snack. C
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
