Lunar Mission One Proposes To Take Core Sample, Plant Time Capsule On the Moon

MarkWhittington writes: The U.S. may have foresworn the moon, the venue of its greatest space triumph during the Apollo program, by presidential directive, but that does not mean that other countries and even private organizations are uninterested. The latest proposal for a private moon landing is a British effort called Lunar Mission One, according to a Wednesday story in the New Scientist. Its goal is twofold. The undertaking proposes to drill a 20 meter core sample below the lunar surface for analysis. Lunar Mission One will also deploy the first moon based time capsule. A Kickstarter effort has begun for initial funding.

Comments

Robots can't drill

[Russ1642]

If you're going to drill any decent depth you'll have to put together a manned mission with a bunch of roughneck drilling rig workers. They're the only ones that can operate drilling equipment. It can't possibly be taught to other astronauts, and most certainly not some dumb robot.

Cynical of promises....

[wired_parrot]

I'm skeptical of anyone who thinks they can fund a complex lunar exploration mission as a kickstarter project.

All that I foresee coming out of this is a multi-year "consulting study", using the dreams and hopes of space enthusiasts to pay for it. In another words, one space consultant gets a paid multi-year sabatical, with a short assignment report on the Moon at the end as the only result.

But maybe I'm just a cynic when it comes to kickstarter projects and their promises....

Re:Cynical of promises....

[Russ1642]

Raising and managing the billions required requires a full company, let alone actually producing anything. Kickstarter just isn't up to the task.

Re:Cynical of promises....

[Kjella]

No no no, absolutely anything is possible it's just the "establishment" that's unwilling to fund it. It has absolutely nothing to do investors doing fact checking and reviewing your competence, technology and business plans before committing large amounts of money, they're just all in cahoots with Big Oil / Big Pharma / Wall Street / The 1%ers / The Government / The Illuminati to bury any project they don't like. With Kickstarter you can cut out the middle man and we'll be skipping around the galaxy Star Trek style before you know it. All you've heard of ideas being a dime a dozen is false, just fund a Kickstarter with thousands of dollars and the execution practically does itself.

For the people with a faulty sarcasm detector: The above paragraph may contain sarcasm.

20M drilling project on very fist lunar mission

[Hadlock]

Did these guys just say "hey let's do a lunar sample return mission! high five!" and throw together a kick starter? They don't even have a target launch vehicle chosen yet. Not only do they want to do a return sample mission (something China has been working on for 15 years) but they want to drill a 60 ft hole in the moon while they're at it. This is, to use a pun, lunacy. The logistics involved of entering lunar orbit, let alone landing are incredible. And they want to throw a 60' drilling apparatus on there that will work flawlessly? Not even the ESA can get their 8" drill to work on the comet correctly and that's just ice.
 
Good luck with that.

Re:LOL ...

[fahrbot-bot]

Of course, all of the Luddites will just spend the next 50 years saying it's a hoax.

And all the high-school text books updated to match, once all the crops start to fail... (Sigh. That movie was better than I thought it would be, but not as good as I hoped it would be.)

a time capsule is a stupid idea

[jsepeta]

if you're going to spend money bringing something to the moon, it should be nanobots that self-assemble a moon base.