A For-Profit Trip To The Moon

jrg writes "The company, TranOrbital, Inc. has a project, TrailBlazer, to become the first (early 2001) commercial space mission to enter lunar orbit. They plan to do this for a fraction of the price it would cost NASA, plus they plan to map the entire surface of the moon in unprecedented detail using HDTV video cameras (finally, we get to see those alien bases! ;) ). If they can pull it off as cheaply as they claim, this might signal a new phase in the human utilization of space. "

Comments

The debate starts early corporations in space

[ACK!!]

I see the concerns shaping up really quick. I also see the folks lining up with kudos. The kind of debate already voiced in some of the early comments are the sort of posts that will follow the discussion throughout.

The debate is whether or not corporation involvement in the direct exploration of space a good thing.

There are pluses:

1) Businesses are usually apt to get things quicker than the government.
2) Businesses tend to be more effective in the results gained.
3) Businesses do not suck as much taxpayer dollars to achieve their goals. Notice that comment: I have not forgotten the whole debate over corporate welfare programs. Programs that give money to corporations that already rich for going into this or that market etc..

There are downsides as well:

1) Can we trust the corporations who are not motivated by the popular vote factor to not exploit their position and pollute the heavens in the same way they have polluted the earth.
2) Safety concerns are also a factor. NASA despite the few notable exceptions we all remember has a pretty good safety record. Can we trust the corporations will have the same sort of record?
3) What about the science factor? Is there any incentive for a money making operation to support the scientific community the same way NASA has?

The real question is whether the practical use of space is worth the possible downsides of corporate involvement on a massive scale. With good regulatory limits and oversight I think that the corporate model can be the new wave and spark a new era in the exploration of space.

Re:The debate starts early corporations in space

[pblase]

Re downsides: 1) I can only speak for TransOrbital, of course in saying that we won't, but in general: no. There will be the same requirements for public opinion and government rules as here on Earth. Of course, A) since the lunar surface is so much wasteland anyways, it doesn't make _that_ much difference, and B) stuff is so expensive that recycling is far more attractive than here on Earth. 2) Killing customers is bad for business. 3) Well, if you look carefully, often the scientists aren't funded by NASA - they get their grants from such agencies as the NSF. NASA just runs the spacecraft. There's no reason why private companies won't take the same money - that's precisely what TransOrbital and SpaceDev are doing. (TransOrbital has up to 4 kg of instrumentation space available, if anyone is interested).

Re:Sounds cool, but is this wise?

[john_many_jars]

1) amen. Though if the corporate pockets are deep enough, such lawsuits will be ruled invalid on their face because of legislation lobbied by corporations (cf HMOs, guns, etc).
2) seatbelts are/were patented (not sure of the status now). (ie Patents used wisely can be quite beneficial--whole list other examples)
3) rocketfuel is hydrogen and oxygen. The exhaust is water.

Re:Limits to resolution of pictures

[Graymalkin]

Um...dude? 27 km is not a very low orbit (you know this I'm sure), it's only about 4 times lower than the orbit of the Shuttle's usual orbit. And besides that they don't mention a detail about the rover tracks that are important. It would be much easier to see the tracks from outside of the left track to the outside of the right track which I would venture is ~170cm. The Great Wall in China can be seen from orbit because it is fairly wide, you're calculating for a single tire track not the two tracks combined.

Re:Stop the Insanity

[Graymalkin]

The moon (had it colonies) would be a damn fine place to build luxery hotels and tourist attractions. It would also be better than Florida for retirement purposes. Besides entertainment it would be a great place to build observatories, there's little light pollution and on the far side you'd have a pretty quiet time in the radio regions.

Re:Humans free of commerce? No.

[Graymalkin]

How do you mean the internet exploded quickly? The Internet was around for many years before anyone actually built business plans around it. That means it took a while to actually become popular. Space travel COULD make a buck if people actually knew something about it. If the cost of a trip up to the moon cost about as much as a week long vacation to Europe many people including myself would rush the company providing such a trip. If you've ever watched satillite TV you'd see that space is already profitable.

Re:Don't be impressed by China.

[quantumfire]

do you have any idea of the market value of just one medium-sized chunk of asteroidal nickel-iron?

No, actually, come to think of it. What is the market value?

And no, for once, I'm not being a smartass. Just curious. :)

Solutions... maybe

[SpazAttak]

Now I'm not a physicist, but couldn't you just chuck the thing into the sun?

Burn it to a crisp... no litter no harm done.
Hopefully
I guess it introduces some more cost for the fuel to power it to the sun, but would it really be that much more fuel?
All ya have to do is break the moon's gravity and possibly clear a planet and let gravity do the rest

Re:Solutions... maybe

[IdahoEv]

Actually, it's worse than that, even. Remember that orbits closer to the parent body are *faster*, not slower orbits. To drop to a lower orbit, you have to speed up. And you have to speed up a lot from 18mps to drop the orbit within the surface of the sun.

You have to make your orbit increasingly elliptical to do it reasonably; a thinner ellipse until one side intersects the solar surface. Cheaper than shrinking a nearly circular orbit that far, but still prohibitive.

It's actually cheaper to chuck it out of the solar system.

Re:Why?

[dnnrly]

The device you mention for getting minerals back to earth orbit has been mentioned in many fine SF tales and is called a mass driver(I think, don't hold me to that). One of the biggest problems is the ease of use as a weapon of mass destruction cf. Babylon 5 when the Centari trash the Narn homeworld. That might only be a story but when you think about it, a 1000 kg slug travelling at 100000kmh(for example, and not an unreasonable speed) has 3.858*10^11J of energy. Not a small amount.

And It's about time too.

[JacksonG]

For too long we have ignored our celestial partner and space research in general has been on a severe downer since the heyday of the Apollo program.

If governments won't go into space then the only other entities that can do it are the commercial interests. Mapping the moon with modern technology is an admirable step forward from the data collected on the Apollo missions. And who knows, if one or two of these unmanned missions go successfully then man may once again set foot on the moon.

And maybe, just maybe, their craft will get a photo of tranquility base and prove that that damned landing was a hoax!

J

Re:Amazed

[mr_death]

lbrlove asked: Has anyone considered the liability issues of this (I am seriously asking)

You can't avoid the lawyers, but you can make it more difficult for them to go after your assets. Strategies include:

1. each spacecraft is held by a separate C corporation. It is alleged that United Airlines hold each aircraft they have in a separate C Corporation. That way, if the aircraft goes down and people sue, the maximum amount the lawyers can get is the value of the aircraft (and insurance on that aircraft, if any.)

2. Offshore asset trusts. Some jurisdictions (e.g., Cook Islands) will not recognize foreign judgements, so the plantiffs will have to try the case again in the jurisdictions of the trust. Further, there are tight time limits to file.

3. somewhat convoluted multi-entity structures which give multiple levels of protection (e.g., a limited partnership with the general partner being a C corporation.)

Note that I Am Not A Lawyer -- I just pay one to cover my own butt with some of these methods. Your Mileage May Vary, yadda, yadda, yadda ...

Land claim

[maddurbation]

The U.S. flag is up on the moon as we all know. That land is ours. What's to stop some other country or terrorists from snatching it up right from us?
The answer lies within:
Get your Moon Photon Disruptor Deatomizer Missile Turret today!
(from Blamo)
What the government needs to do is buy 1000's of these wonderful Blamo created devices for only $39.95 each. Act now and recieve a special Blamo Moon Photon Disruptor Deatomizer Missile Turret keychain!


"spare the lachrymosity when the fulminations have inveighed"

I Likes The Crashes

[Anonymous Coward]

Forget NASCAR, I wanna see a big 'ol Space-Ship get all smashed up! Nothin' more fun than watchin' a bunch a rich folks get bar-b-q'ed intersteller style!

Re:I Likes The Crashes

[pblase]

We're planning imagery down to the point of impact, if possible.

Why?

[infodragon]

I first asked my self, "Why would a corporation be interested in making an extremely detailed map of the mood?" Then it just hit me.

An extremely detailed map would allow for planning a more in-depth mission. Possibly for mineral/metal prospecting for future mining missions. For a corporation the moon may be the most valuable untapped resource EVER.

They wouldn't have any government regulations. How can you pollute an already lethally radioactive environment? You cannot pollute an atmosphere because there isn't one.

You have the stability of a huge body (not an asteroid with almost no gravity) with low gravity. The low gravity would allow for cheaper movement and processing of the minerals on the moon. The minerals produced would be much stronger due to the low gravity and the vacuum of space. You also have water, which was recently found on the southern poll.

After you have set up shop you must get the goods back to earth. Well the low gravity of the moon and vacuum of space presents a rely cool option. You can build a huge catapult that would launch the goods at tremendous speeds, kinda like they have on an aircraft carrier. These goods would fall into orbit around the earth and be used for whatever... A space station or brought back to earth for sale.

The possibilities are endless and mankind finally has the technology to explore them.

Re:Why?

[BlueMonk]

WE NEED TO BE ABLE TO EXPAND. There are too many of us here, and being able to move a large percentage of people off of Earth before we ruin it is going to require steps in between. We can't do it right now but we can take a few steps IN THAT DIRECTION to at least increase the chances of it someday being possible.

Don't you think it would be easier to expand on a planet that can hold an atmosphere with its own gravity than on one that must be pressurized? I think we need some intensive research on fusion energy and terraforming in order to get some process started on Mars so that it's habitable by the time we figure out a reasonable way to get there. If we figure out everything and then realize it's going to take another 50 years for the operation/reaction to complete, that will be somewhat of a disappointment. I'm hoping there's some chemical reaction or nanotechnological process that we could just set off today and wait 20-50 years and then the Martian atmosphere will be suitable for humans. (Of course practical fusion energy would be even more useful here on earth)

Re:Why?

[boing boing]

He said: "Yes it is. One of the design issues of the space suites is to protect against radiation from the sun. IMO that is part of the environment."

I say: "Technically it is a transient part of the environment. And a space suit does not provide much protection. For instance most satellites have up to 1000 mil (1 inch) Al shielding and this does not have a significant impact upon Galactic Cosmic Rays. GCRs also are the most dangerous to human beings because they deposit the most energy per unit material. This is the reason most manned space missions are at 400 to 500 km; it is much safer because of the impact of geomagnetic shielding."

He said:"These goods would fall into orbit around the earth and be used for whatever... A space station or brought back to earth for sale.

That is brought back to earth for sale. Most likely by a space craft similar to the space shuttle! "

I say:"The cost of a vehicle like the space shuttle is enormous. I don't have the figure at hand, but it is on the order of a million dollars (taxpayer money) each flight. Just getting up and going down. Tough to make a profit with those sort of costs."

As to the comment about water being on the moon, I believe another reader answered it. At this point, no one knows.

Re:Why?

[infodragon]

The cost of a vehicle like the space shuttle is enormous. I don't have the figure at hand, but it is on the order of a million dollars (taxpayer money) each flight. Just getting up and going down. Tough to make a profit with those sort of costs.

Yea the cost is enormous now. So was a pentium when it first came out. Point maid? If not in the future cheaper and alternate ways of getting stuff from space will be developed. As someone else posted...

The Chinese have returned probes with heat shields composed of compressed walnut shells (if memory serves), the Russians have successfully tested inflatable heat-shields for reusable probes, and most goods (especially electronics) can handle tens or hundreds of G's if properly packed.

As to the water you said...

As to the comment about water being on the moon, I believe another reader answered it. At this point, no one knows.

That is correct nobody knows for sure. But NASA as a strong belief. I to believe that there is water on the moon for a couple of reasons.

It is a definite that there is hydrogen. In the universe hydrogen gas is the most abundant matter. Hydrogen gas is defiantly not on the moon. So what else could be there? With the abundance of water in comets I do believe that there is water on the moon deposited by a comet. However this is pure conjecture but most times the simplest explanation is most often the case. With all the facts and all the possibilities there is probably water on the moon.

Anyway thanks for your coments it is not often that I find someon so knowledgable in the area of space and space exploration who is willing to debate!

BTW, sorry about the troll thing, I couldn't resist;)

Re:Why?

[boing boing]

Check out this site. It has several presentation about re-entry plans. It is not trivial and the US is probably the best in the world at it, but it has to be controlled. These objects you return are essentially meteorites in the way they enter the Earth without control. Very dangerous.

I hope to see the day when launch costs get cheap enough ($1/pound vs 10K$/pound) to send humans into space; but before humans spend too much time in space, it is necessary to develop a good way to eliminate the dangers of radiation. This will be the most expensive and difficult challenge (IMO) for future space exploration.

I thought the troll part was funny.

Re:Why?

[fractaltiger]

Hmm. You have good points there. One thing gets me, though. Why spend so much if the price of loading the minerals from orbit back to Earth would still be high, let alone even getting these "catapulted" so that they will not fall from their fixed orbits. There are already enough debris and shutdown satellites travelling at dangerous speeds up there to routinely put new stuff in orbit for short amounts of time since no one would keep good track of that.

I believe that it would be great for experimental minerals if the lesser gravity does make production cheaper. But if the actual trips and the overhead costs are still very high, this is going to take a long time. Just consider how long it is to get say, diamonds, when there's only one company owning about 90% of the world supply.

Now think about Nasa owning 100% of the moon's raw supply -- they're no good at mining! No, just kidding, I'm sure that a real company would eventually take over, but I believe that sending miners would take a lot of highly selective tests and expensive training--you can't just get a Joe Blow who works in a mine in orbit...

just my two cents, please give me feedback

Re:Why?

[Shadowmist]

There are things we can't run away from. We do not have the means and quite possibly won't have them in the lifetimes of our grandchildren to create self-sustaining communities beyond Earth's atmosphere. Space travel isn't something that's going to become cheap unitl physics is rewritten to give us an option beyond impulse-driven craft.

Above and beyond that are the inherent difficulties in maintaing an ecosphere and viable genetic pools. Just as putting animals in zoos will not do anything but slow an inevitable extinction, it is no more possible for us to "backup" Earth's biosphere.

In short it comes dow to this. Humanity's future as a species is inextricably tied to this planet. Our test is to overcome the inheret eco-destructive nature we've had since going beyond the hunter-gatherer days.

Failure is simply not an option.

Re:Why?

[Golias]

An extremely detailed map would allow for planning a more in-depth mission. Possibly for mineral/metal prospecting for futuremining missions. For a corporation the moon may be the most valuable untapped resource EVER.

Hey, you're right! With just a few hundred billion dollars of VC money, we could build the biggest volcanic-ash mine in history! Think of all the Lava-brand soap we could make!

Okay, okay... Seriously, whenever anybody talks about terraforming Mars, building moon colonies, or mining asteroids, I think we should step back and apply this simple proof-of-concept test:

Would it be feasable to do this right now at the South Pole?

Keeping people alive in Antarctica is much, much cheaper than out in deep space or on our neighboring planets. Transportation and communication costs are also an order of magnitute lower. Don't even get me started on the costs of replacing equipment, or letting people visit their extended families over Christmas.

Even if a major catastrophe happened (big rock hits us, large-scale nuclear war, "Patch Adams II" is made, etc.), it would still be far easier to restore Earth's biosphere to a state that lets us survive than it would be to build a colony on one of Jupiter's moons.

Nobody is seriously suggesting that we should build permanent hydroponic farms in Antarctica, or housing projects on the ocean floors, or shopping malls in the Saharah desert... so why are so many people convinced that we will have entire cities on the Moon within a generation or two?

Re:Why?

[Dr Strangelove]

I first asked my self, "Why would a corporation be interested in making an extremely detailed map of the mood?" Then it just hit me.

An extremely detailed map would allow for planning a more in-depth mission. Possibly for mineral/metal prospecting for future mining missions. For a corporation the moon may be the most valuable untapped resource EVER.

BINGO! Someone here gets it!

If I correctly recall, the TrailBlazer probe is optimized to look for a number of very specific things, such as lava tubes. There are known lava tubes on Luna, but they became known because they were not structurally stable and collapsed akin to terrestrial sinkholes. Structurally stable lava tubes would be prime real estate, in that you are shielded from the sky (Gamma radiation and the like, but we're geeks who never go outside anyway, right?), and can pressurize them for crops, strolls, hobbies absurd on Earth (flying with wings, anyone?), et c.

Here is a respectable article on the uses for lava tubes: http://www.asi.org/a db/06/09/03/02/100/lava-tube-settling.html

I must admit that I'm a bit disappointed in most of the posts here. If I didn't know any better before reading them, I would have to assume that there's no reason to leave Earth ever, that it doesn't matter that we're in the middle of another mass extinction (no falling rock needed this time, just a bunch of members or a species of large mammal with destructive potential and limited grasp of the fragility of their environment), and that the notion of existing offword is nothing more than just another genre of escapist fantasy.

WE NEED TO BE ABLE TO EXPAND. There are too many of us here, and being able to move a large percentage of people off of Earth before we ruin it is going to require steps in between. We can't do it right now but we can take a few steps IN THAT DIRECTION to at least increase the chances of it someday being possible.

...not to mention the notion of BACKING UP some of the life on the only example of a living biodiversity before we finish wrecking the original.

Re:Why?

[boing boing]

"How can you pollute an already lethally radioactive environment?"

The environment is not radioactive. Radiation passes through the environment...but it also does that here. Our atmosphere provides an excellent shield but we still experience galactic cosmic rays on earth...IBM has been looking at upset rates on large commercial memories in servers for about the last 50 years.

"They wouldn't have any governmnet regulations"

There are space treaties to the effect that no one nation or company could own the moon or other parts of space.

As to all your other assertions, most of them are without merit. Water was not found on the moon...they tried and still don't know. And many of the other "advantages" are also false. For instance, goods falling into earth's atmosphere would need to be assured of a safe reentry. High Gs and high temperatures would eliminate most inexpensive methods.

Maybe I am just responding to a troll?

Re:Why?

[infodragon]

The environment is not radioactive.

Yes it is. One of the design issues of the space suites is to protect against radiation from the sun. IMO that is part of the environment.

Water was not found on the moon
Ummmm.... NASA tends to disagree

Other links....
another NASA article

More water than original estimates

Info on Prospector

For instance, goods falling into earth's atmosphere would need to be assured of a safe reentry.

I never said that! Please read what I wrote...

These goods would fall into orbit around the earth and be used for whatever... A space station or brought back to earth for sale.

That is brought back to earth for sale. Most likely by a space craft similar to the space shuttle!

A steel produced in a vacuum is stronger. Read it here

Anyway if you try to refute statements please back them up with facts like this. I was just making a comment not submitting a report.

Maybe I am just responding to a troll.

Re:Why?

[Winged Cat]

Sorry, but Antarctia's been "claimed" by international treaty. Science expeditions only; no permanent residents. Colonies in orbit/on the Moon/on other planets would be non-sovereign (at least for now), but there are no human agencies with a vested interest in preventing people from living there permanently.

And...some people are seriously suggesting and building habitations in the ocean. Not ocean bottom resorts, but on ships or in mega-buildings anchored near land, where people can still see the sun. Of course, those do not have the promise of minerals and low-g that moon colonies would. The question, as always, is "why would anyone want to live there?"

That said, you're probably right in that we won't have mega-cities off of Earth by mid-century. But mining colonies would be one way to start a permanent human presence.

Re:Why?

[Maurice]

Assuming "environment" means the stuff around you on the moon then it is NOT radioactive. However, since there is no atmosphere, energetic particles and photons are not stopped by anything but your spacesuit. Of course if you are even slightly underground you're ok.
The NASA site you point to says that there is a probability that there is ice on the moon, it is not definite. Even if there was, we don't know if it is in such a form that is easily usable. Might be all mixed with rocks or dust.
When you send goods from Moon to Earth you need significant propulsive action to reduce speed in order to enter Earth orbit. Alternatively you can do direct reentry, but it is high-g and you need special capsule if the payload is gonna survive.

What's next

[JupiterP5]

This is along the same lines as turning MIR into a hotel. Which is basically what's happening to it. It seems to me that space exploration is going to be more and more commercialized. What's next, being able to visit the Ramada located on the moon!

Re:Got Spam from TO on Wednesday

[Alarmist]

The privately held company has already arranged for a launch aboard the "Strela" launch vehicle.

Strela is Russian for, I believe, "arrow." Their hand-held Stinger-oid missiles (SA 7, I think, though I don't recall) were called by the same name.

Either they've been up to something and slapped an old name on it, or somehow these people are planning to use very short range surface-to-air missiles to loft their payloads.

What else are they not telling us?

The first advertising opportunity in lunar orbit

Which no one will see, unless the ad is huge (on the order of several miles across).

Earthrise 2001: A defining video image for the New Millennium

As if the December 1968 shot by Apollo 8 wasn't good enough. How the heck does a "video image" (I guess these people have never heard of "pictures") define a whole millennium?

An atlas of the entire lunar surface for students & planetary scientists

These already exist. The only thing they can possibly add is more accuracy and smaller resolutions.

Low-altitude, high-speed video, for Hollywood science-fiction movies footage

Equivalent or better quality can be produced in any decent computer imaging lab. They're starting to reach (read, grope) for anything that could be useful here.

The first deep space email service, from lunar orbit

"Look honey, my message got routed via a satellite over Copernicus!" Yawn.

What are they hiding from us? This can't possibly succeed as-stated.

Re:Clearly The Way Things Are Going

[Daniel Dvorkin]

I'm all for private space exploration, but I have to say that I'm a little tired of the conventional wisdom that private companies will do things faster, better, and cheaper (to coin a phrase) than NASA when the fact is that _not one_ private manned space mission has ever been launched. My Dad worked on Apollo and Skylab, and he's made the point quite persuasively that the reason NASA spends so much time and money on manned missions is that _that was the only way to make sure they got everything right_; it's unfortunate when an unmanned mission goes bad, but it's orders of magnitude worse when _people get killed_. And as recent events with unmanned missions have shown, faster and cheaper is not always better ... Imagine what the impact on space exploration would have been if a manned Mars mission had suffered the same fate as the unmanned probes.

In general, I'm deeply skeptical of the current mania for privatization of government jobs. Schools, prisons, transportation ... none of these have delivered the promised benefits. I'm fundamentally a believer in capitalism, but I think we as a society have to accept that there are some things government does better, some things private enterprise does better, and some things which are best done simultaneously by both. I strongly suspect that space exploration falls into this last category.

if..

[MrShiny]

..these people can go to the moon for as much money as they spent on their web site, they're in business.

But seriously folks, the government has gone into space, now the commercial sector.. when is the open source community going to launch a space mission?

Re:if..

[pblase]

Sponsorship opportunities are available. (read: "your logo here")

A Good Thing?

[aliebrah]

Is this really a good thing? Do we want to turn space into the same junkyard that we've turned Earth into?

Re:A Good Thing?

[medicthree]

What? I'm sorry, but I just don't see the connection between mapping the surface of the moon, and turning space into a "junkyard." I think it's high time that space is de-mystified (although that's probably much easier said than done), and one of the first steps towards that goal is taking it out of the realm of a government-only territory.

Re:A Good Thing?

[Alarmist]

Is this really a good thing? Do we want to turn space into the same junkyard that we've turned Earth into?

Earth-orbital space is already a junkyard, with over ten thousand known objects and fragments of objects in various orbits.

Just recently, parts of a Delta II booster landed in South Africa. Fortunately, no one was hurt, but it does make one wonder what else is up there and what kind of orbits those things are in.

For that matter, one also wonders what the bits that are up there can do. Who knows what sorts of sinister devices are up there, waiting to be brought down or activated at the touch of a button? I mean, really, how hard is it to rig an expended booster with thrusters that would allow it to deorbit on command? Sure, accuracy would probably be poor, but it might be enough for scare purposes.

Re:A Good Thing?

[dazedNconfuzed]

The Moon is a pile of rocks. What are you worried about?

Re:A Good Thing?

[Alarmist]

The Moon is a pile of rocks. What are you worried about?

And so is Earth. Hmmm.

Re:A Good Thing?

[Sun Tzu]

Too late. Our respective governments have had such a monopoly on that for so long that there is already a huge number of objects up there in orbit. In 1963 the U.S. Air Force launched into orbit 400 million tiny needle-sized objects in a single experiment! Maybe that's why we see so few UFO's these days... ;)

Re:A Good Thing?

[whovian]

Did it occur to anybody else that UFOs might actually be space junk burning up on reentry into the atmosphere?

Re:A Good Thing?

[Rombuu]

Well, since space is infititely big, I'm not sure why this would ever be an issue.

Re:A Good Thing?

[eudas]

the resources available to us on earth are finite. it is my belief that we should attempt to utilize them in the most efficient manner in matters such as this.

in my mind, i'm thinking several things:

1. disposable space probes? god... everything is disposable now, eh?
2. disposable items are for resource-heavy systems.
3. we may or may not be resource-heavy. since thus far history has shown mankind to be the worst kind of resource squanderer on the planet, and the matter available to us is finite at this point in time, it seems logical to attempt to use them as efficiently as possible.
4. disposable probes may be quite cost effective in knowledge gained vs matter/resources used.
5. if we set probes to crash into the sun (as another poster mentioned), the chance of reclaiming those resources used in the probe is nil. ditto for those that drift in space indefinitely.
6. if probes crash into the moon, we may at some point either a) develop a large enough stockpile of objects on the moon to make it worthwhile to retrieve them or b) develop our technology sufficiently that the cost of reclaiming the resources from the moon is effectively trivial.

all of these points are off of the top of my head and mostly just me rambling, and they may be considered useless bean-counting in the grand scheme of things, but i didn't play all those RTS's for nothing. ;)

that's my $0.04.
eudas

Re:A Good Thing?

[The Abominous Salad]

Rereading the company's website will lead you to notice that the spacecraft they have in mind will be designed to be disposable. They will have an expected lifespan of 30-90 days, after which the company will guide them to crashland messily into the moon.

Returning to the original post on this thread, I have to agree that this company's proposal has some flaws. Finding cheaper solutions toward scientific problems will undoubtedly increase public sector involvement and innovation; but from our current perspective, well, we don't know much about Luna, its potential uses or dangers, etc. Seems to me that we're saving pennies now, but creating the expensive (and dangerous) problem of having to clean up the mess later.

Re:A Good Thing?

[crazy_speeder]

Just recently, parts of a Delta II booster landed in South Africa. Fortunately, no one was hurt, but it does make one wonder what else is up there and what kind of orbits those things are in.

is this the same guy on the tv commerical for yahoo!? you the know one. he logs on, discovers somethings coming, buys a ton of pillows, and BAM! a satellite on the roof of his trailer home. but the dog is alright.

do you, yahoo!?

Re:Clearly The Way Things Are Going

[Fruan]

Yes we damn well are! We, as a species cannot possibly expect to survive if we restrain our selves to the bottom of this one gravity well.
By spreading out we can create greater biodiversity while at the same time preventing us from keeping all our eggs in one basket. (C'mon, you know about those two 'killer asteriod' movies. Well leaving aside the stupid hollywood bravado, that sort of this is something we need to plan for.)

For the sake of all humanity we need to colonize space yesterday

Re:trash

[seanmeister]

From the site:

A part of you and your life can be deposited on the moon at the end of TrailBlazer's mission.

That is sad. A business card?? This is how you should go about "securing your place in history and on the moon"?? Oh yeah, here's my card - it symbolizes everything about me and my life... Call me, we'll do lunch - NOT!

I'm much happier having my name on a chip on the Stardust Mission, and it didn't cost me a dime!

Clearly The Way Things Are Going

[waldoj]

There's been more and more talk from NASA about skipping Mars missions, never going back to the moon, etc. This is kind of sad, but probably OK.

We all know that commercial enterprise can do way better with space missions than the government. Primarily because there's no overarching benefit to the goverment sponsoring space trips anymore. The research, while it should, IMHO, be government-sponsored, will probably go better as a commercial system.

Less screw-ups, more competition, lower prices. Get me a room on that Lunar Hilton, baby!

-Waldo

Re:Clearly The Way Things Are Going

[lw54]

But isn't NASA a government funded "A-OK on the monopoloy" commercialized venture?

Re:Clearly The Way Things Are Going

[Pierce]

You can always help ASI, we're going to get to the Moon. It's not a question of if, but of when. http://www.asi.org Wayne

Re:Clearly The Way Things Are Going

[winter@jurai.net]

"...but it's orders of magnitude worse when _people get killed_."

Its this crippling additude that has us stuck on the ground only dreaming of the stars.

How many test pilots were killed during the big push to bring new aircraft to the front during WWII? Did this mean that someone wasn't 'doing it right?' In some cases, maybe but in the long run it was less expensive to drive the learning curve with lives than it was with time and money.

We should expect to lose lives to the exploration of space. We should spend these lives as dearly as possible but we should not be afraid to spend them.

The cost for remaining on this one planet is far far greater than 100 or 1000 or 10000 lives lost in the conquest of space. Our species survival is at stake here. We -must- reach into space in order to avoid stagnation.

Re:Clearly The Way Things Are Going

[boing boing]

Since I currently work in the aerospace industry and have experience with both governmnet and industry types, I must say that you are right where your father was concerned, but you are not right today. NASA is not the place it once was. It no longer contains the best and the brightest. Right now, the government is about as far behind technology as they possibly could be. And better faster cheaper has produced remarkable success stories except for the last couple screw-ups that are largely due to part of NASA. No private company has gone into space extensively because there are not enough rewards to going into space. I personally think this current venture is a boondoggle and a horrible thing for anyone (government or private) to do. But the fact of the matter is that NASA has fewer and fewer good people. And they have been playing games with taxpayer money. Programs have been funded with other programs monies. Check out www.spacer.com or NasaWatch to get a feel for the problems with NASA and the space industry as a whole. Don't get me wrong, private industry can be pretty stupid too (i.e. Roton) but NASA has had much more success with unmanned missions that manned ones.

Re:Clearly The Way Things Are Going

[lcrawford]

why do we need manned missions? Computers can do most of what a human can, and better, Without oxygen, sleep, food, messy by-products, etc... Spaceships become much cheaper when leaveing it in space is an option. Humans are much better for PR, but you really have to factor that in. Is PR worth the extra xkilos of oxygen/food/waste disposal/return system/safty systems? Not to mention that humans are a huge PR liability if something goes wrong and they croak.

Re:Clearly The Way Things Are Going

[Daniel Dvorkin]

During WWII, um, we were, well, _at war_. The alternative to dead test pilots was even more dead combat pilots. We're not in anything like the same situation today.

Re:Clearly The Way Things Are Going

[albamuth]

Privitization is always the driving force behind rapid progress, economies of scale, and in general greater availability to the public. Privitization of state-run enterprises is usually one of the first IMF structural adjustment policies to be enforced on debtor nations and history has clearly shown that this leads to less availability to the public, as prices rise out of reach. "Rapid progress" - that is unproven, since just about all of the rapid technological progress in history has been fomented by political (war) pressure. "Economies of scale" - I agree, but only because those private companies can ruthlessly exploit 3rd world labor.
Furthermore, how much of these new technologies are ever really available to anyone with an income lower than $35,000 a year?
"I can't get no bread, but Whitey's on the moon..." - Gil Scott Heron

Re:Clearly The Way Things Are Going

[Daniel Dvorkin]

I'll say it again: not one private manned space mission has ever been launched. I'm not saying that such missions won't be launched -- I think they will, and that eventually they'll be as routine as airliner takeoffs, and will be seen as the normal means of getting into space, and I hope that day comes quite soon. But right now, it's all vaporware.

"NASA has had much more success with unmanned missions than manned ones?" Depends on how you define "success," I guess ... Personally, I see manned and unmanned missions as being different in kind as well as degree, and I don't think we can truly say we've become "successful" in space until we have large numbers of people up there, all the time.

Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, and even the Shuttle all accomplished their missions. Meanwhile, _no_ private company has had _any_ success with manned missions -- except of course for building them for the government, using that "about as far behind as possibly could be technology."

Re:Clearly The Way Things Are Going

[Dissenter]

You know, looking back, I really wish that I had a chance to experience the excitement of the US landing on the moon and walking around. I have always thought that space stations and lunar colonies would be the wave of the future, but it's not. NASA seems to be too busy conducting experiments of "Wow check out how these tomatoes grow in zero gravity." Well frankly I'm a little tired of it. I want to see all my Star Wars dreams become real. I like Sci-Fi. I want to be part of this "wave of the future." Quite honestly I'm a bit disappointed that I can't go to the moon yet, so if HDTV pictures are the best I can get, I'll take 'em.
Dissenter

Re:Clearly The Way Things Are Going

[blazer1024]

I totally agree with you, but I had a thought... a bad thought.... something evil could happen.

What if we had a Microsoft in space??? I can see it now....

Shortly after leaving the atmosphere, the spaceship Linus, heading to the colony on Mars, is contacted my a MS patroller.

"Attention unknown vessel. This is the MSS Capitalism. You are not displaying a current, valid license on the outside of the ship. If you have not accepted a Microsoft End User License Agreement (EULA) you may not enter Microsoft space."

"Microsoft space? But nobody owns space!"

"It doesn't matter. We make all the ships, so you have to follow our rules."

"But I built my own ship, because I didn't like your massive, bloated, clunky ships!"

"That is unacceptable. You may only use Microsoft ships."

"Noooo!"

Suddenly a bunch "Free Space Foundation" ships show up, and start shooting at the MS ship... etc.. etc.. etc..

Re:Clearly The Way Things Are Going

[Minor Nuisance]

Amen Waldo! Privitization is always the driving force behind rapid progress, economies of scale, and in general greater availability to the public. We've seen this time and time again in the computer industry, telecommunications, and even health care (it wasn't until government mandated "cost-maintenance" programs were created that costs sky-rocketed.) So why not space, too?

AC's on the moon?

[seanmeister]

I wonder how many AC's will fork over $2,000 to send "First Post!" cards to the moon...

Re:Commercialization of Space

[RobertAG]

On earth, places have ALWAYS been named after explorers or their patrons. Why should space be different? I think the people who actually front the money and make the journey have the right to name whatever it is they find anything they want.

Historically, exploration has been driven by political and economic concerns. NASA's first goals were politically driven (beat the Soviets). Various companies launch communications satellites not to better humankind, but to make money. Other space exploration and colonization will be conducted for those same reasons.

Selflessness is a noble motivation, but it doesn't put dinner on the table.

Commercialization of Space

[Anonymous Coward]

This is where space exploration is going. Soon heavenly objects will be named after whichever corporation sponsored the trip. I've always had a problem with science being propelled by money (much like human genome mapping).

Re:Commercialization of Space

[Alarmist]

I've always had a problem with science being propelled by money (much like human genome mapping).

Some types of science (notably various branches of physics, a lot of bioengineering, and pretty much everything relating to space) can't be done cheaply. They require either government sponsorship (and you know what that means) or corporate sponsorship (and you know what that means). Governments and corporations, in theory, have some sort of accountability to the general public. In practice, this is not the case.

Perhaps it's time for private individuals to pool resources to start a private space program. Not-for-profit.

Caution: safety is expensive

[Jobe_br]

From the original post, this company will accomplish the lunar mission at a cost far lower than NASA would accomplish.

Here's my warning: a large portion of the cost of designing/manufacturing the hardware and designing/writing the software for avionics & spacecraft is tucked away in the testing portion of each called verification.

As an avionics software engineer, I've witnessed this first hand. Conformance to standards such as D0178B (commercial avionics) and the mil standard (exact reference eludes me at the moment) is expensive! These standards are designed with one thing in mind: safety. Other considerations may also be folded in, but bet your bottom dollar, safety is the first priority. A comparison between the commercial avionics certification standard and the mil spec will show you just how much safety matters: the FAA cares a lot more about the safety of 300 travelers than a pilot & navigator in an F-18 (does that even have a pilot & navigator?).

This post in no way is meant to imply that this company is NOT following safety standards, rather (as the subject reads) providing a warning that low cost at the cost of safety is not low at all.

As usual, my $0.02

Regards,
Jobe

Re:Caution: safety is expensive

[pblase]

Yup, test, retest, and test again. Of course, since we're not carrying people on TrailBlazer it's not quite that overwhelming. (Note, the launch vehicle is another matter, but then we're not making that).

trash

[clearcache]

...great. They're offering people the opportunity to have their business cards and/or a personal message deposited on the moon. Wonderful way to mark the first commercial space venture...dumping a load of paper on earth's only natural satellite...

...and yes, I do detect some foreshadowing here...as if commerce hasn't fscked up our own planet enough, it's time to branch out and fsck up the entire solar system.

Re:trash

[shren]

At 2000$ a card, I doubt they are going to need a landfill anytime soon. And I doubt the cards will be "scattered" - they'll probably be in some kind of hard shell, so some Loonie a hundred years from now can dump out the cards into a bio-recycler and turn the shell into a water tank.

Re:trash

[NetFu]

...great. Yeah, it's not our fault the world is fscked up -- it's the corporations, the governments, the ... wait a minute, those corporations and governments don't exist without us (the public) so isn't it our fsck-up?

Let's face it: Human forays into new frontiers have never been and never will be pretty. We all WANT to do it but nobody's willing to SACRIFICE to do it, so profit's got to be the overriding priority. Are you willing to give half your annual salary/pay to do it and do it right? Or if you're a student how about selling half your worldly posessions?

It's all well and good to have lofty ideals, but no matter how much we all want the world to run on honesty, respect, and generally good will toward all things it just doesn't -- it runs on Money. These computers we are ALL typing on wouldn't be here in front of us (not to mention many other luxuries like cars, etc.) if not for those same *nasty* corporations.

Bottom line: embrace progress or be steamrolled by it.

Re:trash

[pblase]

Well, we'd hope that they'd end up in a museum eventually. And there won't be _that_ many, maybe 50 or so. (unless we're really lucky). I do hear the arguements about trash heaps, and believe me we're going to avoid that. As others have pointed out, when you're in space, recycling and "ecologically friendly" behavior is not optional, it's a matter of life and death. Small, closed ecosystems don't take kindly to pollution of any kind. On the other hand, since the surface is basically a barren wasteland anyways.... I will be more than happy to personally go EVA and pick up TransOrbital's messes. Once we get there in person, of course!

Re:trash

[pblase]

Well, business cards are a personal part of modern life, they represent who and what you are. And, of course, you're free to write on it what you will. What would you like to send? We're offering messages too, and we can send _anything_ inert for a fairly reasonable price. (see the website products page).

Re:trash

[clearcache]

Bottom line: embrace progress or be steamrolled by it.

Well, I prefer "Bottom line: embrace progress embracing ethics" a little more.

I don't disagree with you...corporations have fscked up the world through the consumer and vice-versa. But, you can have progress AND corporate ethics at the same time...you don't need to sacrifice the quality of living for technological advancement.

Re:trash

[MikeM]

I'm buying one. I'm an Artemis member and it gives
me the ability to support the mission in a
for profit way and its just way cool. Plus
its pretty cheap advertising for a small business

Re:trash

[NetFu]

OK, name examples of how the universities and military pioneered 100% of the technology in the computer you use right now...

I'm waiting...

Oh, I guess I won't get an answer from you, "Anonymous Coward"!!

If you are going to attack someone's post, at least have the balls to use your REAL IDENTITY!!!

Re:trash

[Alarmist]

Wonderful way to mark the first commercial space venture...dumping a load of paper on earth's only natural satellite...

You have to wonder, though, who they think they're kidding. "Buy space on our moon shots to drop a personal message or your business card!" Yeah, right. There are plenty of people dumb enough to buy 1000 acre deeds to lunar soil and think that'll be enforceable, but this is just silly. Really, who wants to send a business card that no one else will see to the moon?

There's something deeper here. What else are they planning on sending? I bet it isn't just camers and business cards.

Re:trash

[rebbie]

While I agree with your point about fscking up the solar system, tbe cards are to be mounted inside the spacecraft and not just sccattered on the lunar surface.

As far as the other advertising goes, didn't you hear about the Pizza Hut rocket that -- I think -- Russia launched a year or so ago? They sold ad space on the side of the thing. What's wrong with that?

Somehow an ad on the side of a private rocket sounds a LOT better to me than "3COM Park" "Nokia Sugar Bowl" or "Continental Airlines Arena."

Re:Where have all the geeks gone?

[SlashParadox]

We are still here, but are discouraged by NASA's failure to send more men to the moon in the last thirty years.
NASA is too busy studying the effects of weightlessness on jelly beans to go back to the moon, and we have given up.

Nice mission statement..

[PopeAlien]

TransOrbital, Inc. is a private venture dedicated to the commercial development of space.

Great. Track housing and industrial parks from here to the moon. That mission statement seems kind of vague. Will we have new phases of the moon as viewed from earth? full moon, new moon, half behind the McDonalds billboard moon..
-

Re:Nice mission statement..

[pblase]

Nope, although I wouldn't put it past _some_ people. However, the only way to get up there and _stay_ up there is to let people make a profit at it. Otherwise it's only at the whims of government programs, which will change as the political environment changes.

Slashdot immortalized

[ArsSineArtificio]

On their site it mentions the availability of A) a business-card-sized payload you can pay for and B) 8.5" x 11" worth of data, etched onto a nickel disk which you could also pay for.

Do you realize what this means? Using mechanical tools and chemicals on the one hand, and scanning graphics (and etching them) on the other hand, we could place on the moon BOTH steaming hot grits AND Natalie Portman, naked and petrified!

Slashdot would be immortal!

------------------------------------------------ -------------------

Re:Slashdot immortalized

[MasteroftheVoxel]

I can see it now... one million years in the future when Aliens discover the remains of our civilization...

They would say: "Neebork sulu si koo traka traka oopoop pwe"
oops, sorry... babelfish... ok, here we go
"and we found a strange metal object encoded with these cryptic words 'Natalie Portman, naked and petrified.' Our research has shown that Natalie Portman was some sort of icon, a deity maybe, worshiped several hundred thousand years ago...
The word 'naked' has been translated to mean 'wearing no clothes' and 'petrified' appears to either relate a sense of extreme fear or a physically solid state of being. Why Natalie Portman is naked ad petrified is currently the subject of much debate. Perhaps it is a warning left on their moon to warn future visitors. Maybe they were aware of their impending doom. Whatever the case may be, we must procede with extreme caution as we do not know what we will find on the main planet's surface itself..."

Honestly, is this the message we want to send to future civilizations?

Re:Slashdot immortalized

[Eccles]

Do you realize what this means? Using mechanical tools and chemicals on the one hand, and scanning graphics (and etching them) on the other hand, we could place on the moon BOTH steaming hot grits AND Natalie Portman, naked and petrified!

Not to mention, we could put the DeCSS code on it! Let's see the MPAA stamp out *that* copy! :-)

Re:Slashdot immortalized

[notsoanonymouscoward]

Nah... I'd write "First Post!"

Space

[necverse]

Wow... Maybe I`ll have a chance to go in space one day. There is one thing that really bothers me though, will I be able to bring my pet goat along. I can't go anywhere without my goat. If I'm away from my goat for too long I start to have that empty feeling inside. After a while I start to cry. I checked out the TransOrbital site and they said nothing about bring goats. Maybe there's no place in this world for a boy and his goat :(.

Re:Space

[pblase]

If you want to bring a goat, we'll fit in a goat. You'll have to pay extra for the custom space suit, though.

Bill's travels...

[Spoing]

1. Ticket to the moon...7,500,000 shares

   You'll go where I want Today T-shirt...1/2 share

   Pressurized space suit...7,500 shares

   Solid rocket boosters...450,000 shares

   Code that calculates yards instead of meters...free

   A live HDTV video feed...priceless

At least they aren't sending bodies

[Cy Guy]

Another firm, Celestis has a plan to send a portion of your cremated remains to the moon. It will cost about $12,000 to have 7 ounces of ash (about 1/16 of normal human remains) sent up in a lipstick size urn.

Here are some press articles about the plan:
AP, BBC, Reuters SF Chronicle

A Modest Proposal

[TwP]

On their website, TransOrbital Inc. offers anyone willing to cough up the cash the opportunity to have their business card flown to the moon on their space vehicles. All this for a mere $2000 (US). If that is a little to steep, then you can have a personal letter, poetry (or whatever else will fit onto an 8-1/2" x 11" piece of paper) etched onto a nickel disk (read "stored on a hard drive") and sent to the moon for $50 a page.

My proposal is to take the currently disputed Slashdot pages along with Microsoft's basterdized Kerberos code and send them to the moon. We could all send a few dollars to CmdrTaco (et. al.) to pay for the disk space on the satellite. It would be Slashdot's new claim to fame -- the only website violating the DMCA on two celestial bodies. And, if Bill wants the code removed, he can go to the moon and get it himself!

Maybe Slashdot could run a server on the moon and get around the DMCA all together . . . but that damn network latency!

------------------------------------------------ ----------------

Re:A Modest Proposal

[pblase]

TransOrbital is auctioning off the first business card slot in our TrailBlazer mission on E-Bay. Go to e-bay to participate. See our website at http://www.transorbital.net for further information. We cleaned things up a bit, comments invited.

Stop the Insanity

[BenLutgens]

I'm no astro / quantum physisist mind you , but I fail to see the practical reason for putting average joe's up on/around the moon. What possible good could come of it. Except more garbage to hear about in the news. There is little of value to b e learned from the moon, it would however befun to go run around up there all wieghtless and shit. That I can see. And why bother mapping the moon? Who really cares what's up there? Furthermore, how is this geek news worthy? Like any real geeks will be able to afford to go to the moon anyway, and why would they? The connectivity would suck!

Re:Stop the Insanity

[pblase]

1) There's stuff out there that is, or could be, worth a lot of money.

2) Consider the plight of the Native Americans from the other side. For what may be legitimate technological reasons, they didn't think that there was anything or anybody beyond the Atlantic or Pacific. They didn't explore, they didn't prepare - and they were wrong.

Consider also the fate of the Chinese. Circa 1400 they had great exploration fleets out exploring the China Sea and the Indian Ocean, and had almost rounded the Horn of Africa. Another 20 years or so and we would have had junks sailing into the Thames. But, due to a political upset, they recalled and burnt the ships, destroyed the shipyards, and decided to sit in their borders and contemplate their navels - decreeing that the outside world could come to them. Less than a century later, the British fleet sailed in and started taking over.

What you don't know can kill you.

I thought it was funny, and ontopic

[georgeha]

I hope no one finds the big

monolith I buried up there.

I heard about a company who plans to blast people's ashes to the moon, for $12,000 per pop.

tcd004

Here's a clue moderators.

The first section is a funny allusion to The Sentinel by A.C. Clarke, and 2001: A Space Oddyssey.

The second part is about another private company commercializing space.

Where's the offtopic?

George

Re:I thought it was funny, and ontopic

[tcd004]

Thanks George!

You're the man.

tcd004

*ROTFL*

[fable2112]

Someone moderate this up? :) Best laugh I've had all day ....

Re:Don't be impressed by China.

[Tau Zero]

Closing price of nickel on the London Metal Exchange (per http://nickelalloy.com/) yesterday was about $4.52/lb. Density of nickel is 8.9 g/cc, or 8900 kg/m^3. If you've got a 100 meter diameter chunk of 10% nickel-iron, this is 1028 million pounds of nickel. If you cut the spot price in half, it would be worth about 2.3 billion dollars (US) for that 100-meter chunk.

This is just for the nickel. The iron, and other constituents such as platinum-group metals, would also be salable for quite a bit if you made the effort to separate them.
--
This post made from 100% post-consumer recycled magnetic

The surface is not radioactive!

[orichter]

At least not in the sense that you seem to mean. Just because you experience radiation, does not mean the source is radioactivity. When I shine a flashlight on you, you are experiencing radiation which has nothing do do with radioactivity. Radioactivity implies a nuclear decay. This decay often releases many types of radiation (generally not electromagnetic in nature.) For all those smart guys who are going to tell me that the sun which produces the radiation is just a big nuclear reaction, that is true, but it is fusion, and not fission, thus the sun is not radioactive per se. The moon is radiated, or irradiated, but not radioactive (or more correctly, not significantly more radioactive that the earth).

Re:Clearly The Way Things Are Going-WHAT?

[Shadowmist]

People do frequently pay for corporate screwups, it's just billed differently.

Cases in point:

1. The Savings and Loan collapse thanks to the de-regulation of the '80's. The required bailouts went into the hundreds of billions of dollars, and it came mostly out of the pockets of the middle-class.

2. The Exon Valdez, Love Canal,Three Mile Island, Hinckley, Union Carbide's plant in India.; Cancer clusters, closed wells, and at least one case the deaths of thousands of people due to a poisonous toxic cloud. The costs of doing buisness frequently ignore the costs to the communities that are impacted by them.

Also it's one thing to claim a profit space mission when all you're doing is sending a camera to orbit on a spacecraft covered with product endorsement. But after the novelty stunt flights, putting live people on a mission that generates profit on it's own merits is another world altogether. I've yet to see someone in the commercial sphere who's got a chance at pulling anything other than a high-profile stunt. Most that's been accomplished so far has been lofting satelites into low Earth orbit AFAIK.

EBay auctioning TransOrbital deivery service

[vik]

TransOrbital, Inc. (http://www.transorbital.net) offers service to put a business card on the Moon at auction on ebay. Details below.

Link to Auction:

Let the trading begin--your item is listed!

http://cgi.ebay.co m/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=333215424

Title of item: Your Business Card Sent to the Moon in 2001
Minimum bid: $500.00
Reserve price (if any): $0.00
Quantity: 1
Auction Ends on: Thursday, May 25, 2000 at 09:57:43 PDT

Questions answered:

Gregory Nemitz
VP, TransOrbital, Inc.
USA 619-528-0520
gnemitz@transorbital.net

If there was no private exploration in history

[georgeha]

Let's just think what our history would be like if the only allowed exploration of unexplored territory was via government sponsored agencies.

~100,000 BC, Oldavie Gorge

The tribal government reports an arid landscape once you pass the Nile, we don't think it's commericially viable to send anything out there.

Plus, the youngsters of the tribe think we should concentrate on making Oldavie perfect before we send out any expeditions.

-15,000 BC Kamchatka

Well, yeah, maybe there is something to the northeast, but it's probably just frozen wasteland.

~1492, Spain

While some of the native did display strange fruits and vegetables, and gold and gems, we don't think the commercial exploitation of the new world is viable.

We will send scientific teams to explore the new world, once every 10 or 20 years.

-~1600, England

Perhaps we could work within the system of the Church of England, since Parliament won't authorize a colonizing expedition to the New World.

I could go on.

George

Re:Clearly The Way Things Are Going-WHAT?

[Minor Nuisance]

Fewer screwups? Probably not.

But as long as the public isn't forced to pay for them (as they would be if it was the goverment screwing up, which we all know happens CONSTANTLY) then what more could you ask for?

Progress doesn't happen without screwups.

Where have all the geeks gone?

[dazedNconfuzed]

Not long ago, a proposition to cheaply and profitably put people on the Moon was a rallying point for geeks. New uncharted lands! Life in space! Vast resources! Fascinating environments! Geeks would walpaper their cubes with pictures of rockets, Moon landings, and sketches of non-Earth colonies. Building and occupying a Moon colony used to be one of the holy grails of engineering.

But...nearly all responses to this news item today have been "aw gee, why would anyone want to go to the Moon? they might make it dirty! and jerks might go there." Come on people! What happened to the sense of adventure? of engineering challenges? of survival challenges? of profit motive? of any combination of these? What happened to all the geeks that would give their left nut in a heartbeat for a ticket on a Moon-bound rocket to build a colony?

Geekdom is dead - replaced by politically correct, green, TV-mesmerized lumps.

Re:Where have all the geeks gone?

[Snaller]

What happened to all the geeks that would give their left nut in a heartbeat for a ticket on a Moon-bound rocket to build a colony?

They grew up?

--

Re:Where have all the geeks gone?

[Golias]

What happened to all the geeks that would give their left nut in a heartbeat for a ticket on a Moon-bound rocket to build a colony?

We sent some guys up there in 1969, and discovered that it is just a big, lifeless, rocky wasteland with no Amazon Women anywhere to be found.

Rocket Doesn't add up

[monta]

The spec's say they have a 100 lbs force rocket accellerating a 440 lb rocket. Am I missing something here? They need something more like 2200 lbs force engine. -Monta

Re:Rocket Doesn't add up

[Maurice]

They are saying that the onboard thruster will be 450 Newtons, which is equal to about 100 lbf. That means the force on the spacecraft when the thruster is on will be 450 N. The total weight is 440 lb, but it doesn't matter, because the onboard thrusters are used once the spacecraft is in orbit, i.e. for moon transfer, so there is no gravity to pull it down. The launch from Earth will use an Ariane rocket booster (according to the same site) which provides many thousands of pounds of thrust at launch. Also, they mention using Ariane V, which sounds really like an overkill to me, because the Ariane 5 is huge and expensive. IMHO they didn't design this thing in detail, but just threw some approximate stuff on a sheet of paper.

Re:remember "Salvage I"

[NetFu]

This is far from a time for NASA to rest on it's butt because they think they have no competition. Am I the only one who was more than a little stunned by the fact that China is ready to (or have they already done it?) put astronauts into space? I believe Japan has already done it and the EU puts a lot more commercial hardware into space than we do already.

Not only do we (America/NASA) have competition, but we've already been left behind in some ways (the EU is far more busy than us putting that stuff into orbit because they are just plain better at doing it efficiently than we are). Where are our national leaders?

With the economy the way it is now, why the hell isn't someone working on finding new resources in space to propel us as a nation through the 21st century??? There's no telling if there's another "Seward's Folly" waiting out there for us.

Lunar SUV park!

[cryptolitho]

I can see it now: they'll provide specially-adapted SUVs and dirt bikes for tourists to go off-roading across the Lunar landscape. Chills 'n' thrills in 1/6 of Earth's gravity!

Re:Commercialization

[pblase]

Well, A) Corporations can almost never do whatever they want - especially when they're as small as TransOrbital. They can do what makes money and what the government(s) allow them to do. Also, generating bad PR is bad for business. B) Most spacecraft _are_ international efforts. E.g TrailBlazer: Americal integration and parts, British parts, Canadian parts, Russian launch vehicle. What makes this whole thing possible is that so much stuff is available off the shelf!

Re:Huh !!!

[pblase]

We're sending the actual business card; the paper will be scanned, micro-reduced, and printed on a carrier.

DeCSS

[AgentX]

Since they are accepting text ($50/page) to be sent to the moon, how about the source to DeCSS? I just think it would be a good way to make sure that when the earth is destroyed, we can still watch our DVD's. Has anyone already sent in the source?

'Environmental' Regulations?

[whatnotever]

Months later, TrailBlazer will impact on the surface of the moon.

Are there any regulations about polluting space? There's almost no hope for Earth orbit, but c'mon, do we just let people throw anything they want on the moon?

This of course brings up the encompassing issue of governmental/commercial regulation/ownership/etc of space. Unfortunately, I don't know about any specifics...

Heheh.. this reminds me: "I've given a gift the whole world can appreciate... I've colorized the moon." (Ted Turner - on The Family Guy)

hm.

Re:'Environmental' Regulations?

[SlashParadox]

Of course there are no regulations about polluting the moon. Nasa has been doing it for years.
Things left on the moon:

The Lunar Rover

various cameras (we saved the film, and left the cameras)

The LMs

• LM "Eagle" Apollo 11 impact site unknown
• LM "Intrepid" Apollo 12 3.94 S 21.20 W
• LM "Antares" Apollo 14 3.42 S 19.67 W
• LM "Falcon" Apollo 15 26.36 N 0.25 E
• LM "Orion" Apollo 16 Impact site unknown (lost attitude control)
• LM "Challenger" Apollo 17 19.96 N 30.50 E

Well, you get the idea. NASA has no qualms about leaving junk on the moon.

Re:Sounds cool, but is this wise?

[Tau Zero]

is hydrazine a fossil fuel?

No, hydrazine (N2H4) is made from ammonia (NH3) if I'm not mistaken. However, the ammonia is made from nitrogen and hydrogen using the Haber process, and the hydrogen is obtained from natural gas (CH4). Ultimately, hydrazine is made from fossil fuel. (Neither is it a particularly safe fuel itself; kerosene is far easier to handle and has very low toxicity.)

H202 is made some other way, isn't it?

By electrolysis of water using a particular anode material, if I'm not mistaken. (I'm not a chemist, I just play one on Slashdot.)
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Re:A similar mission

[boing boing]

Clementine was not NASA's idea and was not designed mostly by NASA.

Re:A similar mission

[boing boing]

I personally *know* the person who conceived the mission and it was not a NASA person.

Re:remember "Salvage I"

[boing boing]

You are correct about NASA being behind the rest of the world in a lot of areas.

The real reason for this gap is because of a lack of good people and because we adopted the mindset of the Apollo and Voyager missions. We overspecify everything that goes into space and because of that use old technology and old ideas. Did you know that Voyager is still going and has mostly escaped the bounds of our solar system? That is one hell of a lot of overspecing.

Now that we have years of experience from space the Europeans learn from it instead of us.

Transportation's a killer

[Tau Zero]

Highly dangerous, and/or toxic manufacturing and machine houses (chip and board fabricators, for example) could be moved off of the planet, reducing industrial and thermal waste on the planet. The fact that space is so huge (oh, really?) is enough to realize that there will be more than enough room.

At current transport costs of $5000/kg, you would not be able to afford a product assembled in space from raw materials made on Earth. Coming down is cheap (almost free), going up will cost you an arm and a leg... If you postulate raw materials from space (plastics from carbon and hydrogen found in comet cores, metals from asteroids or the Moon) you have to ask yourself how you get all the money to start all the mines, the chemical plants, the plastics plants, the semiconductor foundries, the LCD manufaturing plants, and everything else you need just to get the first complete product out of this pipeline. It's a huge investment, and definitely not going to go anywhere as long as there isn't a big market for such gear in orbit; it will be cheaper to ship finished product up than to ship up the infrastructure and then re-engineer everything to work under space conditions.

Waste can be stockpiled in designated areas, and if neccesary, shot into the sun, where it would be quickly neutralized and broken down. The sun would not be affected in the least from this, after all, it is just on huge fusion reactor.

That's silly. It takes far more energy to send something to the Sun than to send it out of the Solar System permanently (about 2.5 times as much delta-V), and mass, especially organic mass (toxic or not) is a rarity in space. It would make far more sense to run your waste through a plasma torch with some excess oxygen and sort through the simple molecules that result than to "throw it away" in the manner you propose.
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Round trip vs One way

[hardaker]

I wonder if the fares will be different for round trip vs one way flights. Are the one way flights going to be 90% of the cost of a round trip ticket, just like commerical airlines?

Low Hanging Fruit

[Boulder Geek]

The moon is relatively easy, especially for an unmanned craft. Being so close (2 light seconds) allows for the spacecraft to be controlled largely from Earth. This is one way Lunar Prospector was able to keep the costs down.

The challenge will be to do privately funded missions that last for years of flight time at distances of light hours. Somehow I don't see Trans Orbital rushing into those projects.

BTW, Clementine didn't map the lunar surface in visible at all. It used a laser altimeter and a few other really interesting instruments. And it didn't cost under $100M (that was Prospector at $63M). I don't have the figure on the top of my head, but being pre-"Better Faster Cheaper (choose two ;-)", it was probably closer to $500M. But since it was half-military we'll probably never know.

Re:Got Spam from TO on Wednesday

[MikeM]

>Strela is Russian for, I believe, "arrow." Their
>hand-held Stinger-oid missiles (SA 7, I think,
>though I don't recall) were called by the same
>name.

>Either they've been up to something and
>slapped an old name on it, or somehow these
>people are planning to use very short range
>surface-to-air missiles to loft their payloads.

The Strela is a new launcher based on bits and
pieces of Russian RS18 ICBMs (SS-19 Stiletto
by NATO classification). See here for more
info:http://www.spaceandtech.com/spacedata/elvs/ strela_sum.shtml

>What else are they not telling us?

Nothing. Russians just reuse hardware names...

>Which no one will see, unless the ad is huge (on
>the order of several miles across).

Trailblaser has a camera and it takes pictures of
the ads as it takes pictures of the moon. No one ever said you actually see the ads from Earth.

>Earthrise 2001: A defining video image for the
>New Millennium

>As if the December 1968 shot by Apollo 8
>wasn't good enough. How the heck does a
>"video image" (I guess these people have
>never heard of "pictures") define a whole
>millennium?

It actually isn't, unless you personally consider handheld 8mm camera to be better than HDTV?

>An atlas of the entire lunar surface for
>students & planetary scientists

>These already exist. The only thing they can
>possibly add is more accuracy and smaller >resolutions.

That's the main point. The detail of Clementine et al wasn't good enough since that wasn't what they were actually designed for. Clementine was a test of a DOD satellite, not a real lunar probe.

>Low-altitude, high-speed video, for Hollywood >science-fiction movies footage

>Equivalent or better quality can be produced in
>any decent computer imaging lab. They're
>starting to reach (read, grope) for anything
>that could be useful here.

You just don't like people do you? Anyway, ask
any film expert, they'll tell you they prefer
real shots to generated ones. Everyone who saw
Apollo 13 knew that the launch sequence was
faked...

>"Look honey, my message got routed via a >satellite over Copernicus!" Yawn.

Sounds pretty exciting and interesting to me. I guess your just not part of the target audience.

>What are they hiding from us? This can't
>possibly succeed as-stated.

I'm afraid it is. They're not hiding anything. But I suspect my say so isn't going to convince you....

The killer is going up, not coming down.

[Tau Zero]

...goods falling into earth's atmosphere would need to be assured of a safe reentry. High Gs and high temperatures would eliminate most inexpensive methods.

I beg to differ. The Chinese have returned probes with heat-shields composed of compressed walnut shells (if memory serves), the Russians have successfully tested inflatable heat shields for reusable probes, and most goods (especially electronics) can handle tens or hundreds of G's if properly packed. I think I remember some people investigating the prospects for returning Shuttle external tanks to Earth; I don't know what they planned to use for heat shielding, but if you spun one right the foam on the outside might do the job. Low-density objects decelerate without a whole lot of "heat loading", and their heat shields can be correspondingly simple; Shuttle's system is complicated because it's, well, a brick.

Returning stuff to Earth isn't difficult; getting people, equipment and any necessary raw materials into orbit in the first place is difficult.
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Re:Moon vandalism

[pblase]

We will _definitely_ try to dodge anything that NASA, the Russians, or anybody else left up there. Of course if we don't know about it, that's tough.

Re:Limits to resolution of pictures

[pblase]

Well, the main mapping orbit will be higher than that, but for getting "tire tracks" we're planning on lowering the orbit considerably. It'll be risky, which is why that will be done at the end of the mission after the surface map is done.

Re:Sounds cool, but is this wise?

[theNAM666]

That's a good point. Imagine if people were to start commercial air, boat, or even car or bus transportation. The lawsuits that would ensue would probably stop anyone from going anywhere!

>1. Our lovely lawsuit-happy society, and the risk of problems on space flights. "Space tourists"
>could end up suing if something went wrong, eventually bankrupting the industry and putting a
>stop to space exploration. This would just suck.

first dibs

[zpengo]

I want a little plaque on the moon that says "ZPengo has first dibs."

Re:Interplanetary Litterbugs?

[VultureMN]

Who gives a crap if they leave junk on the lunar surface? It's not like there's a biosphere to screw up. And besides, leaving stuff on the lunar surface could be a -good- idea. Future missions can use the stuff other missions had left behind, even if it's just scrap metal. If mission planners can land in an area that relatively rich in scrap metal, they don't have to carry as much along with them if they need to build something while they're there.

What ever happened to the Artemis Project?

[JammmGrrl]

What ever happened to the Artemis Project? Their plan was to set up a commercial base on the moon. I first heard about it 4 or 5 years ago, but haven't heard anything within the past year.

They were working with volenteers all over the world. It was sort of a non-profit effort with profit gains in mind. (Like most non-profits make money, but just roll it back into the organization for future projects).

I'm sure they have a website, but I am in a rush and can't look it up now. Gregory Bennette (sp??), the science fiction author and a former NASA engineer, was highly involved in it.

Re:What ever happened to the Artemis Project?

[MikeM]

Transorbital is a spinoff of the Artemis Society which what handles the Artemis Project. If you look at
http://www.transorbital.net/whowearehome.html you'll see the relationship.

The Artemis Society can be found at www.asi.org. Greg Bennett is also still head of ASI in addition to running Bigelow Aerospace (http://www.bigelowaerospace.com/).

Re:What ever happened to the Artemis Project?

[vik]

The Artemis Project (http://www.asi.org) is still going strong.

TransOrbital Inc. initially spun off from the Artemis Project, as a company to prove that commercial flights to the moon were possible. It still has that aim, but has aquired a slightly wider scope.

Some of the images (which are to be much more detailed than Clementine's) will be used by the Artemis Project to determine if usable structures such as lava tubes exist.

Vik :v)
[Designer/Artist for TransOrbital]

Re:Sounds cool, but is this wise?

[MikeM]

> 1.

Most of the tourist companies are based in jurisdictions with reasonable tort law. Note that
this means that they're not based in the U.S.

> 2.

Most emphatically and 100% YES!!!! Space is
big enough for Microsoft to claim entire worlds if it wants to.

> 3.

Most rocket fuels are synthetic... a few use
Kerosene but its a fairly small amount compared to what other industries use.

You have an alternative?

[Tau Zero]

Rereading the company's website will lead you to notice that the spacecraft they have in mind will be designed to be disposable.

Of all the NASA spacecraft sent to other bodies in the last 30 years (Pioneers, Voyagers, Vikings, Mariners, Galileo, Cassini, Deep Space 1, Lunar Prospector, Mars Climate Orbiter, Mars Polar Lander...) can you name one that was not disposable? Unless you have some means of guaranteeing that the spacecraft can be returned to Earth (which is the only place where any kind of recycling or reuse infrastructure exists) there are exactly three possibilities: land on something (and probably never leave), crash into something (messily more likely than not) sooner or later, or continue in space indefinitely (as "junk").

The slightest amount of thought would have brought you to this conclusion yourself. So I've got to ask you, what was your point?
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Re:You have an alternative?

[jaga~]

yeah. shouldnt add too much cost to alter its orbit once its done to manipulate the gravity between earth and the moon to send it on a collision course with the sun.

its like the trash can of our solar system...it will melt it down to its components and dissipate throughout the stars atmosphere...

Re:You have an alternative?

[quantumfire]

huh? That would cost a *lot*. It takes an amazing amount of energy to alter the orbit of a spacecraft by any significant amount. You can't just blow off a few pounds of TNT on the side of the sucker and expect it to fall into the sun within a few years. The cost to put an orbital transfer engine on the spacecraft would be sizeable in and of itself, not to mention the costs associated with shooting the heavier spacecraft to the Moon. And if you're thinking about having landers lift off the surface of the moon just to clean things up, forget about it.

Just not really feasible to go slapping engines big enough to knock something into the sun on a cheap little throwaway spacecraft. It pretty much defeats the stated purpose of the program, which is to get to the Moon *cheap*.

Re:Sounds cool, but is this wise?

[Sloppy]

someone trying to patent oxygen?

Don't be silly, they wouldn't patent oxygen.

They would patent an apparatus that supplies oxygen. No wait, there's prior art for that. They would patent an online apparatus that supplies oxygen.

Captain's Log, Belt Freighter #227, 8/17/85 09:15 GMT:

I have asked the climate control crewman to check on the oxygen levels. He is preparing his suit to go outside in order to manually examine the regulator. After I deliver this shipment of magnetic monopoles to Earth, I will have enough money to pay the Amazon "online apparatus" royalty, and then be legally allowed to check the regulator from inside the cabin via remote sensor.

Coincidently, by that time I get back home, IP6 may finally be adopted, and the regulator will be able to have its own address. I think I'll keep the masquerading firewall in place, though. I learned my lesson last time when 31337 h4xx0rs used my solar collector as a mp5 trading site.

---

Re:Huh !!!

[MikeM]

The _image_ on the 8.5x11 sheet of paper is shrunk down very small and etched onto a nickel disk. The business card is sent pasted to the inside of the orbiter _as is_.

Limits to resolution of pictures

[StupendousMan]

I was surprised to read a blurb from TransOrbital which claims that

The photos from lunar orbit will be very high resolution, utilizing a telescope with an HDTV camera. "We expect to be able to see the tire tracks from the Apollo-era rovers."

The laws of physics state that the smallest angular detail visible to a system is
1.22 times (lambda/diam), where "lambda" is the wavelength of the light and "diam" is the diameter of the lens. This limit is set by diffraction. Now, if the lens is 10 cm in diameter, and the light is red light of 600 nm wavelength, then the limiting resolution is about 7.3e-6 radians, or 1.5 arcseconds.

In order to see details of linear size "L", a camera with resolution "theta" radians must be closer than D = L/theta. Suppose the tire tracks are 20 cm wide each. Then the spacecraft must have an orbit of about (0.2m)/7.3e-6 = 27 km or
lower to resolve them. That's quite a bit lower than the Lunar Orbiter spacecraft ...

Now, it's true that the long, long tracks of the lunar rovers might make a high-contrast feature over a large area; and that feature might show up in pictures, even if its width is smaller than the limiting resolution. In fact, I suspect that this is why the advertising mentions the rover tracks: because compact items like the rovers themselves, or the remaining sections of the Lunar Module spacecrafts, will NOT show up in the pictures.

If the spacecraft has a safer orbit, more than 27 km above the lunar surface, or it has a camera lens less than 10 cm in diameter, then the limiting resolution decreases, and the smallest object which can be discerned is larger than 20 cm. I wouldn't get too excited, yet.

Re:Limits to resolution of pictures

[vik]

I can't give out any secrets, but let's just say we do actually have a means of achieving the necessary resolution.

Personally, I'm quite excited :)

Vik :v)
[Designer/Artist for TransOrbital]

You're not adding everything

[Tau Zero]

Also, they mention using Ariane V, which sounds really like an overkill to me, because the Ariane 5 is huge and expensive.

The error you're making is assuming that this probe would be the only spacecraft on the entire Ariane V rocket. The Ariane V usually carries whole constellations of satellites at a time, and there are carrier structures designed for exactly this purpose. (This is how most AMSAT birds get into orbit; they buy some of the excess payload capacity cheap, and the rocket flies with an extra satellite instead of inert ballast.)
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NASA cant even go to the moon

[Kamel]

It is a relatively unknown fact that NASA can no longer support a mission to the moon. Yes, we had the technology, no we don't have it anymore. It was accidentally (dont even ask how, its ridiculous) destroyed. The ELV that took men to the moon in the 60s no longer exists, and there have never been attempts to create another one like it. In addition, I find it *extremely* unlikely that NASA would support (and they WOULD need NASA support) a mission like this. It's frankly too risky technologically (they would need to proof test everything, that takes YEARS), safety (they would need to PROVE everything was safe, also years), and even the Orbital Debris aspects (something that takes several months to prepare) would be unlikely to pass the guidelines. It just isn't going to happen. I wish it would, but it won't. And yes, I am informed, I work at GSFC. Kevin Kamel

remember "Salvage I"

[WiartonWilly]

It was a 1 hour TV show about a guy who went to the moon using his own funds. Now Transorbital just needs theme music and some bad acting for the new HDTV version! ;^)

Seriously though, NASA needs some competition!

Re:remember "Salvage I"

[rebbie]

If I remember correctly, they used stuff from a junkyard to build the thing. Part of the capsule was the back of a cement mixer, and they used fire extinguishers to move around during space walks.

Andy Griffith the star of the show.

Interplanetary Litterbugs?

[*igor*]

'twould seem, from their products that their ongoing mission is to explore strange new worlds and leave your business card there.

I do hope we come up with a better business model before we have a rather annoying cleanup job...

Re:Interplanetary Litterbugs?

[Alarmist]

I do hope we come up with a better business model before we have a rather annoying cleanup job...

On the one hand, they're making a mess by despoiling the moon's surface with this trash (and who knows what else).

On the other, they're potentially creating jobs for future workers: lunar garbagemen to clean up all this trash.

On the other other, there's probably a deeper agenda here. Why launch a probe to make HDTV shots of the moon and dump business cards? What else are they going to be doing up there?

TrailBlazers

[Trilliumjs]

Wonder if Scottie Pippen will be their spokesmodel?

Sounds cool, but is this wise?

[fable2112]

I find this disturbing for a few different reasons:

1. Our lovely lawsuit-happy society, and the risk of problems on space flights. "Space tourists" could end up suing if something went wrong, eventually bankrupting the industry and putting a stop to space exploration. This would just suck.

2. Imagine the stupidity that has the potential to ensue with the "corporatization" of space. Case in point: Would you really, honestly want to have say, MS or a similarly large company claiming ownership of space, or someone trying to patent oxygen? :)

3. Rocket launches use a lot of fuel. Way to run out of fossil fuels that much faster. Could be bad. *shrug*

Re:Sounds cool, but is this wise?

[Tau Zero]

Since when were hydrogen and oxygen fossil fuels, eh?

Most hydrogen is obtained by partial combustion of natural gas and/or reforming with steam.

CH4 + 2 H20 -> CO2 + 4H2

The methane is typically obtained from fossil fuel.
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Re:Sounds cool, but is this wise?

[seldolivaw]

I'm no expert, but is hydrazine a fossil fuel? H202 is made some other way, isn't it?

Re:Sounds cool, but is this wise?

[JohnFred]

Since when were hydrogen and oxygen fossil fuels, eh?

Re:Sounds cool, but is this wise?

[macpeep]

3. Rocket launches use a lot of fuel. Way to run out of fossil fuels that much faster. Could be bad. *shrug*

What do you think space ship use as fuel? Gasoline? Think again.

After the Goldrush

[wishus]

Well, I dreamed I saw the silver Space ships flying
In the yellow haze of the sun
There were children crying
And colors flying
All around the chosen ones
All in a dream, all in a dream
The loading had begun
They were flying Mother Nature's
Silver seed to a new home in the sun
Flying Mother Nature's
Silver seed to a new home

-- Neil Young, After The Goldrush
---
$ su
who are you?
$ whoami
whoami: no login associated with uid 1010.

Amazed

[lbrlove]

I am always amazed at the irrepressible spirit of adventure and entrepreneurship in the U.S. Unfortunately, the spirit of entrepreneurship is often greater among lawyers. Has anyone considered the liability issues of this (I am seriously asking)? Who insures such a project, and are the perceived gains greater than the realistic risks and costs? Is it just me that regrets having to think about such things this way in such a litigious social climate?

In a purely political sense, it would be great if the private sector could take away the social arguments against realizing the potential of space. NASA could slowly become a regulatory agency in the vein of the FAA. I just wonder about the impact of introducing space exploration to capitalism in its most rabid form.

-L

I hope no one finds the big

[tcd004]

monolith I buried up there.

I heard about a company who plans to blast people's ashes to the moon, for $12,000 per pop.

tcd004

Here's my Microsoft parody , where's yours?

Don't be impressed by China.

[Tau Zero]

Am I the only one who was more than a little stunned by the fact that China is ready to (or have they already done it?) put astronauts into space?

If you're stunned, you probably forgot that:

1. Manned spaceflight can be done with 40-year-old technology (American or Russian);
2. The Russians are in pretty bad economic shape and will do almost anything for money;
3. The Chinese have enough money to buy the technology to build the Soyuz.

Given that, it's a pretty small jump from having the will to having the hardware.

With the economy the way it is now, why the hell isn't someone working on finding new resources in space to propel us as a nation through the 21st century??? There's no telling if there's another "Seward's Folly" waiting out there for us.

What do you mean, "no telling"? OF COURSE they're out there, waiting (do you have any idea of the market value of just one medium-sized chunk of asteroidal nickel-iron?). It's just a matter of getting them back here at an affordable price.
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Nothing compared to Nature

[Tau Zero]

So they're going to drop a few hundred pounds of metal alloys on the Moon. Nature deposits tons of meteroids, some stony, some iron, some chondrites on the Moon every day. You can sift iron out of lunar regolith with nothing more sophisticated than a magnet; I don't think that human activity is going to be detectable on that scale until a few billion probes have crashed.
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Moon vandalism

[Drone-X]

Months later, TrailBlazer will impact on the surface of the moon.

I was just thinking about the _extremely_small_ chance that it would actually destroy an artefact that NASA left on the moon. Could they be sued? Or in what court could they be sued?

Close...

[Tau Zero]

What do you think space ship use as fuel? Gasoline?

Atlas: Kerosene and oxygen.
Saturn V first stage: Kerosene and oxygen.

Arguably, many space ships do use gasoline. Kerosene isn't exactly gasoline, but it's very close and it all comes from oil.
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Re:Interesting!

[mattc]

Let's hope the sun doesn't core dump.

Opensource space mission....

[MikeM]

Before you get your panties in a wad you need some background information. Transorbital is a spinoff of the Artemis Project (www.asi.org) which is a close approximation of an open source space mission as you can probably get.

ASI's job is to formulate business plans and technical details in an open way. Once they reach a high enough level of detail/believability they are spun off into companies who take the ideas and run with them.

The main document of the Artemis Society is the Artemis Databook which is a compendium of our notes and links and documents on how to build a full base near Mare Anguus. You should check it out if your the least bit interested in space.

You can find a list of all of the ASI related companies and organization here:
http://www.asi.org/adb/10/companyindex.html

You can join here:
http://www.asi.org/adb/06/05/asi_member.html

Cheaper to fix it in post!

[rogerbo]

TransOrbit is planning amongst other things: The first advertising opportunity in lunar orbit Video with lunar background showing corporate logos on a sub-spacecraft

Yeah, fine, figures they want corporate sponsorship up the wazoo. But the problem is nowadays we're so used to seeing amazing images on tv and in the movies that the real images won't amaze people anymore. In fact I'd bet that when they get their HDTV pictures back from the moon, the real pictures won't look good enough and they'll be digitally post produced to make them look more like the science fiction versions.

And another thing. How will the sponsor paying know they didn't fake the whole thing? Give me a few days with tucked away in a digital editing suite with Maya and flame and I can put any logo you want on a spaceship orbiting the moon.

Got Spam from TO on Wednesday

[Mike Caprio]

An image of the spacecraft they sent me

Here's the text of their email to me:

TransOrbital Offers the 1st Commercial Spaceflight to the Moon

A Project Participation Opportunity with a For-Profit Space Venture

Solicitation of Interest

Not only will the 2001 TrailBlazer Project be the first commercial spaceflight to the Moon; it will also return the first video from the Moon in thirty years. The video will be of very high quality and digitally enhanced, showing the lunar surface details as has never been seen before.

The entire Project is intended to cost a small fraction of what it would cost NASA to complete a similar project.

TransOrbital Inc. has developed a low-cost, video spacecraft project for lunar orbit. TransOrbital's commercially funded robotic spacecraft, 2001 TrailBlazer, will return HDTV video from lunar orbit for use as Internet content and other commercial products. The privately held company has already arranged for a launch aboard the "Strela" launch vehicle. The 2001 TrailBlazer Project is a for-profit Space Venture and will produce high-quality video and other products such as:

• The first advertising opportunity in lunar orbit
• Video with lunar background showing corporate logos on a sub-spacecraft
• Earthrise 2001: A defining video image for the New Millennium
• Final de-orbit video, up to moment of impact
• An atlas of the entire lunar surface for students & planetary scientists
• High-resolution aerial photography of pre-targeted sites on the Moon
• Low-altitude, high-speed video, for Hollywood science-fiction movies footage
• The first deep space email service, from lunar orbit
• Interactive Lunar Flight CD-ROM game made from the photography

The photos from lunar orbit will be very high resolution, utilizing a telescope with an HDTV camera. "We expect to be able to see the tire tracks from the Apollo-era rovers."

Excellent Website and Portal Content

"We want to do for the Moon what Jacques Cousteau did for marine exploration, to go, to see, sell the images as content and repeat it again and again." The Project will provide exceptional long-term content for TransOrbital customers' Internet portals during construction of the spacecraft, the launch, and throughout the spaceflight to the Moon. This exciting Project can propel customers' portals to the forefront of the Web, as the premiere sites for content, education and news about space and the Moon. The spacecraft will also provide small cargo delivery service for relics and personal & business cards, to a hard landing on the lunar surface.

The Project will be fully insured against launch and technical failure, assuring the return of deposits in the event of disaster, a welcome feature incorporated into TransOrbital's business plan. TransOrbital is seeking additional associates and customers for products created during the 2001 TrailBlazer Project.

Point of Contact:
Gregory Nemitz
VP, TransOrbital, Inc.
3672-A Bancroft St.
San Diego, CA 92104
Tel: 619-528-0520
Fax: 619-693-3039
gnemitz@transorbital.net
http://www.transorbital.net

Mike Caprio, mikecap@nospamldbw.com

A similar mission

[Maurice]

I remember that there was a similar mission to map the moon back in 1994. It was called Clementine and was a joint project of NASA and the Air Force. The probe had all sorts of cameras in it (IR, UV, visible) plus a laser rangefinder, and it basically mapped the moon in extreme detail. The probe was to flyby an asteroid after it finished mapping but its engine failed during that latter stage.
Anyway, that mission was extremely cheap and the probe was very small (about 200kg IIRC). In fact they launched it on an Air Force surplus Titan 2 ICBM. I don't remember the total cost, but it was less than $100M and the mission took pictures in many wavelengths plus it made a relief map of the moon using the laser rangefinder. I don't think this commercial mission will contribute anything new to science, it looks like it will just take pictures of company logos on a moon-Earth background.
There was also the Lunar Prospector which had alpha, gamma and neutron spectrometers to study the materials that make up the moon. It cost even less than Clementine.
So don't diss on NASA with the cost of Lunar missions. Unmanned small probes to the Moon are not too hard to make and considering those guys just have one video camera, hell, you could almost launch that thing on SCUD missile for a ridiculously low cost and hope to recoup the money by taking stupid ad photos that anyone can do in photoshop in like 5 minutes.

Re:Clearly The Way Things Are Going-WHAT?

[tcd004]

Fewer screwups? You really think a competetive price-per-pound marketplace, with...say 15-20 corporations all racing to be the first to put thier flag on Asteriod 37-D is going to have fewer screwups than the Gov?

I'll bet we're looking at somethign simialr to the industiral revolution in space. Corporations will exploit the fuzzyness of space-law for profit, and people will be the ones who suffer.

tcd004

Here's my Microsoft parody, where's yours?

Why?!?

[redragon]

The main reason that we havn't pushed out into space, I think is the same reason why we don't have a real welfare system, and why big buisness gets more of our tax money than anyone else. (Or into investigating where the prez's penis has been)

I honestly don't want to give my tax money to a government that gives it to big business. Instead, I want to give my money to fix the interstate, I want my money to feed people who don't have enough, I want my money to help put people on mars, and I want my money to research mining asteroids.

The only way things seem to get done in our society right now is through the corporate sector. More power to them I suppose.

Besides, only way Joe/Jill Blow will get on the moon is through a private company.

Watch the HBO series From the Earth to the Moon...as a matter of fact, anyone who says that space exploration doesn't matter should watch it.

Sorry for the rambling...
C

I say we sent "Moon Unit Zappa".

[hardaker]

I think we should start a collection to fund the trip for Frank Zappa's kid (Moon Unit). Certainly I think she deserves something good for the name bestowed upon her by her father.

Commercialization

[Arcanix]

I have read a few of the posts that lament the commercialization of space, but really what did you expect? Last time I checked the economies of the Western world were based on a Capitalist economy which essentially means that coporations can do whatever they want.

Anyone who has some noble idea of space as a neutral ground for international cooperation needs to take a reality check. Not only will the space of the future be dominated by corporations, but it will most likely be necessary to have a significant military presence in space.

Interesting!

[Bad Mojo]

"... this might signal a new phase in the human utilization of space."

I wonder what the load average of space is now?

[root@space /root]#w

1:02pm up 71 days, 3:33, ALOT users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00


Bad Mojo