NEARLY 40 years after John F. Kennedy kick-started the dash for the Moon, the
race is on again. This time it鈥檚 not the US versus Russia, it鈥檚 entrepreneur
versus entrepreneur. Several private companies reckon they can make money by
sending spacecraft to the Moon and the first commercial moonshot could happen as
early as this summer. But can private companies really profit from Moon
missions? And where will their efforts lead?
The idea of commercial lunar missions dates back to at least 1986, when John
Santarius, a physicist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, proposed mining
the Moon鈥檚 abundant resources of helium-3 for a future (still unrealised) fusion
reactor on Earth. Until now, however, all of the orbiters and landers that have
visited the Moon have been government-funded. It鈥檚 not that the private sector
lacks the know-how to get to the Moon. 鈥淭he science required is around 30 years
old,鈥� says Dennis Laurie, president of TransOrbital, one of the companies at the
forefront of the new Moon race. What鈥檚 been missing is a viable way of making
money.
TransOrbital of La Jolla, California, is one of several companies who think
they have overcome that problem. It plans to launch a commercial orbiter,
TrailBlazer, sometime this year. According to Laurie the craft is 80 per cent
complete and could be ready for launch in four months.
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Once everything is in place, the 520-kilogram orbiter will blast off from the
Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on a Russian Dnepr rocket. This will carry
TrailBlazer into low Earth orbit, where the orbiter will separate from the
launcher and fire its own booster to take it to the Moon. Four days and around
384,000 kilometres later, the craft will enter lunar orbit. After several weeks
orbiting from pole to pole, TrailBlazer will descend to low orbit and attempt
flyovers of significant lunar sites, including Apollo 11鈥檚 base in the Sea of
Tranquility, and the Russian rover Lunokhod 2, which was left in the Mare
Serenitatis (Sea of Serenity) in August 1973 by the unmanned Luna 21 mission.
Three months after lift-off, TrailBlazer will deliberately crash-land on the
Moon鈥檚 surface.
TransOrbital has all manner of schemes lined up to make money from the trip.
For a start, the craft will take video footage of the flight from Earth orbit to
the Moon, and while in polar orbit it will photograph the entire surface with a
stills camera. It鈥檒l also capture footage of an Earthrise over the Moon鈥檚
horizon. And once in low orbit it鈥檒l take colour video of surface features down
to a resolution of 1 metre. All the footage will be put up for sale, and
TransOrbital also plans to publish a photographic lunar atlas.
Dust to dust
The company even thinks it can profit from the crash-landing. TrailBlazer
will carry a time capsule into which customers can put messages, photographs,
business cards, mementos, and 鈥渁nything personal that cannot harm a
spacecraft鈥濃�攊ncluding funeral ashes. The going rate is $2500 a
gram, or a flat $2500 for a business card. A 300-character message will
set you back $16.95.
So who are they selling to? TransOrbital promotes its services first as an
鈥渙ut of this world鈥� public relations opportunity and secondly as a way to
preserve personal items in perpetuity. 鈥淭he Moon is as close to a permanent
archive as you can get right now,鈥� says Laurie鈥攁lthough he cannot
guarantee that the capsule or its contents will be intact after the
crash-landing.
For now, however, the mission is on hold. The launch is scheduled to take
place in Kazakhstan and so constitutes a transfer of technology to a foreign
power, which means TransOrbital has to await clearance from the US Department of
State. The delay has already forced TransOrbital and its launch partner, Russian
company Kosmotras, to cancel a planned test launch in January, and Laurie admits
he doesn鈥檛 know when or if the licence will be granted.
To break even, TransOrbital needs to make $20 million. Laurie admits
that they鈥檙e still a long way from hitting that target in advance sales. But he
says interest is growing. Some customers have made very strange
requests鈥擫aurie recalls one who wanted to send a throne to the Moon, so
that none of his descendants would get their hands on it after his death.
Unfortunately, thrones take up a little too much room on the average Moon
lander, so TransOrbital had to refuse.
After TrailBlazer, TransOrbital has two more missions lined up鈥攖hough
both are still on the drawing board. The first, Electra 1, will deliver a time
capsule to the Mare Anguis (Serpent Sea) crater. Unlike TrailBlazer, the Electra
craft will attempt a controlled landing, so there鈥檚 less danger of the capsule
breaking. Laurie estimates that this mission will cost $40 million.
TransOrbital also plans a second Electra mission but details are hazy.
TransOrbital might be the closest to launching a commercial moonshot, but it
doesn鈥檛 have a monopoly on the idea of sending ashes to the Moon. Space funeral
company Celestis of Houston, Texas, has similar plans. For $12,500, it
will arrange for a 鈥渟ymbolic portion鈥� (about a gram) of your ashes to be
deposited on the lunar surface.
Celestis has already overseen one high-profile lunar funeral: it arranged for
astronomer Eugene Shoemaker鈥檚 ashes to hitch a ride on NASA鈥檚 Lunar Prospector,
which deliberately crash-landed near the Moon鈥檚 south pole in July 1999. The
event caused such a stir that Celestis decided to make the service available to
the general public.
At least that鈥檚 the idea. Despite the fact that 25 people have already paid
for a lunar funeral, Celestis doesn鈥檛 actually have a craft lined up to take
them there. The company has no rocket or booster technology of its own so needs
to buy a berth on a craft that is either landing on the Moon or going into
permanent lunar orbit. As yet there鈥檚 no sign of a deal, so it鈥檚 hard to assess
the viability of Celestis鈥檚 plan. However, one of the company鈥檚 founders,
Charles Chafer, says he would expect to pay a space agency several tens of
thousands of dollars per kilogram to get his payload to the Moon. Each trip
would carry the ashes of 100 customers.
So why would anyone want a lunar funeral? 鈥淟ike a lot of people, I feel an
affinity to the Moon,鈥� says Celestis customer Helen Woodcock of Portland,
Oregon. 鈥淚鈥檓 a traveller鈥擨鈥檝e covered most of this planet 鈥攁nd the
Moon is the ultimate trip.鈥� She says her family tell her she won鈥檛 know the
difference once she鈥檚 dead. 鈥淏ut I know now, and it makes me feel good now.鈥�
Another contender for first commercial moonshot is LunaCorp of Fairfax,
Virginia. In the summer of next year it plans to launch a lunar orbiter to make
a high-resolution digital map of the Moon鈥檚 surface. 鈥淪uperSat鈥� will also beam
back live television pictures, including passes over the Apollo landing sites.
LunaCorp is currently hawking exclusive TV rights and says two US networks are
interested, though it won鈥檛 say which ones. It has signed a sponsorship deal
giving the electronics shop Radio Shack the right to plaster its logo all over
the craft.
Arcade games
The mission will cost $30 million, though LunaCorp doesn鈥檛 need to
recoup all of that from sales to break even. A large chunk of the mission鈥檚 cost
is being met by NASA in return for LunaCorp pioneering a new method of satellite
fabrication: SuperSat鈥檚 components will be transported into orbit on the space
shuttle and assembled on board the International Space Station. According to
LunaCorp鈥檚 president, David Gump, that means the craft doesn鈥檛 need to be as
robust as an ordinary satellite, because it doesn鈥檛 have to survive the
pummelling of escaping from the Earth鈥檚 atmosphere. And because risky procedures
such as unfurling antennas and solar arrays can be done by hand, and the
satellite can be tested before it鈥檚 released, it should be less likely to go
wrong.
LunaCorp claims this will allow its orbiter to take clearer pictures than
TransOrbital鈥檚. 鈥淚t will have enormously high data transmission rates,鈥� says
Gump, partly as a result of having larger and more sophisticated antennas. Its
standard resolution will be 1 metre, something TransOrbital will achieve only
during its low-orbit passes. LunaCorp plans to convert the high-resolution map
into a simulation allowing punters to explore the surface of the Moon in an
arcade-type game.
SuperSat will also prepare the ground for future LunaCorp moonshots. It will
scout for a suitable landing site for IceBreaker, a rover which LunaCorp hopes
to put on the Moon in 2004. The rover will send back pictures and, naturally, is
available for sponsorship. Gump also talks of letting members of the public
steer it for a few minutes for $10 or $15 a go.
But IceBreaker will also contribute to a serious scientific mission: the
search for lunar water. In 1999, NASA鈥檚 Lunar Prospector found spectroscopic
evidence that there was hydrogen on the Moon. NASA speculated this was in the
form of water ice, but the mission鈥檚 final act鈥攁 deliberate crash-landing
into a shadowy crater near the Moon鈥檚 south pole, in the hope of throwing up a
spray of liquid water鈥攆ailed to find anything. IceBreaker will attempt to
confirm the presence of water by drilling into the lunar soil and scanning
beneath the surface with ground-penetrating radar.
But why would a private company be interested in divining for water on the
Moon? The reason is simple: there鈥檚 only so much money to be made from selling
novelty items. To generate a steady income from the Moon, private companies will
have to invent a sustainable business plan. And that means finding something on
the Moon of genuine value.
Unfortunately, it鈥檚 at this point that pragmatic business ideas dry up.
LunaCorp talks in general terms about developing the Moon鈥檚 resources. Gump
suggests that a first step might be using lunar water as fuel for communications
satellites in orbit between the Moon and the Earth, or strip-mining helium-3,
which is moderately useful even in the absence of fusion, and is very scarce on
Earth. But the company has no concrete plans to make any of these things happen.
TransOrbital talks optimistically of the Moon becoming a thriving colony, or a
transportation hub for exploration of the Solar System. It has strong links with
Artemis Society International, which is committed to building a self-supporting
colony on the Moon by 2025. But exactly how its commercial activities point
towards that goal remains a mystery.
Meanwhile, at least one company that used to believe sincerely in the
commercial potential of the Moon鈥檚 resources has had second thoughts. Two years
ago, ORBITEC of Madison, Wisconsin, prepared a detailed report for the NASA
Institute for Advanced Concepts about converting lunar ice into rocket fuel for
a future launch site. The Institute hasn鈥檛 taken the scheme further and ORBITEC
has quietly dropped its interest. 鈥淲e have no real plans to send anything to the
Moon,鈥� says chief executive Eric Rice.
Nevertheless, he still believes that the Moon offers long-term commercial
opportunities, and he doesn鈥檛 discount the possibility of TransOrbital and its
rivals making a quick buck. 鈥淚f the money鈥檚 there, all power to them,鈥� he says.
But it鈥檚 not clear the current crop of commercial missions will lead to anything
of lasting value.
Commercialisation looks inevitable, but in all probability it鈥檒l prove to be
a passing fad that burns itself out. Whether anyone makes a quick fortune
sending ashes, business cards and trinkets to the Moon remains to be seen, but
it鈥檒l be fun while it lasts.
In legal terms there seems little to stop companies exploiting the Moon for
profit. The 1979 Moon Treaty, drafted by the UN Committee for the Peaceful Use
of Outer Space, aimed to regulate exploitation of the Moon. It explicitly banned
private ownership of lunar land and resources, and decreed that any wealth
derived from the Moon belonged to the whole world and should be shared equitably
among rich and poor nations.
Unfortunately, this aim proved a little too noble for most UN member states
and the treaty has only been ratified by nine countries: Australia, Austria,
Chile, Mexico, Morocco, the Netherlands, Pakistan, the Philippines and Uruguay.
None is renowned for its spacefaring prowess.
鈥淓ffectively, the treaty is a dead letter,鈥� says Virgiliu Pop, a space lawyer
at the University of Glasgow. In his opinion there鈥檚 nothing in international
law to prevent companies from making money from lunar missions, as long as they
don鈥檛 stake a claim of ownership on its land or minerals. Such a claim, he says,
would violate the widely accepted UN Outer Space Treaty of 1967鈥攖hough not
everyone agrees with him.
Dennis Hope, a private citizen of Rio Vista, California, says he is the
Moon鈥檚 rightful owner. In 1980 he staked a claim at his local federal office and
notified the US, the USSR and the UN of his intentions. He received no reply.
Undaunted, he started selling plots of lunar land for $15.99 an acre
(plus $1.16 鈥渓unar tax鈥� and $10 shipping and handling). Hope
claims several companies have bought land from him.
Hope says he鈥檚 exploiting a loophole in the 1967 treaty, which stipulates
that no government can own extraterrestrial land but says nothing about
individuals. Rubbish, says Pop. Landed property rights cannot exist without
state protection, and state endorsement of Hope鈥檚 claim would explicitly violate
the 1967 treaty. And in any case, Hope wasn鈥檛 the first to claim the Moon.
Martin Juergens, an elderly German, claims his family has owned the Moon since
15 July 1756 when Prussian emperor Frederick the Great presented it to his
ancestor, Aul Juergens, for services rendered.
While many regard Hope as a nuisance, his efforts do have a serious side.
They highlight the ambiguities in current space law with regard to
extraterrestrial, profit-making enterprises. Hope says he鈥檚 prepared to defend
his 鈥減roperty rights鈥� in court. However, he鈥檚 unlikely to have a case anytime
soon. The 1967 treaty says that the Moon is anyone鈥檚 to visit, and enshrines the
right to leave any object on the surface as long as it鈥檚 not a weapon.