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Space Science

TransOrbital: The Commercial Race To The Moon 174

Posted by timothy from the selling-you-the-moon dept.
apsmith writes: "Some of the companies that were preparing for a race to commercialize space and return to the moon (like Idealab's "Blastoff.com") have vanished with the stock market meltdown. But TransOrbital, a privately held company, is still plugging away, and claims to be on schedule for launch in the 4th quarter of 2001. The funding model seems to be generating lots of pretty pictures and selling them. Though for just $2500 you can also send your business card to the Moon!" Sounds like they've pushed their schedule a little bit since last mention, but considering the scope of the project, nearly any launch date would still be respectable.
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TransOrbital: The Commercial Race To The Moon More

TransOrbital: The Commercial Race To The Moon

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  • if ($see_it) {
    believe_it();
    }

    That pretty much sums up my feelings on the subject, 40 years ago, they said we would be living on Mars by 2000. I'm not going to get excited quite yet.

    The original [slashdot.org]

    • If things had kept on their original track, we might have been living on Mars. Although Apollo was a great achievement - and TransOrbital's planned missions certainly would not be possible without NASA's technological developments - Apollo mucked up the works so far as an orderly progress into space is concerned. The original concepts, as noted by Von Braun and others, was to incrementally work from sub-orbital, to orbital, to space station, to Moon, to Mars. Apollo sunk a lot of money into getting to the Moon without building any infrastructure to enable us to keep going there: SSTO's, long duration space stations, lunar shuttles, etc.
  • I hope one of these companies makes getting into space affordable during my lifetime. We should all feel insignificant if we don't even make it off the surface of our own planet in a universe as big as ours.
    • I for one hope that we get this stuff successful and practical in the nearer future.

      I want to get enough folks established off planet before we turn it into a billiard ball.

    • Even though, there are a couple of people I would be willing to blast off into space and never see again :)

      My fear is that given the enviromental issues on earth, a lot of companies might one day find it expedient to send their toxic waste to the moon.

      Establishing a moon government would have been bad enough, with some people claiming to own parts of the moon, (I think it was slashdot article), but with the current political situation, I do not see too many people agreeing to a XX govt led moon colonisation.

      If you think that this sounds too far fetched, think about the fact that even today, a lot of western companies/countries export toxic waste to poor nations, because it is more economically expedient than 'home' disposal or recycling.

      I can just see the arguments for optimum amounts of pollution, and how much more pollution the moon's atmosphere (or lack thereof) can sustain.
    • We're certainly trying. Keep your eye on http://www.transorbital.net for announcements. The key is to start small and build up. TrailBlazer is, to some extent, our effort to find the minimal commercially viable mission. Once it's in place, we can start to grow, building on proven technology and capabilities.

  • My card on the moon...ok... (Score:4, Funny)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) on Monday September 24, 2001 @10:18AM (#2341130) Homepage Journal
    Now who has the burden of proof here? Does TransOrbital prove to me that my card is sitting on the moon (or in a well staged sandbox in New Jersey, filled with the grey dust that comes out of vacuum cleaners) or do I have to prove that it's not (in fact sitting in tiny strips under a paper shredder in New Jersey) .. Or .. should I just have faith and go around puffing about what a .biz stud I am that my card is on the moon?


    If you had to ask me (which, of course you don't) these are more impressive [metalcards.com] at least someone can break into a house with one, in say, New Jersey.

    • I guess you could ask them to lay it out on the surface and buy a really big telescope, but even then I'm not quite sure who you'd impress by doing it.
      • I guess you could ask them to lay it out on the surface and buy a really big telescope

        Is that even possible? I read somewhere that Hubble can't even see footprints on the moon.. Prolly wrong. If someone could link me in the right direction, it'd be appreciated.
        • I forget the exact equations, but a google search on the sci.space.* newsgroups for "diffraction limit" will give the answer both for using Hubble to try and see manmade objects on the moon (They'd need to be more than 10m across) and for using spy satellites to read car number plates and newspaper headlines on earth (You can probably resolve things about 15cm across).

          It works out that you'd need mirrors kilometres across for it to work. Cheaper to go there and have a look directly. Oh, and it's a limit of physics, not a cover up by intelligence organisations...

          Anthony
      • Except "2001 Trailblazer (TM)" isn't going to land, just orbit and take pictures. Your business card, momento or personal message will simply be carried along for the ride. They might evenually send a mission to actually land later...

        TransOrbital's proposed Electra I mission will be the first commercial lunar surface lander

    • either way does it really fucking matter?

      honestly is some dork told me, "I have my business card on the moon." I would be ROFL hardcore.

      $2500 to put a piece of paper up there. Hmmm. No thanks. I have no desire to even put myself in space. I have always believed that after the 0-gravity novelty wears off you would be quite bored.

      It's free to send it to a black-hole (shredder) I think that is a lot more novel than having it clutter the god damn moon.

      But this sort of shit just pisses me off. Just ignore what I have to say I guess.
      • I have always believed that after the 0-gravity novelty wears off you would be quite bored.

        Mmmm, check, isn't it more like 0.16666 gravity. In fact, there's enough gravity on the moon that you couldn't jump off of it, or better yet, throw a baseball off of it.

      • Oh come on!

        One of their objectives is to take really-neat never-before-seen photographs:

        "Earthrise 2001TM", the Earth majestically rising over the limb of the moon as the spacecraft swings around from the far side.

        Now who wouldn't really want to seen an updated photo of the earth as seen from the moon! That late '60s photo is just so outdated, surely we need a more current photo to put in our wallets!

      • I have no desire to even put myself in space. I have always believed that after the 0-gravity novelty wears off you would be quite bored.

        That's only if you forgot to bring a friend of the appropriate gender...

    • Just what we need to do... start a lunar landfill with all our junk.

  • In John We Trust (Score:3, Interesting)

    by neolith ( 110650 ) on Monday September 24, 2001 @10:19AM (#2341135) Homepage
    Forget these losers. I think JC will beat slick marketing anytime. If anybody is going into orbit first, my money is on him. Check out Carmack's rocket site:

    http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/

    The project logs are immensely entertaining reading!

    • Forget these losers. I think JC will beat slick marketing anytime. If anybody is going into orbit first, my money is on him. Check out Carmack's rocket site:


      That's nice, but, Transorbital isn't doing the race to orbit - they have thier sights set higher. Instead, they are shooting for the first commercial landing on the moon. I should put the obligatory RTFA comment here, but, instead I'll give ya a quick rundown - instead of trying to put someone in orbit, they are shooting for putting a lander on the moon. Unmanned, and you can do things like get pictures of your business card setting on the moon, plus they are planning on shooting some video, etc. Not what I'd call high-excitement stuff, but, at least someone is doing something with the moon :-)


      So, in this case, Carmack isn't competing with them, unlike the $10 million prize...

      • I did RTFA, and like many others I'm very skeptical that they will make orbit, let alone the moon. I found the site to be really long on promise and short on potential.

        I thought other slashdotter's would like to see the opposite, a site short on promise and long on potential, and heck, even has video of rocket platform crashes and stuff. Content-free Carmack's site is not. I guess my thing is: which advances commercial spacetravel -- which is the real point here -- more; some CGI pictures of an unmanned lunar lander, or real people working on real rocketry that aren't burning money on press-releases and pretty pictures. And the pictures aren't even that pretty.

        So the question becomes: if someone is in the race for the moon, but never even makes it to orbit, is the race really that interesting to follow? I guess we'll see come '4th quarter 2001'...

        • I thought other slashdotter's would like to see the opposite, a site short on promise and long on potential, and heck, even has video of rocket platform crashes and stuff. Content-free Carmack's site is not.

          I'll absolutely agree with you on this point. Carmack's site doesn't have much for fancy graphics, etc - but, then again, Carmack's site doesn't have to deal with something very important to TransOrbital, Inc. Investors, and even more importantly, Customers. JC has quite a bit of money to start with, and they are taking what could be considered a somewhat low-tech approach. (BTW: Thanks to the pointer to Carmack's site - I've never looked at it before. Spent about 10 minutes reading the various reports from the site before I responded to your first post.) Thier group really doesn't HAVE to post what they've been up to online, and do it mainly to tell people what they've been up to, etc. It's not a heavily commercial venture (but, if they start tossing people into orbit, that might change ;-).

          TransOrbital has got to do everything possible to impress investors and potential customers. They litterally have to promise them the moon. Comparing the two is almost, but not quite, comparing apples and oranges.

          I thought other slashdotter's would like to see the opposite, a site short on promise and long on potential, and heck, even has video of rocket platform crashes and stuff. Content-free Carmack's site is not. I guess my thing is: which advances commercial spacetravel -- which is the real point here -- more; some CGI pictures of an unmanned lunar lander, or real people working on real rocketry that aren't burning money on press-releases and pretty pictures. And the pictures aren't even that pretty.

          Much appreciated for the alternate point of view. But your original post come across more as a troll than a serious "Hey guys - take a look at this. These guys are actually getting somewere." Sometimes it's in the presentation :-) (Speaking of presentation - damn you are right about thier CG pictures. Those could use some serious improvement.)

          There's more than one road to the stars right now. All three have players now. There's government - NASA, and agencies in other countries. There's groups like the RocketMan and JC's group. Then there's commercial groups. Each has to conduct themselves according to how thier missions are geared - for instance, JC & Co. don't have to worry about glossy press releases, while TransOrbital has to spend the money on them to sell products and services. Personally, I'm happy to see players in all three fields. It's a good sign that commericalization of space is gonna happen. The interest level is there, and there's now enough people trying different things to actually make shit happen.

          One more thought - ya know, after reading JC's page, I hope some of the TransOrbital people read this thread. I'd like to see pictures, and log entries like JC's group does. I can see where someone might question where constructions of the modules are at when you can't actually SEE any progress.

          So the question becomes: if someone is in the race for the moon, but never even makes it to orbit, is the race really that interesting to follow? I guess we'll see come '4th quarter 2001'...

          They never said THEY were launching it themselves with thier own technology. They just said they were going to be the first to the moon. That changes the race considerably - it's not that hard just to slap that puppy up there with someone else's tech, then depend on your own to get it the rest of the way. :-)

    • Cool, but remember: TransOrbital isn't building a launch vehicle. We could, possibly, use his engines.

  • Where is the Craft? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by reezle ( 239894 ) on Monday September 24, 2001 @10:19AM (#2341137) Homepage
    If they are really trying for a 4th Qtr, 2001 luanch date, seems like the lander would have to be built already. All I see are CGI mockups of it. All of the literature says about the lander is that it 'will be' this, and 'will have' that. Sounds like these folks are perhaps selling pretty pictures already?
    • I believe the TrailBlazer project slated for 4Q 2001 is an orbiter. The lander doesn't have a launch date associated with it in the "mission" literature.
    • From watching the X-Prize contenders, there seems to be a pretty consistent rule:

      If a rocket company wannabe has actually flown hardware, it may be close to actually flying hardware...and beyond that, hardware that can carry things.

      If a rocket company wannabe has not actually flown hardware, any tickets they sell are lotteries or fraud at best, and will not be actually redeemable for many years if ever.

      The vast majority of wannabes are currently the latter. It does them no great service to hype up publicity this far ahead of actually being able to provide what they claim, and significantly harms those who are actually trying to build private launch capability.

    • Re:Where is the Craft? (Score:2, Informative)

      by pblase ( 93639 )
      Currently, the Electra lander has been pushed back till at least 2002. Our initial mission will be the TrailBlazer lunar imaging probe, designed to return HDTV quality video of the trip, the Earth, and the Moon. We were hoping to launch in December of this year, and have signed agreements with the launch company, but the ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) permit - the export license from the State Department, required for taking any spacecraft out of the country - has taken much longer than necessary.

      As for proving that we're actually carrying the biz card, well we'll post pictures of them in the spacecraft prior to launch, and pictures from the spacecraft during the mission. Don't know what more could be done.

      Paul Blase
  • ...transorbital just hired a guy with about a dozen TV movie-of-the-week credits as their marketing director!!! And with the success that those made-for-tv-miniseries-pieces-of-crap generate, is it really any wonder that TransOrbital is selling "product" as well as they are? I mean come on, if the guy can push "Runaway Father" on a generally mindless tv-viewing public, then he can sell ANYTHING!!!

  • Just what we need! (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "Though for just $2500 you can also send your business card to the Moon!"

    Let's get cracking on littering more celestial bodies after we're done with the one we were born on.
  • you can actually send anything inert that won't damage the spacecraft, for a mere $2500 a gram..

    they always said spaceweed was going to be expensive but damn!

    • Business Cards

      Mementos

      Personal Messages

      Hm... I thought there was already an international treaty [greaterearth.org] against putting commercial messages on the Moon.

      "Each standard 8.5 x 11 inch page will be etched onto a metal disk."

      Yeah, and then, because it's copy protected, it'll nuke the first alien computer they try to view it in [slashdot.org]...

      • The Moon Treaty (Score:3, Informative)

        by Salgak1 ( 20136 )
        As I recall, the United States is not signatory to the Moon Treaty, and as such, it has no effect on the US or commercial activities therein. . .

        We are, however, signatory to the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 [asi.org], which does not rule out commercial activity, but doesn't exactly encourage it, either. . .

      • Hm... I thought there was already an international treaty [greaterearth.org] against putting commercial messages on the Moon.

        Can you point out the exact article/paragraph forbidding commercial activity? The closest i can find is Article 7, paragraph 1, which talks about depositing garbage:
        In exploring and using the moon, States Parties shall take measures to prevent the disruption of the existing balance of its environment, whether by introducing adverse changes in that environment, by its harmful contamination through the introduction of extra-environmental matter or otherwise. States Parties shall also take measures to avoid harmfully affecting the environment of the earth through the introduction of extraterrestrial matter or otherwise.

        but whether business cards fall into that category is not clear...
    • I suppose you could grow some plants hydroponically... How many seeds are in a gram? Do they charge you based on weight on takeoff, or weight upon landing? Or is it the average of the two...hmm. The mind boggles.

      On the other hand, what are the chances of your payload actually returning intact? Reminds me of Homer and the floating potato chips. Spacemunchies, anyone?
      • Doesn't matter. If the seeds are actually going to grow into anything, they have to get nutrients from somehwere. The Law of Conservation of Mass rules out that their mass can increase (ie: by growing) without drawing substance from elsewhere and converting it to cellular material.

      • Book recommendation:
        Allen Steele, Orbital Decay. A fine book. I also recommended his other works to anyone reading this article. Its mostly blue-collar in space. Orbital Decay deals mainly with construction workers putting up solar power satellites. And some recreational growing in space. And a communications-snooping spy satellite called Big Ear.


        Orbital Decay [barnesandnoble.com]. Barnes n' Noble link, no referral.

    • If it'll go through customs and won't endanger the craft (e.g. no explosives) we'll carry it.

      Seriously, though, yes - there's a great "gee-whiz" factor here. But then people bought pet rocks and are naming stars (sans approval from international astronomical authorities) and adopting whales. We're not claiming anything other than entertainment value, at this point, and the opportunity to be a part of opening up space to the "little guys."
  • scratch that idea of it seated nicely in a landed capsule, they plan to hit 'paydirt' quite literally.

    goin all nasa style and shit

  • Spacedev (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Spacedev at www.spacedev.com is NOT dead. They too have been chugging along alright. A rough summary of this company is that they are a aerospace startup creating far cheaper satellites then NASA, with the long term goal of mining asteroids. Boeing has looked into having Spacedev as a partner in space development, and in the end Spacedev is outliving so many of the dotcoms which has much larger IPOs, etc. I swear I'd own stock, if I wasn't a poor college student. :(

  • Scientific data (Score:3, Interesting)

    by zardor ( 452852 ) on Monday September 24, 2001 @10:27AM (#2341182)
    It seems that they already have one prospective customer that wants to send more than a postcard. The Foundation for the International Non-government Development of Space (FINDS) [finds-space.org] made an agreement [finds-space.org] with transorbital last year to return scientific data, to test the Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) constellation at lunar distances to learn if it is possible to utilize GPS for navigation during a lunar trajectory or in lunar orbit.
    Now, if there only was a market for earthlings sending postcards *home* from the lunar surface, space exploration would be a much more interesting place.

  • What kind of nutcase think's it's a good idea to pay $2500 to throw litter on the moon?

    Yes, someday the moon-men will know that Bob Jones was the executive vice-president of marketing for razorfish. and they'll care. deeply.

    • What kind of nutcase think's it's a good idea to pay $2500 to throw litter on the moon?

      The US and Russian governments perhaps? Golf balls, a rover, a flag, a plaque, and various spacecrafts/probes amongst other things.

      Moon-men would probably deny humans ever landed on the Moon if we didn't act in character.
  • Is there a single [sic] IdeaLab! company that is worth the paper its stock certificates are written on? Overpriced domain names resold from the Tuvalo Islands (.tv)? Selling tickets to events with a $7 surcharge (TicketMaster.com)? NetZero? Cooking.com? It sounds to me like money send to this company will end up going to the class-action lawyers that bring the shareholder lawsuit when this company goes down in flames.

  • Don't even have the licenses to launch. (Score:4, Informative)

    by A Commentor ( 459578 ) on Monday September 24, 2001 @10:32AM (#2341212) Homepage

    From there May 31, 01 press release [transorbital.net]. There where just getting applications ready to submit inorder to get approval for launch... None of the other press releases state that they have received approval, or that they have even submitted the applications...

    I think they are much further off than 4th Quarter of 2001...

    • They don't need a US launch license, which you get from the space people [faa.gov] at the FAA. They are going to be on a multiple payload [transorbital.net] launch of a Russian Dnepr rocket. This means that if they aren't ready in time, they have to duke it out with the other missions which are going on that rocket.

    • Not because I really know, of course, but because the possibilities of it being anything else are miniscule. The reason these people haven't 'gone under' with the other dot-coms is because they're not a dot-com!

      It's a web-site maintained by a couple of kooks. Kook-maintained web-sites don't require a tone of overhead last I checked.

      • Re:It's A Scam (Score:3, Funny)

        by dstone ( 191334 )
        Kook-maintained web-sites don't require a tone of overhead last I checked

        Actually, I've heard that kook-maintained web-sites generally enjoy a 2600Hz tone overhead. Though rhythmic bass tones can also be nice.

        2600.com [2600.com]
    • The approval has been submitted, but certain aspects of the craft weren't to the regulatory body's liking. In particular, the inflatable sub-satellite was apparently construed as an untethered ICBM decoy.

      Bureacracy is even dumber than you think!

      Vik :v)
  • First off all, I wish them great luck. I've (along with the united geekdom of the world, I presume) been waiting for something like this to happen for most of my life.

    In related news, Rocketguy [rocketguy.com] is still scheduled for take off in May 2002. His project is even more impressive, in my opinion.

    • The rocket will be fueled by 90 percent pure hydrogen peroxide ... This fuel only has about 1/3 the energy of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. That's why it usually isn't used for a rocket. Liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen are also very dangerous to deal with.

      Er, isn't 90% pure hydrogen peroxide also very dangerous to deal with? I think Rocketman is a brave person to strap himself onto a hydrogen peroxide rocket and go straight up. God be with him.

  • I like this part about sending your personal relics to the moon:

    The rate to transport relics to the moon is $2500 per gram. Note: due to the velocity at which the 2001 TrailBlazer spacecraft will impact at the end of the mission, as well as the unknown nature of the lunar surface at the point of impact, no guarantee can be made as to the state of the payload following its arrival on the surface.


    I guess that you can't expect them to promise not to break stuff. Anyone want to pitch in on getting a stuffed penguin in the likeness of Tux sent to the moon? (perhaps make one out of aerogel or something really light.) It'd be great if it was big enough to see from the ground with a good telescope.

    • Tux (Score:1)

      by zardor ( 452852 )
      Hmm, in order to see him from the earth's surface, you would probably need to send a BIG Tux [linuxmall.com]
    • Well, no offense to these folks, but they sound like a company whose only profit will come from "fund raisers..." like sending shit up for us (probably literally).

      To see the penguin, we'll need a REALLY REALLY big one... so we go to the company that makes those big inflatable annoying things (you know, bigger than buildings), and hook up some sort of way to inflate it, and we're set :-P

  • unfueled vs. fueled payload mass (Score:3, Insightful)

    by frknfrk ( 127417 ) on Monday September 24, 2001 @10:36AM (#2341233) Homepage
    from transorbital's web page:

    45 kg (100 lbs) dry mass including payload
    200 kg (440 lbs) fueled.

    over 75% of the launch mass is fuel. why haven't any companies looked to interesting technology such as high-altitude magnetic rail launches, etc, instead of our low altitude (read: heavy atmosphere) extended burn launches?

    -sam
    • Even Mt. Everest is a small fraction of the altitude needed. And more to the point, achieving orbital velocity (Mach mid-20s) accounts for about 5/6 of the fuel needed; altitude only accounts for about 1/6. Rail guns and similar could theoretically impart the necessary velocity, but even extremely long (100s of kilometers) guns would still impart enough Gs to the payload during launch to crush and kill any large living organism (like humans)...and non-living payloads (like satellites) don't pay nearly as much as tourists.
    • why haven't any companies looked to interesting technology such as high-altitude magnetic rail launches, etc, instead of our low altitude (read: heavy atmosphere) extended burn launches?

      When someone asks "why haven't they" the answer usually is ... money. And it sure is in this case.

  • Message to the moon (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Only $50/page -- I really hope someone gets the DeCSS source code engraved on one of those disks!
  • . .. has anyone looked into what The Artemis Project [asi.org] is up to lately ?? THEY were planning a private moonshot years ago. . . .
    • TransOrbital is an ASI affiliate organization. The
      plans for the TO mission mentioned here were developed by ASI originally.... So yes, you are
      correct, ASI did this years ago. And TO is how
      ASI is actually doing it....
    • A few years ago, Artemis [asi.org] started a committee called the Microlander Committee to investigate what the smallest possible lander that could be put on the moon was. I know 'cos I asked the original question.

      After much work, notably by Paul Blase, this committee acquired considerable aerospace know-how and transformed into TransOribtal.

      As an aside, amongst the board members is Dr Richard Van Allen, he who the Van Allen belts are named after and who ran the Pioneer missions for NASA. This ain't no hoax.

      Vik :v)
  • Technically, one could claim that the first commercial or private lunar mission was the Asiasat-3 flyby (although it is pushing it a bit, since there was no science involved)
    The story is that the rocket launching the communication satellite had a problem, and left the payload in a lower, usless orbit. But, by using the satellite's own, limited fuel reserves the ground controllers were able to swing it around the moon and back into a semi-useful orbit.
    Some more details are here [space-frontier.org] and here [spaceviews.com]
  • How much would it be for just a little piece of scrap paper with my URL?

    (humor)
  • The spacecraft will also carry your personal relic, memento, or treasure to the moon. TransOrbital will approve, on a case by case basis, the transportation of ANY INERT OBJECT to the moon.

    Hey, what about sending a Windows XP box up there? The term inert seems like a perfect fit; and it's only $2500 per gram, so if every Slashdot reader donates some bucks ... =)

  • ...The spacecraft will be placed in orbit just inside of the terminator so as to obtain optimal shadow relief of surface features...
    The terminator (imaginary line dividing lighted and shadowed surface) moves as the moon rotates on its axis. Even if they change the orbit once every few days, in the three month of time mission it means A LOT of fuel. Am I missing something here?
    • We're going to orbit TraliBlazer over the poles like Clementine & Prospector did. This doesn't really need any more fuel than an equatorial orbit.

      Vik :v)
    • The spacecraft will be in a polar orbit, starting just inside the terminator. The location of the orbit relative to the terminator changes not as the Moon revolves around the Earth, but as the Moon (and Earth, of course) go around the Sun - basically the spacecraft's orbital plane stays still and the Sun moves through 360 degrees per year. Since the duration of the mission will only be about a month, the terminator will move beneath the spacecraft by 30 degrees over the course of a month.

      The Moon's motion around the Earth, on the other hand, serves to move different areas of the moon underneath the orbit over the course of the month, allowing the spacecraft to view the whole lunar surface, in time.
  • I think TransOrbital is missing the very important point that there is _life_ in the ocean. They say they want to do for the moon what Jacques Coutsteau did for marine exploration, but I really can't see it happening. How many pictures of grey rocks and craters do they expect to sell? How do you do a documentary on grey rocks and craters?

  • return ticket ? (Score:5, Funny)

    by hrstrand ( 127958 ) on Monday September 24, 2001 @11:09AM (#2341395)
    at $2500 pr. gram, It would be something like $350M to send Steve Balmer up there on a one way ticket. Maybe we should all throw in a buck or two ?
    • > at $2500 pr. gram, It would be something like $350M to send Steve Balmer up there on a one way ticket. Maybe we should all throw in a buck or two ?

      Yeah, but having seen that Monkey Dance video, are you sure he wouldn't just jump up and down on the lunar surface until he finally achieved lunar escape velocity?

    • And unleash the first Space Dance Monkey?? Is this some kind of devious plan to conquer other planets by bringing them MS-brand funk?
    • For something like that we could work out a bulk discount.

  • Don't crash that thing on MY land! (Score:3, Informative)

    by MadCow42 ( 243108 ) on Monday September 24, 2001 @11:09AM (#2341396) Homepage
    Hey, I OWN a plot of land on the moon (1774 acres, actually)... don't crash that thing on My property!

    Don't believe me? Go buy your own plot at www.lunarembassy.com [lunarembassy.com] !!

    q:]

    MadCow

    • Uh, yeah, you "own" a piece of the moon. Once a group of people land on the moon and set up house on "your" 1,774 acres they will own it until someone with bigger guns/clubs kicks them off. The law of the jungle works in outer space, too.

      Property and ownership are illusions created by civilization. You only own something so long as you can defend it and hold onto it. In our society, we help each other out and generally agree not to tread on others' property, but by no means is property or ownership a God-given right.

    • By my calculations, before taxes, you paid $28366.26 for your piece of novelty soil.

      Are you fucking crazy?!?

      • It's gotta be the craziest scam I've ever seen. The only thing is that when you're dealing with lawyers, they can often make things that we know are fucking nuts seem quite reasonable. I'd really love to see this thing put to the test in court. Of course, once we have the capability to live relatively comfortably on the moon, we should have plenty of potential sources of real estate. I hear Mars is lovely this time of year.

      • Actually, they're now selling 1-acre plots, but they used to sell 1774 acre plots for the same amount. I only paid for one "plot".

        I'm not THAT crazy, ya know!

        And yes, I do realize that such a landclaim is extremely sketchy, but it's a fun conversation piece (actual "Lunar Deed"), and if you read their history, they have a quasi-legal claim to the moon (although I'm sure it wouldn't stand up).

        MadCow.

  • In further news... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jd ( 1658 ) <imipak AT yahoo DOT com> on Monday September 24, 2001 @11:14AM (#2341413) Homepage Journal
    The EU paid to have the entire of Microsoft HQ transported to the moon, on condition that TransOrbital's lander crashes really hard. TransOrbital could not be reached to confirm that the Blue Screen accessory was a part of the deal.


    Seriously, commercial companies will not reach the moon in 2001. I honestly can't see any commercial prospects even appearing much before 2010. (Sorry, Mr. Clarke, you were just too optimistic.)


    On the other hand, I can very easily see rocket geeks reaching at least orbit in the next year or two, and perhaps the moon in the next four or five. As economic and social pressures build against any kind of shared-resource society, I fully expect actual geek R&D to accelerate.


    Ironically, I can very easily see enthusiasts from a wide-range of technical "hobbies" to achieve what NASA and these vaporware companies only dream of... Because they may have to. As much as I detest comparisons with over-romanticised historical events, I can see rocket enthusiasts reaching for the stars as latter-day Pilgrims, escaping increasing hostility from the established society.


    Unlike Jon Katz, though, I don't see geeks as the victims of a cruel world - we can leave any time we choose to pool the necessary resources together. Every year spent on Earth, subject to the whims of beurocrats, questionable legislation and business practices far more insidious than all the religious peasents in the world could ever be, is a year spent on Earth by choice.


    Current world events may tip the balance. Does anyone seriously believe model rocketry will escape the current crackdowns unscathed? Does anyone seriously believe that, should model rockets be further restricted or banned outright, that enthusiasts won't build them anyway? Just with a lot more incentive to get into orbit & beyond than they've ever had before.


    Something that is poorly understood, but only too true - necessity is the mother of all inventions, with conflict the grandmother. Open Source may soon become illegal, and hobbies of alll kinds are being squelched by absurdities like the DMCA. Rocketry is a very plausable next target. We have the conflict, we are approaching the necessity, the only conclusion I can see is we'll soon have the technology. That's the way things work.

    • Every year spent on Earth, subject to the whims of beurocrats, questionable legislation and business practices far more insidious than all the religious peasents in the world could ever be, is a year spent on Earth by choice.

      And you propose we leave earth how?

      I suppose death works, but that leaves the destination a little uncertain.

      Chemical rockets are not a viable way of migrating from Earth for Joe Geek, as the cost per person will be many, many times even a successful geek's yearly salary.

      Ion and plasma rockets are not a vaible way of migrating from earth, as there is no way in heck you can get them giving 1 G of thrust.

      Magnetic launch or "supergun" style gas-launchers are not a viable way of migrating from earth, unless you don't mind being squashed to jelly. The acceleration path *has* to be at least a thousand kilometres long (about 600 miles) or preferably more, if acceleration is to be something that humans can withstand. That means a self-propelled craft. A thousand-kilometre tube on the ground would send you through far too much atmosphere on the way out. A tube that turns up at the end squashes you to jelly from centripetal acceleration.

      Laser launchers are almost certainly not a viable way of migrating from earth, because your launch path must be steep, and you run out of atmosphere after a few tens of kilometres. Acceleration required is far too great for humans to withstand. And powering the lasers is very expensive (efficiency is horrible).

      Fisson rockets won't work, because they just heat a working fluid to chemical rocket temperatures, which means your mass efficiency is no better than chemical rockets.

      Fusion rockets will most likely have acceleration characteristics comparable to ion and plasma rockets - far too low acceleration to be useful for ground-to-orbit. And fusion has been 20 years off for the past 50 years.

      We're not going to be able to move large numbers of people off-planet for a long time. We'd need free power (for a laser launcher), or much better materials and free construction (for a really huge launch cannon with a muzzle outside the atmosphere), or both (for building a space elevator). Don't hold your breath.
      • Oh yes - there's also the little problem of bringing our troubles with us. The ills of society are a direct result of human nature. Geeks are human. Their kids will be human. Thus, any utopia you establish away from normal society will soon be fraught with all of the troubles it tried to escape. Examples of this on small scales and large are all around us.

        But the technical argument was more fun than just pointing this out.
      • Fission rockets worked, all the way back in the 1960's, and they produce a "specific impulse" (the amount of thrust per unit time per pound of propellant) about three times the best chemical rockets. Of course, it's doubtful that you'd ever get approval to run one in Earth's atmosphere again.

        More directly to the question, rockets waste a lot of energy carrying oxygen, when they spend much of their trip into orbit flying through an atmosphere carrying quite adequate amounts of the stuff. If research into scramjets succeeds, the propellant requirement for launching rockets decreases radically.

        Additionally, many of the costs of running space launches are because we do so few of them. If we were doing twenty a day, we'd be able to set up much more efficient production lines for the job. The propellant cost of a space shuttle launch is a tiny fraction of the mission cost.

        • More directly to the question, rockets waste a lot of energy carrying oxygen, when they spend much of their trip into orbit flying through an atmosphere carrying quite adequate amounts of the stuff. If research into scramjets succeeds, the propellant requirement for launching rockets decreases radically.

          I'm doubtful of this, for a couple of reasons.

          Firstly, the proposed space-plane designs I've heard talked about still only used the scramjet for intermediate speeds (above Mach 5 but still well below orbital velocity). Building a scramjet that can work at 8 km/sec is going to be *really* *really* hard. If you're using rockets for the last stage of the trip, you're still saddled with most of the resulting efficiency problem (though it might be a bit easier to pull off a single-stage-to-orbit vehicle under these conditions).

          Secondly, a scramjet still only works in the atmosphere. If you're travelling at orbital velocity in the atmosphere, you're dumping a *lot* of energy into your shockwave, and have a *lot* of air friction heating you up. You'll be burning a lot of fuel just to maintain velocity (not accelerate), and you'll need the heat shielding of the Gods. This means you're probably forced to use the scramjets for only a short time and intermediate velocity range, which means you're stuck with rockets for the last part of the trip.

          In summary, while I agree that scramjets will make it easier to build ground-to-orbit craft, I don't think they'll improve the cost by orders of magnitude.

          Additionally, many of the costs of running space launches are because we do so few of them. If we were doing twenty a day, we'd be able to set up much more efficient production lines for the job. The propellant cost of a space shuttle launch is a tiny fraction of the mission cost.

          The propellant cost will probably remain a small part of the mission cost even with mass production, at least for chemical rockets. The fuel:cargo mass ratio forced by the Isp of chemical rockets requires a big, complex rocket for relatively small amounts of cargo. Big, complex devices are expensive to build and to maintain.

          Now, the shuttle is still many times more expensive than it needs to be, because 1) it's an experimental craft pushed into routine service, and 2) NASA has to bend over backwards to make sure there are *no* failures, which pretty much means dismantling and rebuilding the whole shuttle between flights to maintain it. A more reasonable benchmark would be one of the commercial satellite launch groups. They can afford the occasional launch failure, so they don't have to spend a truly insane amount of money on maintenance. These are the closest thing we have to mass-produced rockets. Costs are still very high, though.
  • I like how they are capitalizing on polluting the moon.
  • ...and exchange them for some that work properly.

    At only $2500 per gram, it's a steal.

  • As if there isn't enough crap poetry on the net (Score:3, Insightful)

    by datatrash ( 522537 ) on Monday September 24, 2001 @11:39AM (#2341560)
    Just what the poor, poor martians need, a whole high tech garbage bag full of poems that read like bad Robert Smith songs and buisness cards for sales reps in case the martians ever reveal themselves and need to market themselves in the global, uh, intergalactic economy.

    What I don't understand is that a business card is $2,500, but 8.5 x 11 inch pages are "expected to be under $50 per page?" I don't have a business card, so I have't been paying attention to their evolution, but I hadn't realized that they had evolved to chest size placards. A much better waste of money would be on the equally idiotic residensea [residensea.com].
  • If you look at the 'last update' date (view page info) you'll see that most of the pages haven't been updated in quite a while.

    These guys are dreamers, I'd be surprised if they even have a mock-up. I was a member of ASI (the 'parent' organization from which TransOrbital was spun off), and they were an all-volunteer organization of dreamers who were big on talk and small on action.
  • Commercialization of the moon won't work for the simple reason that it was recorded during the first landing that the surface of the moon continued to vibrate for 56 minutes after touchdown. If the moon is *that* unstable, I don't see how it could possibly support the construction and structures necessary to anchor and maintain commerce.
    • "Vibrate" on a MICROSCOPIC scale. The moon isn't made of jello. As a parallel, the Earth's crust continuously reverberates with tiny slips of the continental plates, volcanic erruptions, and the tug of tidal forces. Structures and people aren't collapsing.

  • While the idea is great, don't expect a launch anytime soon. They don't have the money yet to buy a launch and the spacecraft isn't even built. Good hype for them though having it posted here.
  • It would be neat to have a commercial craft on the moon, but let's keep things in perspective.

    Why does one want to go to the moon?

    Why aren't we there today?

    The primary reason why the Apollo missions failed to spawn a continuous succession of future missions was the complete lack of infrastructure left behind for future scientific projects (including unprecedented experiments due to low lunar seismic noise, critical for gravity wave detection; and optical and radio astronomy), which is why we should be there in the first place.

    Repeat this mantra : "It's the science, stupid." We're not going to the moon to put business cards on it.

    The cost of any lunar mission is extraordinary, and moreover, the cost of providing good infrastructure for important missions is even larger. Ultimately, and certainly until we have some sort of permanent base there, I think there is no good business plan which can justify that infrastructre. Even the relatively few space applications which one can possible imagine (semiconductors, pharmaceuticals) could be achieved in Earth orbit for much, much less money.
    The revenues gained by any lunar project simply pale in comparison to what is needed to achieve the important goals discussed above.

    So what are these folks doing? Little more than medieval item worship. Putting messages, items, and business cards on the moon? Sure, it's a start, but a LONG, LONG ways from achieving the goal of why we should be there.

    And I, for one, question whether any short-term business strategy can supply the needed infrastructure to provide those goals. It will ultimately require at least partial government support.

    Bob

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