TransOrbital: The Commercial Race To The Moon

apsmith writes: "Some of the companies that were preparing for a race to commercialize space and return to the moon (like Idealab's "Blastoff.com") have vanished with the stock market meltdown. But TransOrbital, a privately held company, is still plugging away, and claims to be on schedule for launch in the 4th quarter of 2001. The funding model seems to be generating lots of pretty pictures and selling them. Though for just $2500 you can also send your business card to the Moon!" Sounds like they've pushed their schedule a little bit since last mention, but considering the scope of the project, nearly any launch date would still be respectable.

Comments

Don't even have the licenses to launch.

[A Commentor]

From there May 31, 01 press release. There where just getting applications ready to submit inorder to get approval for launch... None of the other press releases state that they have received approval, or that they have even submitted the applications...

I think they are much further off than 4th Quarter of 2001...

Re:In John We Trust

[Midnight Ryder]

Forget these losers. I think JC will beat slick marketing anytime. If anybody is going into orbit first, my money is on him. Check out Carmack's rocket site:

That's nice, but, Transorbital isn't doing the race to orbit - they have thier sights set higher. Instead, they are shooting for the first commercial landing on the moon. I should put the obligatory RTFA comment here, but, instead I'll give ya a quick rundown - instead of trying to put someone in orbit, they are shooting for putting a lander on the moon. Unmanned, and you can do things like get pictures of your business card setting on the moon, plus they are planning on shooting some video, etc. Not what I'd call high-excitement stuff, but, at least someone is doing something with the moon :-)

So, in this case, Carmack isn't competing with them, unlike the $10 million prize...

The Moon Treaty

[Salgak1]

As I recall, the United States is not signatory to the Moon Treaty, and as such, it has no effect on the US or commercial activities therein. . .

We are, however, signatory to the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which does not rule out commercial activity, but doesn't exactly encourage it, either. . .

Don't crash that thing on MY land!

[MadCow42]

Hey, I OWN a plot of land on the moon (1774 acres, actually)... don't crash that thing on My property!

Don't believe me? Go buy your own plot at www.lunarembassy.com !!

q:]

MadCow

Yup, you forgot about polar orbits

[vik]

We're going to orbit TraliBlazer over the poles like Clementine & Prospector did. This doesn't really need any more fuel than an equatorial orbit.

Vik :v)