Beyond the X-PRIZE — a $1.5B Commercial Lunar Market

coondoggie writes "Optimism certainly abounds in some corners of the manned space community. Today the aerospace consultancy Futron said that as much as $1.5 billion may be up for grabs for commercial space operation in the next ten years. The consultancy singled out the $30 million Google Lunar X-PRIZE contestants as a highly likely group to take advantage of such a cash pot, but there are many others who'd like a slice of that pie as well. But it's not all wine and roses; finances loom large over any space projects, and technology development is also proving to be a bugaboo. For example, even as NASA's commercial partners, such as SpaceX and Orbital, have made steady progress in developing space cargo transportation technology, they have also recently fallen behind their development schedules."

Re:GLXP is unwinnable

[BJ_Covert_Action]

You know, you are probably right, the GLXP is pretty much a gimmick probably. But let me tell you about something you forgot to take into account in your analysis of the situation. Across the country, and even in other countries, there are scores of Aerospace, Mechanical, Electrical, Software, Computer, Civil, Structural, Nuclear, and Materials Engineering Students frothing at the mouth and chomping at the bit to get to work on decent projects. Inspired teenagers and young adults at universities have more gumption in one damn finger than 75% of slashdot ranters combined. I know this because last year I spent my whole senior year working on two satellite design projects with 25 other kids. Twenty six of us, and only twenty six of us, did an entire first-iteration design cycle on a complex remote-sensing constellation that provided damn near 100% coverage of the Earth's surface every twelve hours. Was that as complicated as a moon mission? Obviously not. So this year, a design class of 40 students performed the same feat for meeting the mission requirement to land radio telescopes on the dark side of the moon for astronomy missions.

One class, forty aerospace students, 7 months, and they presented a respectable and plausible first iteration mission design to land on the moon...for free.

So why the anecdotes? It's simple, if Company X offers YYYY-illion dollars to something that entrenched scientists and engineers who have been in the business swear is impossible or just plain unreasonable, there will be an overwhelming number of universities that pick up on the news, assign full or partial mission designs to their students as senior projects, individually or in groups. All of that work will be publicized and posted to educational websites (those of the universities). Now Company X has just stimulated the biggest damn brainstorming session in the engineering world in decades. Now engineers in the industry can review and check out ideas that they can either adopt, adapt, or reinvent to do something that was originally thought unreasonable. Now hundreds of 'Cranky Old Men' engineers are inundated with new ideas for systems and subsystems alike. Lunar dust causing a problem for human health? Don't ever let it get into the habitat, mount the moonwalk suits to the outside so that only the internal portion of the suit is exposed to the habitat atmosphere. Students thought of that one, they can and will think of a lot more...

On top of that, now all those engineering students younger siblings hear that their older brother and/or sister helped design something that "astronauts reviewed!" Oh Wow! Now they have some inspiration from the scientific fields that is personal. Now when this 'gimmick' gets publicized, dozens of new engineers with good ideas will be advertised to the job market for up and coming companies like Space X and Bigelow. Now NASA and Company X can go to Congress and say, "See what a little cash can inspire in this industry you douchebags? We offered 1.5 Billion and there are scores of students chomping at the bit to design this mission and go! Give us money!"

Now every school that participated in the project can ask for more money with the excuse of, "Look, our students are talking with industry already! Look how good we are doing!" Now more money gets donated to schools from Company X and any other companies that want recruiting rights at that particular school. Now the world has to sit there and say, "Holy shit, students did that?"

And maybe, just maybe, amongst all of these satellite gains for both schools and industries (pun fully intended) some genius level sonofabitch, or perhaps a whole class of genius level sonsofbitches will pull an idea out of their ass so insane that it just might make the "impossible gimmick mission" possible.

So you are right, there is a lot in this gimmick that is laughable. But frankly, our species needs to inspire technological growth in the space industry. If that takes a piece of bait that will get a few fishes hooked but doesn't taste good, I say its a damn good idea.