NASA Veterans Try Their Hands at Lunar Tourism

[JonB]

NASA Veterans Try Their Hands at Lunar Tourism

Golden Spike is planning to sell trips for two to the moon for the low, low cost of $1.5 billion.

Golden Spike, a private company founded by NASA veterans, has announced that it plans to launch a series of moon landings through the 2020s. Alan Stern, Golden Spike's CEO and President, said that the company is "selling to nations, corporations, and individuals. Get in line - and I think it's going to be a long one." The company intends to use an existing launch vehicle, while it will commission specially designed lunar landers and spacesuits. Golden Spike intends to sell the missions to countries without their own space agencies, or that cannot otherwise afford to launch moon missions. That won't be the exclusive audience, because the mission are available to anyone who can afford them - including companies and private individuals. "I don't think anybody's got us beat," Stern said. "This is state-of-the-art cool."

The current plan is that each Golden Spike lunar landing will involve four launches. The first two launches will put the lander into orbit, the second two will put the cargo and crew respectively into orbit. The company has a large support board of advisory scientists, including such famous voices as Homer Hickam - the subject of the movie October Sky. The company does not currently have a large number of wealthy investors, to which Stern responded "We don't need it. We're going to make our business run on sales." Stern is also currently involved in a Google Lunar X Prize team called Moon Express, focused on planting a robot on the moon. Alan Stern is the former director of NASA's Science Mission Directorate. Gerry Griffin, the company's chairman, is a former Apollo flight director and NASA Johnson Space Center director.

Source: Space.com [http://www.space.com/18800-golden-spike-private-moon-company.html?cid=dlvr.it]

[http://www.escapistmagazine.com/content/eve/science.php]

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[Quaxar]

Specially designed spacesuits? For 1,5 billion I sure hope it's something like that.
http://s3images.classcreator.com/2376/001/533649/207829.jpg

And I wonder if they're willing to transport giant lasers...

 

[JoJo]

It's difficult to tell at this point how likely this particular venture is to succeed but I think in the long run space travel must be taken over by private companies to push down costs and release our government's budgets from strain. I therefore wish Golden Spike the best of luck on their monumental endeavour.

 

[Albino Boo]

It's difficult to tell at this point how likely this particular venture is to succeed but I think in the long run space travel must be taken over by private companies to push down costs and release our government's budgets from strain. I therefore wish Golden Spike the best of luck on their monumental endeavour.

Unmanned space flight is big business and and governments make a fair amount of money out launching commercial satellites. The problem is that manned space flight don't make money in the same way. Yes you get a few millionaires who quite like the idea of being strapped on top of a mass of high explosives and fired at the sky but its not a mass market. Until someone works out a way of making real money out manned space flight is the costs are going to remain on national governments.

 

[Daaaah Whoosh]

I wonder how many countries are actually going to do this for science, and how many are just going to send their dictators into space while everyone else starves. Oh well, hopefully by the 2020s America will have realized that NASA deserves more money, and we'll have trips to Mars for cheaper.

 

[JoJo]

It's difficult to tell at this point how likely this particular venture is to succeed but I think in the long run space travel must be taken over by private companies to push down costs and release our government's budgets from strain. I therefore wish Golden Spike the best of luck on their monumental endeavour.

Unmanned space flight is big business and and governments make a fair amount of money out launching commercial satellites. The problem is that manned space flight don't make money in the same way. Yes you get a few millionaires who quite like the idea of being strapped on top of a mass of high explosives and fired at the sky but its not a mass market. Until someone works out a way of making real money out manned space flight is the costs are going to remain on national governments.

Making "real" money out of manned space flight isn't going to be possible whilst it still costs thousands of dollars per kilogram you send up, we need daring and wealthy people to pay for the development of technology to cheapen it enough so other commercial ventures become viable. The more they cheapen it, the more people who will then afford to go up and fund yet more research and you've got yourself a virtuous circle. Commercial space-flights for all

 

[antipunt]

I first read that as 'million', not billion.

Oh so naive..

 

[FalloutJack]

Screw the tourism crap. COLONIZE THE DAMN THING! Or mine it! Or something!

BTW: Is anyone else thinking of Airplane 2?

 

[Twilight_guy]

Ugh, I don't really trust space travel. If something goes wrong, you're several thousand miles not only from help but also from habitable areas. At least if a plane malfunctions, you can control its decent and survive, in a space vehicle you might wind up missing a solid object and drifting until you die.

 

[Strazdas]

Rich people wasting even more of our money on vacation on the moon? well if that finally pushes the space technolgoy forward sure.

 

[Therumancer]

I'll never be able to afford it at these prices, but it's cool to see. Back when I was a little kid I had a book called "The First Travel Guide To The Moon" which I loved to death. It's one step closer to reality.

 

[WWmelb]

Awesome. I'm nearly there. Only $1,499,970,000 to go... i estimate to get there by age 1,666.66.

extra points: how old am i? lol

 

[PrinceOfShapeir]

Rich people wasting even more of our money on vacation on the moon? well if that finally pushes the space technolgoy forward sure.

You mean their money, right? How is it our money?

 

[Strazdas]

Rich people wasting even more of our money on vacation on the moon? well if that finally pushes the space technolgoy forward sure.

You mean their money, right? How is it our money?

No, i mane our money, but the day is too short to explain why. Lets just put it simply that those billions celebrities have really should not be theirs. But the world is not perfect, and we still have bigger problems.

 

[Albino Boo]

It's difficult to tell at this point how likely this particular venture is to succeed but I think in the long run space travel must be taken over by private companies to push down costs and release our government's budgets from strain. I therefore wish Golden Spike the best of luck on their monumental endeavour.

Unmanned space flight is big business and and governments make a fair amount of money out launching commercial satellites. The problem is that manned space flight don't make money in the same way. Yes you get a few millionaires who quite like the idea of being strapped on top of a mass of high explosives and fired at the sky but its not a mass market. Until someone works out a way of making real money out manned space flight is the costs are going to remain on national governments.

Making "real" money out of manned space flight isn't going to be possible whilst it still costs thousands of dollars per kilogram you send up, we need daring and wealthy people to pay for the development of technology to cheapen it enough so other commercial ventures become viable. The more they cheapen it, the more people who will then afford to go up and fund yet more research and you've got yourself a virtuous circle. Commercial space-flights for all

There nothing that a human is space can do that makes money. Its inherently more expensive to put human in space as oppsed to a machine. A machine needs no air and water, so even if the launch costs are halved its will still be cheaper to put a machine into orbit than a human.

The European voyages of the 1400s-1750s were largely motivated by profit. A journey to to the spice islands had a 50% chance of dying but people undertook them for the 10,000% profit that those voyages made, nothing in manned space flight has that same profit marging