Coming: commercial manned lunar mission

[Dr Mordrid]

Heads up;

A big announcement may come as early as December that a NewSpace company plans to send commercial astronauts to the Moon by 2020.

The project will be led by several high-profile persons from the aerospace industry and it will have major financial backing, including non-US investors. They intend to use existing or soon to be available launchers, vehicles, technologies and spacecraft.

The leaks indicative they will use US vehicles, multiple launches to assemble the mission transfer vehicle in low Earth orbit, propellant depots and fuel transfer technologies. From there the plan is to park the mission transfer vehicle in lunar orbit, from which 2-person sorties to the lunar surface would be mounted using a lander that is already in development. Eventually a human outpost (read: moon base) would be constructed using inflatable habitats.

Sounds like practice for Mars.

[Umfriend]

A big announcement may come as early as December that a NewSpace company plans to send commercial astronauts to the Moon by 2020.

What are they planning to sell over there?

[VJ]

Rocks from earth... What else?

[Fat Tone]

ROFL!

But don't be daft, all Lunanians know the Earth is made of spinach and water.

[KRSESQ]

I can see a terrific market for REAL MOONSTONE jewelry. Whether it would be a big enough market to support such a venture remains to be seen.

An amusement theme park on the moon could be quite popular.

[Umfriend]

Yeah! A rollercoaster that, just for a few seconds at a time, exposes you to moon-like conditions!

[Dr Mordrid]

Not evey space development needs a business case - that can come later or it can support science/exploration. That said, a few millionaire joyrides can defer at least a bit of the lander development - especially if it's derived from an existing spacecraft like Dragon, Cygnus, ATV or CST-100.Yes, there are already proposals to evolve Cygnus and ATV into crew vehicles or habitats.

At least parts of this can be used for servicing geostationary and other satellites (esp. the James Webb telescope etc. at Lagrange points), for building an Exploration Gateway at Lagrange 2, and exploration infrastructure around/on Mars or its moons.

The key point is that this could serve as an attractive & cheaper alternative to $$$$ govt. (read: Congress) designed projects.

[Dr Mordrid]

Project name is Golden Spike (a refetence to the ceremonial spike used to complete the American Transcontinental Railroad Link....)

Leaked "involved" list so far -

Wayne Hale: NASA engineer, flight director and Space Shuttle Program Manager, he also served as Deputy Associate Administrator for Strategic Partnerships prior to his retirement in 2010.

Gerry Griffin: former NASA Flight Director during Apollo (12, 15 and 17), then Director of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Tx. Also was Technical Adviser for the films Apollo 13, Contact and Deep Impact.

S. Alan Stern: planetary scientist. Principal Investigator of the New Horizons mission to Pluto (and about 23 other missions) and the Chief Scientist at Moon Express. Executive Director of the Southwest Research Institute's Space Science and Engineering Division until becoming Associate Administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in 2007. A staunch hawk regarding project budgets he left NASA after a rumored row with former (and in the minds of many, disgraced) NASA Administrator Mike Griffin.

[Dr Mordrid]

Add Paragon Space Development, which makes environmental and life support systems for SpaceX's crewed Dragon and the Orion NASA Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, and the NASA Constellation next-gen spacesuit. They also have a tech for expandable structures.