Mc Donald's "Lunar Specials" coming soon !
W I R E D
Golden Spike Company Unveils Plans to Fly Commercial Crews to the Moon
* By _Adam Mann_
(http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/author/adammann930/)
* 12.06.12
A private enterprise named the Golden Spike Company announced today that
they have plans to fly manned crews to the moon and back for a price of $1.5
billion per flight by 2020.
Golden Spike, whose board includes _former NASA engineers and spaceflight
experts_
(http://boingboing.net/2012/12/06/golden-spike-company-announces.html) , has
been working under the radar for the last two and a half years to
develop their mission architecture, and unveiled their company after
_several weeks of internet rumors_
(http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/12/private-manned-mission/) . Their
intended clients are not private individuals
for a _space tourism scheme_
(http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/06/ticket-to-space/) , but rather
governments. As yet, the company is not
disclosing its investors or how much money it has backing the venture but
among its
directors and advisers are venture capitalist Esther Dyson and millionaire
former presidential candidate Newt Gingrich.
Golden Spike will follow a model like that of the Russian spaceflight
industry in the 1980s and ‘90s, when they charged money to take other nations’
astronauts to the Salyut and Mir space stations for scientific
experiments. Many governments, including Finland, Japan, the Czech Republic and
Malaysia took Russia up on its offer.
“We can give countries an expedition to surface of the moon for two people,
” planetary scientist and aerospace engineer _Alan Stern_
(http://www.swri.org/iProfiles/ViewiProfile.asp?k=s81y802jwy4371v) , co-founder
of Golden
Spike and former head of NASA’s science mission directorate, told Wired. He
added that the company is already in talks with several countries “both east
and west of the U.S.,” hinting that China may be a possible customer. “
Country after country, everyone will want to join the lunar club.”
Besides scientific expeditions, the company hopes to stimulate an
increased manned presence in space. Golden Spike’s name is a reference to the
final
spike laid down in the transcontinental railroad in 1869, opening up the
western U.S. The company hopes to similarly bring the lunar frontier into the
sphere of human civilization.
Golden Spike estimates starting their entire operation will cost between
$7 billion and $8 billion, “soup to nuts,” said Stern. “That includes
developing, flight testing, and any rainy day funds.” He compared the figure
to
the cost of a major metropolitan airport, though airports are typically
funded by governments.
The company said it can cut costs by partnering with other aerospace
companies and using existing rockets or rockets already in development,
needing
to only build a lunar lander and a specialized spacesuit for astronauts on
the moon. Among their partners are _Masten Space Systems_
(http://www.wired.com/autopia/2012/09/masten-loses-rocket/) , which builds
vertical take-off
and landing spacecraft, for the lander and the _Paragon Space Development
Corporation_ (http://www.paragonsdc.com/) , founded by _Biosphere 2_
(http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/04/biospheresci/) crewmembers Taber
MacCallum and Jane Poynter, for the suits and life-support systems.
But the reality is that rocket science is hard and there are many reasons
not to break out the champagne and declare that humans are going back to
the moon. The company may not be starting from scratch with rocket design but
they also don’t have any magic way to break the laws of physics and
economics.
“I would say that Stern doesn’t have enough zeros in his budget,” said
space policy expert _John Pike_
(http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/staff/pike.htm) , who directs
GlobalSecurity.org and worked for 20 years with the
Federation of American Scientists.
The 1960s Apollo program, including development and testing, came to
around _$110 billion dollars_ (http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1579/1)
in
today’s money or roughly $18 billion per landing on the moon. Trouble is,
rocket technology matured quickly in the ’50s and ’60s and “has seen
essentially no improvement since the days of Kennedy,” said Pike. It seems a
bit
unbelievable that a private company can recreate Apollo at an order of
magnitude lower cost.
While there are now rockets that can bring a payload to low-Earth orbit,
only the enormous Saturn V could launch a vehicle to space large enough to
take people to the moon and back. No rocket available today, public or
private, has that kind of power.
Stern and his team could construct their ships in Earth orbit before
jetting off to the moon but Pike estimates that a lunar orbiting and landing
system would weigh between a quarter and a third of a million pounds. That
means the limiting cost for Golden Spike is the price to get a pound of
material to orbit, which has not yet gotten reliably lower than between $5,000
and $10,000 per pound. A single manned moon mission then has a ballpark
baseline launch cost of $1.25 billion, which doesn’t include any new flight
hardware testing or development.
During their press conference on Dec. 6, Golden Spike said their plan
requires four separate launches. They will first launch two exiting rockets to
bring a spacecraft and lunar lander into orbit around the moon. A second
two launches will get people to the lander, where they will descend to the
lunar surface and conduct an expedition before launching back to lunar orbit
and then back to Earth. Golden Spike did not name the rockets that will be
used for this effort nor their prices.
The private sector has definitely _changed and challenged_
(http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/07/21/138166072/spaceflight-is-getting-cheaper-but-its-
still-not-cheap-enough) many existing models for rockets and spaceflight.
But they have so far had a mixed record. Companies like SpaceX can be
commended for accomplishing something that until now only governments have
been
able to do – orbiting a spacecraft around the Earth and _docking it with
the International Space Station_
(http://www.wired.com/autopia/2012/10/spacex-engine-loss-orbit/) . SpaceX’s
Falcon Heavy launch vehicle, which is
expected to begin testing next year, may further drive down the price of
reaching
space, but it remains to be seen exactly when and how cheaply they will
deliver their product. Other commercial space businesses, like Virgin
Galactic, have seen constant delays and broken promises with their flight
hardware. Richard Branson, the CEO, once wanted to have tourist flights to the
edge
of space in 2007, which was later pushed to 2010, then 2012. _He recently
said_
(http://www.concordmonitor.com/home/2506570-95/virgin-space-branson-delayed)
that he doesn’t know when flights will begin and has stopped
counting.
Golden Spike knows there are many challenges ahead and that, so far, they
only have a plan. Based on the early speculation and rumors, Stern said
that it seemed that people expected them to have constructed and filled a
50-story skyscraper in secret. “It’s much more like we’ve created the
architecture for a new 50-story building we want to build,” he said.
Golden Spike’s announcement is similar to the earlier unveiling of the
_private company Planetary Resources_
(http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/04/planetary-resources-asteroid-mining/)
, which is backed by wealthy tech
billionaires and intends to mine near-Earth asteroids for platinum metals
and water. Both companies have lofty and expensive goals that could either
pan out or end up crashing and burning.
Until Golden Spike begins producing real results, there will be many in
the spaceflight community skeptical of its plans. Stern said they still need
to raise hundreds of millions of dollars. Companies involved with the
Google Lunar X Prize, which are competing to land a robotic probe on the moon,
have _had trouble raising even tens of millions_
(http://www.newspacejournal.com/2012/12/06/what-to-look-for-in-todays-golden-spike-announcement/)
of
dollars. Pike related a well-known story about the economist Milton Friedman
who, while walking with a friend, spotted a $10 bill on the ground. Friedman
’s friend asked him if he was going to pick it up. No, replied the
venerable economist, because if it were real somebody else would have already
grabbed it.
“If you could really shoot people off to the moon for those kinds of
dollars, someone would have done it,” said Pike.
--
Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community
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