I think I heard of someone, perhaps astrobotic, thinking they could close the business case for a small lander. Lots of people have had some small interest in delivering various packages to the moon but insufficient to fund a lander. If you actually have a lander and can sell cargo space by the kg, even if it is a hundred or hundreds of thousands per kg, there could be quite a few interested parties wanting to land their own miniature scientific cargos.wiki link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrobotic_Technology#Commercial_payload_pricingwow.. they are talking about 2million/kg. Im sure there are ways to do way better, at the same time it is totally reasonable to have such inflated prices when there is in fact no way to get anything to the moon right now without years and hundreds of millions in investment.A two man lander sounds a lot bigger, but there are possibilities for making money from it before many of the expensive manned requirements are in place and also ways it could be much smaller than apollo even when manned if other infrastructure is in place.Im dying to hear more details.
obviously the money is the biggest question here. How do they intend to pay for all this?
expensive way to kill SLS when if it's such the dinosaur that many seem to imply, it will collapse under its own weight... if it's going to get done at all, it's going to have to be a more or less shoe-string, no-frills
Good cover, like manganese nodules.
Sounds a lot like a project I heard about a few years ago, called "Golden Spike". Several well known names were rumored to be associated with it.
I'll bet Diamandis has fingers in the pie somehow.
* ILC Dover: http://www.ilcdover.com/Habitats-and-Shelters/
as for backers, Chris did mention INTERNATIONAL!!! So while I applaud the idea of Caterpillar, there is always JBC in Britain...
I suppose that now we should start the guessing game of who is involved.I will start with the obvious candidates: Boeing, SpaceX, and ULA (possibly).
Quote from: FinalFrontier on 11/15/2012 08:05 pmI suppose that now we should start the guessing game of who is involved.I will start with the obvious candidates: Boeing, SpaceX, and ULA (possibly). http://ulalaunch.com/site/docs/publications/AffordableExplorationArchitecture2009.pdfHonestly ULA seems the most obvious partner, even more obvious than SpaceX, only because they only need a check to be written to start a lot of the above program.
What are the legal ramifications? Could this commerical group claim part of the moon say a 10 miles square for its own use? The materail I assume that they get is theirs?
Honestly ULA seems the most obvious partner, even more obvious than SpaceX, only because they only need a check to be written to start a lot of the above program.
Just look at how much talk they generated with a sentence or two about something called 'MCT', before even defining what it stood for.
Quote from: KelvinZero on 11/16/2012 05:08 amJust look at how much talk they generated with a sentence or two about something called 'MCT', before even defining what it stood for.According to one of our forum members who recently attended a lecture by Tom Mueller, Mueller said MCT stood for "Mars Colonial Transport", which really got tongues wagging over on the MCT thread.
I wonder if ULA have decided there is some sort of value to having a spaceX-like vision-or-dream and have decided to compete for that space in some sense.
Quote from: KelvinZero on 11/16/2012 05:08 amI wonder if ULA have decided there is some sort of value to having a spaceX-like vision-or-dream and have decided to compete for that space in some sense.They're not allowed.Would have to be Boeing or LM.Cheers, Martin
ry exciting, and would be a big kick in the britches to NASA and the US Government, which –could- be a very good thing. ...On the flip side, there might not need to be a specific commercial “customer” per se. If Musk and Bigelow want to do it, and can get enough people to invest in it, the business model could very well be to develop a system and operation model that NASA/Congress could find attractive. ...Be interesting on what that would mean for SLS though, which would be quite far along by the time this consortium would look actually legitimate or not, and might be both hard to justify, and hard to cancel for political and PR reasons.
There is a third point, that everyone I think is missing. And that is you don't necessarily HAVE to have a commercial market for each and every piece of the system.
Well if nothing else this proves that people (specifically Americans) haven't lost the desire to colonize space.
Quote from: mrmandias on 11/15/2012 07:08 pmFrom Chris' latest article:http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2012/11/exploration-alternatives-propellant-depots-commercial-lunar-base/source information acquired by L2 this week revealed plans for a “game-changing” announcement as early as December that a new commercial space company intends to send commercial astronauts to the moon by 2020.According to the information, the effort is led by a group of high profile individuals from the aerospace industry and backed by some big money and foreign investors. The company intends to use “existing or soon to be existing launch vehicles, spacecraft, upper stages, and technologies” to start their commercial manned lunar campaign.The details point to the specific use of US vehicles, with a basic architecture to utilize multiple launches to assemble spacecraft in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). The details make direct reference to the potential use of propellant depots and fuel transfer technology.Additional notes include a plan to park elements in lunar orbit, staging a small lunar lander that would transport two commercial astronauts to the surface for short stays.The architecture would then grow into the company’s long-term ambitions to establish a man-tended outpost using inflatable modules. It is also understood that the company has already begun the design process for the Lunar Lander.More details ahead of the announcement are expected in the coming days and weeksSounds a lot like a project I heard about a few years ago, called "Golden Spike". Several well known names were rumored to be associated with it.
From Chris' latest article:http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2012/11/exploration-alternatives-propellant-depots-commercial-lunar-base/source information acquired by L2 this week revealed plans for a “game-changing” announcement as early as December that a new commercial space company intends to send commercial astronauts to the moon by 2020.According to the information, the effort is led by a group of high profile individuals from the aerospace industry and backed by some big money and foreign investors. The company intends to use “existing or soon to be existing launch vehicles, spacecraft, upper stages, and technologies” to start their commercial manned lunar campaign.The details point to the specific use of US vehicles, with a basic architecture to utilize multiple launches to assemble spacecraft in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). The details make direct reference to the potential use of propellant depots and fuel transfer technology.Additional notes include a plan to park elements in lunar orbit, staging a small lunar lander that would transport two commercial astronauts to the surface for short stays.The architecture would then grow into the company’s long-term ambitions to establish a man-tended outpost using inflatable modules. It is also understood that the company has already begun the design process for the Lunar Lander.More details ahead of the announcement are expected in the coming days and weeks
NASA Watch @NASAWatchCompany named "Golden Spike" composed of Shuttle, Apollo & planetary science veterans apparently working on a commercial human Moon mission