Fly me to the moon: Private company plans moon mission!

[Vega115]

Yep, apprantly, a private company, Trailblazer Inc. plans a commercail robotic mission to the moon...in October!

http://space.com/businesstechnology/...al_040129.html

From the sound of it...It seems like it will be done. Dang..even if it is a commercial mission..beats Bush's plan by 4 years! And supposdly is only going to cost 20 Million dollars!

I personally think it actaully might work..we shall see....

[Avatar28]

Personally, I think opening up space to commercial interests would be the best (and probably cheapest) way to get a large, widespread push into space.

[SciFi Chick]

I don't know. Call me a cynic, but paying $2500.00 to litter on the moon just doesn't sound like such a great idea to me. 8-[

[Stuart]

Personally, I think opening up space to commercial interests would be the best (and probably cheapest) way to get a large, widespread push into space.

Well said sir. And getting us out into space is the important thing, not whether its done by a government or a company.

[Demigrog]

I like the idea of this kind of commercial lunar mission and hope it works out; for $17 you can get a text message added to the mission (unclear if it is electronic or physical), and the high-res photos (including Apollo sites) should be interesting.

I don't worry about "littering" much, as there won't be very many missions like this. The business model depends on the novelty to support the prices, which will wear off quick if commercial launches like this become routine.

Technology of the probe probably isn't anything earth shattering (moon shattering?) either; since it doesn't have to land safely its probably a glorified commercial satellite with a bit more deltaV than usual at takeoff.

[Eta C]

Sounds like a repeat of the first Ranger missions that flew in the early 60's. To get a repeat of Surveyor will require a bit more sophistication.

[Diamond]

I don't know. Call me a cynic, but paying $2500.00 to litter on the moon just doesn't sound like such a great idea to me. 8-[

You're a cynic.

Where do I sign up? \/

Edit: Rats! It's sending junk onto the lunar surface!

Hey guys! Land the thing gracefully and look around! [-X

[gethen]

I don't know. Call me a cynic, but paying $2500.00 to litter on the moon just doesn't sound like such a great idea to me. 8-[

I totally agree. What scientific goal is achieved by dumping ashes and business cards on the moon? Private space programs may be the wave of the future, but this doesn't look very smart--unless your total goal is to make some money. If they planned to do some research, I'd be more impressed. Or maybe the idea is to finance the dump with "donations" and they put together another, more complicated trip, to clean it up? :wink:

[TriangleMan]

Private space programs may be the wave of the future, but this doesn't look very smart--unless your total goal is to make some money.

Well, profit is the goal of companies.

[Sparks]

Has it occourred to anyone that maybe they'll just do a sub-orbital launch and let it burn up in the atmosphere, pocket the cash and say they hit the moon?

[kucharek]

I like the idea of this kind of commercial lunar mission and hope it works out; for $17 you can get a text message added to the mission (unclear if it is electronic or physical).

You can do this for many missions today for free. I've messages on Huygens, MER-A, MER-B and Stardust.

Harald

[Demigrog]

I like the idea of this kind of commercial lunar mission and hope it works out; for $17 you can get a text message added to the mission (unclear if it is electronic or physical).

You can do this for many missions today for free. I've messages on Huygens, MER-A, MER-B and Stardust.

Harald

Maybe the TransOrbital people give you a pretty certificate or something to make their text message special.

They are a bit loony (does that make them Luna-tics?) though, I think; one of their stated goals is to put a file server on the moon, as a sort of ultimate "offsite backup" of critical documents. I think if something happened to need an off-planet backup their client has probably already been vaporized...

[crazy4space]

You can do this for many missions today for free. I've messages on Huygens, MER-A, MER-B and Stardust.

I put my name on a disk for the mars rovers and NASA let me print a certificate. From what I understand there were going to be 7 million names attached.

Vega115 I saw this this morning and was going to post. Darned work.

What I like about this is the orbiter that is going with this mission is supposed to try and take pictures of the Apollo landing sites as well as mapping the moon. All for profit of course but I will take pictures of the landing sites for all my disbelievers.

[Madcat]

Trailblazer will orbit the Moon for about three months, sending back high-quality and potentially saleable photos of Apollo landing sites

Of course, since we live in a rational universe, this will silence the hoax believers once and for all.

[Ilya]

I don't know. Call me a cynic, but paying $2500.00 to litter on the moon just doesn't sound like such a great idea to me. 8-[

I totally agree. What scientific goal is achieved by dumping ashes and business cards on the moon? Private space programs may be the wave of the future, but this doesn't look very smart--unless your total goal is to make some money. If they planned to do some research, I'd be more impressed.

Why do you (and presumably SciFi Chick) think that "scientific goals" and "research" are the only worthwhile things to do in space? And what is wrong with making money? Oceanographic voyages takes a up a tiny percentage of the total sea travel; most of it is done by non-scientists (not even by engineers) in order to make money, to enjoy themselves, and to make money off people enjoying themselves. Considerable part of oceanic (and any other) travel is done for utterly frivolous reasons such as underwater weddings, yet technology involved advances largely because people want to achieve their frivolous goals more cheaply and more efficiently. Oceanography benefits as a result, BTW.

How is space any different? What makes you think it is an exalted domain of scientists and must not be sullied by base human desires? Newsflash - almost all progress in history has been driven by base desires.

[semi-sentient]

Trailblazer will orbit the Moon for about three months, sending back high-quality and potentially saleable photos of Apollo landing sites, plus HDTV-quality video that might be sold for advertising use. Data will be collected to create a new, high-resolution lunar map, also potentially saleable.

Even though they are selling the above, I still say that it's a scientific enough reason too support it. After all, do they give away scientific textbooks in school?

TransOrbital initially had planned a July 2001 launch. Trailblazer was later expected to go up early this year. But a new deal struck with Hewlett Packard last summer, which will allow anyone with a properly equipped handheld computer to communicate with the lunar orbiter, forced additional engineering, Laurie said.

"We'd like to have as many people either send things to the Moon or access the satellite while it's in orbit around the Moon as possible," he said. Terrestrial communicators would get a confirmation message that the craft had received a signal.

Cool! I wonder how "equipped" that handheld needs to be? :P Does NASA do anything like this?

The mission is expected to cost less than $20 million.

If they can pull this off and accomplish their goals, then someone *cough* NASA *cough* better be taking notes.

[Ulster]

Personally, I think opening up space to commercial interests would be the best (and probably cheapest) way to get a large, widespread push into space.

I agree that commercial interests are the best way to get a large push into space, but not now. The fact is, the only possible profitable space venture today is transporting payloads such as satellites, and that is certainly open to debate. Perhaps tourism may be profitable, but I don't think it is completely viable at this point. However, you are ultimately correct that commercial interests will drive us. But, in the future.

The startup costs are incredible. Much higher than any possible return on investment. More likely we will need a government project in which the private sector can piggyback. GWB's proposal of a lunar base would fit such a plan by establishing a presence on the moon and absorb a lot of the fundamental costs to private industry and allow them to build from the foundation and begin realizing profits much faster.

Once such a foundation, or foothold, is started it will spread rapidly and enable an accelerating private infrastructure in space to do what it does best, expand. I don't think the GWB plan mentions corporate interests, but the concept is there. GWB's plan in space is important and if you think of it in this context, it is brilliant. Unfortunately, it has been ridiculed by many. I think finally we have a concrete plan to begin our expansion into the solar system and it starts with building the infrastructure on the moon. Sure, it's a very long term plan. But, it is an important (if not critical) start.

[Emspak]

I think the poll question is a little simplistic.

A base on the moon is a great idea for a lot of reasons. But there are a couple of debates you could get into from there.

The first is whether private enterprise is the best way to get lots of people into space. Popular mythology has all these entrepeneurs boldly developing new technologies. But the fact is that historially, anything that is capital intensive (as opposed to labor intensive) has a tendency to start in a government-protected monopoly, a government-sponsored enterprise, or some combination thereof.

Take railroads. Half the land they got was simply given to them. That eliminated a big capital cost. Or telephones: one reason that everyone has a phone in the US is because the government granted AT&T a monopoly. AT&T also developed a large number of technologies we use today (remember Bell Labs?) It is telling that Tellabs (the post break-up version) was actually untenable as a business without the support for the basic research it got from AT&T.

Those are just two examples, there are many more. Point is, private enterprise has not proven good at exploiting new niches unless the return on investment is pretty large, at least initially. So exploring a new land for gold is something people do well for profit, because gold is high-return, relative to the risk. Space hasn't been like that -- I covered satellite companies for years and I can tell you there are reasons Iridium went bankrupt. (If you want their bonds they were selling for a few cents on the dollar last I looked). You'd think satphones would be profitable, but as it has turned out they just can't compete with their land-based cousins. A typical satellite launch cost is on the order of $100 million -- if you let the Russians do it (they do it on the cheap, but the insurance is higher).

So my guess would be that large-scale space exploration -- or exploitation -- will be a governmental enterprise for some time. Unless - and this is the big unless -- someone comes up with a way to recoup something like $500 million a year. Every year. And I am making some pretty generous assumptions about the cost of getting a rocket up there, setting up the facilities to maintain it -- you get the idea.

So far the boldest satellite entrepeneur I know of is the Saudi Prince Abdel-Aziz bin Talal. He put $200 million of his own money in Globalstar back in '98 or '99. He is one of the reasons the company still exists in some form today. But look at that number! Few private equity guys or venture capitalists would float that.

Until there are two things: a really, really low-rent way to get to space and something to generate lots of margin when you get there, I can't see many space-based businesses appearing. Even tourism would require some subsidies, at least initially. (Remember, tourism now is heavily subsidized in many countries, and there is the indirect subsidy to airlines in the US as embodied by the break they get on fuel tax, publicly funded airports and air traffic control, et cetera).

Anyhow, while I am not anti private enterprise per se, I urge people to recognize its limitations. After all, we have bases in Antarctica and the tourist appeal of that continent is still a bit limited. (I understand that there are rules protecting its resources from exploitation, undercutting much of the continent's value -- at least to investment bankers). I would bet the folloing: when a viable population is established on the moon, (or Mars) that has a resource base, then private enterprise will have a reason to be there and make sense.

-J