Shackleton Energy Company Launches Plan for First Lunar Mining Operation

[Diagoras]

Shackleton Energy Company (SEC) Initiates Funding Process
for Lunar Ice Mining to Establish the World’s First Industrial Lunar Base
and Propellant Depots in Space

The process of establishing the world’s first operational lunar base and propellant depot business in space is underway as SEC launches its initial fundraising campaign. This comes in the footsteps of recent amazing new discoveries of huge deposits of propellant-feedstock ice on the Moon by NASA and other international space programs.

[tigerade]

I've read up on this Shackleton Energy Company before.  I'm 99% sure that it's pie in the sky, it's fluff.  This kind of thing would take billions of dollars, and this guy doesn't have it.  I wouldn't be eager to put down money as an investor either. 

[savuporo]

These types of "undertakings" that are so obviously 100% pie in the sky damage credibility of the entire field.


If Moller's venture didn't exist, we'd probably have flying cars by now

[Wyvern]

Isn't this by Bill Stone?  The same guy as the Bill Stone from that TED talk awhile back?

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/bill_stone_explores_the_earth_and_space.html

Huh, well I guess he got tired of waiting for the bureaucrats. 

I to have to place my doubts on this "business venture".  Despite my faith in the private sector I still believe that it will be the government that will be the one shelling out the money to make ideas like lunar colonization possible.

[Cinder]

Does sound like what Bill Stone pitched at TED so many years back. 

[Gregori]

lunacy

[douglas100]

Reminds me of LiftPort. Ever so slightly premature.

[Cherokee43v6]

lunacy

Pun intended???

[mlorrey]

Reminds me of LiftPort. Ever so slightly premature.

I dont know if it is premature to start raising capital now to develop the technology to do something in the late teens or early 20's. Thats like saying SpaceX was premature to raise capital in 2001....

[M_Puckett]

These types of "undertakings" that are so obviously 100% pie in the sky damage credibility of the entire field.


If Moller's venture didn't exist, we'd probably have flying cars by now

We will have flying cars when they can fly themselves without a human doing anything more than punching in the destination.

[docmordrid]

Besides the DoD/DARPA  Transformer (TX) "Flying Humvee" project

http://www.lockheedmartin.com/products/adp/Transformer_TX.html

there's also....

http://www.urbanaero.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=zUu8X3HSDoIhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=zUu8X3HSDoI

[Cherokee43v6]

Ah, someone has resurrected the idea of the 'Fleep'

[Wyvern]

Wasn't there an Israel military vehicle that looked just like the Ubanaero?

[docmordrid]

AirMule is an evolution of the X-Hawk, and Urban Aeronautics is a privately held company HQ'd in Yavne, Israel.

[douglas100]

I dont know if it is premature to start raising capital now to develop the technology to do something in the late teens or early 20's. Thats like saying SpaceX was premature to raise capital in 2001....

Fair enough. I just think it might be a good idea to actually have a lunar transportation system in existence first. Let's just see how much capital they manage to raise.

[Cherokee43v6]

The difference is that in 2001, the search for funding by SpaceX involved Elon going "Where is my wallet?"  I do not believe he brought in outside venture capital until around 2006 or so...

In fact he specifically had said that he wanted to avoid too much external funding for SpaceX because of the nightmare he went through with the VCs on the PayPal board making it impossible to achieve his original goals for that company.

[Moe Grills]

  They won't be the first to apply for bankruptcy protection; remember NEAP?
   Type the acronym in your search window and surf.

[Wyvern]

To get loosely back to the original topic.

Are we sure that harvesting propellant from the Moon would be cheaper than just bringing it up from Earth? 

Sure I love the image of a huge lunar propellant factory making the moon an economical goldmine, but is the cost feasible? 

I tried looking at some studies but all the ones I found (after a five second search on Google...) require me to purchase them which isn't an option for me.  Anyone more knowledgeable persons willing answer my question on the economic feasibility of lunar propellant?

[Patchouli]

These types of "undertakings" that are so obviously 100% pie in the sky damage credibility of the entire field.


If Moller's venture didn't exist, we'd probably have flying cars by now

No frivolous laws suits against civil aviation manufactures and FAA civil aviation rules that are stuck in the 1970s are more to blame then anything else for there not being flying cars yet.

NASA already developed the highway in the sky system that could enable almost anyone to safely pilot an aircraft.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/04/15/60minutes/main688454.shtml

[MikeAtkinson]

Are we sure that harvesting propellant from the Moon would be cheaper than just bringing it up from Earth? 

In general terms exporting propellant from the moon becomes less economic the further from the moon it is used. This is because some of the propellant needs to be used to transport the rest of the propellant and there is added infrastructure in tankers, depots, etc.

In general terms high usage rates are more economic than low, because of the large development costs of the mining infrastructure and potentially high fixed costs of the mining base (particularly if it needs to be manned for maintenance).

High usage rates imply low launch costs from Earth, because otherwise we could not afford to launch the non-propellant elements of missions. Lowing launch costs reduce costs for propellant from Earth by a similar factor, but reduce propellant costs from the moon proportionally by less than that as most of the lunar propellant production costs are not due to launch costs but due to development and hardware elements.

Lunar propellant production costs are fixed by the necessary development and production infrastructure, once development is started it largely determines costs for the whole term of the project, which is likely to be > 30 years. This makes it vulnerable to competition from Earth where new launcher developments are on the order of 7 years. It runs the considerable risk of being undercut by more nimble Earth based propellant launch companies.

The considerable technical, project and competition risks make it unlikely that Lunar propellant production could be commercially funded in my opinion.