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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. "
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.
ACK
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.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
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.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
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.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
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.
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.
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.
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.
... 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.
In general, I'm deeply skeptical of the current mania for privatization of government jobs. Schools, prisons, transportation
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Is this really a good thing? Do we want to turn space into the same junkyard that we've turned Earth into?
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
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).
...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.
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!
-----------------------------------------------
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
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
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
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
Work for Change & GET PAID!
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!
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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
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.
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Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
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
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.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
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?
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Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
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.
A well-crafted lie appears unquestionable - Dama Mahaleo
>Strela is Russian for, I believe, "arrow." Their
/ strela_sum.shtml
>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
>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....
(Yes I work for NSI. No I don't pretend to speak for them since they don't pretend to speak for me.)
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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Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
I want a little plaque on the moon that says "ZPengo has first dibs."
Got Rhinos?
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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This post made from 100% post-consumer recycled magnetic
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
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.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
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.
Michael Richmond "This is the heart that broke my finger."
mwrsps@rit.edu http://stupendous.rit.edu
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Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
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
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*
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
The Artemis Project (http://www.asi.org) is still going strong.
:v)
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
[Designer/Artist for TransOrbital]
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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Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
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.
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 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
Mike Caprio, mikecap@nospamworld.stdspam.com
Digital Renaissance Man - Writer, Coder, & Artist
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.
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?
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
- Sighuh?
Things left on the moon:
The Lunar Rover
various cameras (we saved the film, and left the cameras)
The LMs
Well, you get the idea. NASA has no qualms about leaving junk on the moon.
No time for
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.
"... this might signal a new phase in the human utilization of space."
/root]#w
I wonder what the load average of space is now?
[root@space
1:02pm up 71 days, 3:33, ALOT users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
Bad Mojo
Bad Mojo
"If you can't win by reason, go for volume." -- Calvin