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A Florida-based company has won U.S. government permission to send a robotic lander to the moon next year. The move is the first time the United States has cleared a private space mission to fly beyond Earth's orbit.

The Federal Aviation Administration's unprecedented go-ahead for the Moon Express mission also sets a legal and regulatory framework for a host of other commercial expeditions to the moon, asteroids and Mars.

As approved by the FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation, the privately held Moon Express, headquartered in Cape Canaveral, plans to fly a suitcase-sized lander to the moon for a two-week mission in 2017, said the company founder and chief executive Bob Richards.

The spacecraft will carry a number of science experiments and some commercial cargo on its one-way trip to the lunar surface, including cremated human remains, and will beam back pictures and video to Earth, the company said.

Before now, no government agency was recognized as having authority to oversee private missions beyond Earth's orbit, though a 1967 international treaty holds the United States responsible for any flights into space by its non-government entities.

So far, only government agencies have flown spacecrafts beyond the orbit of the Earth.

Source: TechPowerUp Forums

Geez for I minute there thought the US was going to send people back to the moon.

whm1974 wrote:

Geez for I minute there thought the US was going to send people back to the moon.

I thought the same and was wondering why the timeframe was so short.

1966 called, it says it's been there, done that, got the tee-shirt.

Holy clickbait headline Batman!

So how come no one has setup a mining colony on the Moon yet? I've read stuff from the 60's and 70's before that claims we would be mining the Moon by now.

I watched Neil live as he bunny-hopped down that ladder on 20 July 1969 and am 100% pissed that we haven't put people there since December 1972 and Apollo 17.

Oh, and the private space companies need to listen to their inner Delos D. Harriman (I urge the Gen X/Millennial crowd to look it up and start reading the underlying author).

whm1974 wrote:

So how come no one has setup a mining colony on the Moon yet? I've read stuff from the 60's and 70's before that claims we would be mining the Moon by now.

Richard M. Nixon and his gutting of Apollo just after the success of Apollo 11 (it was JFK's deal, the goal had been met, Nixon hated JFK, lather/rinse/repeat). Manny, Mike, Adam Selene, and Professor Bernardo de la Paz await us still.

whm1974 wrote:

So how come no one has setup a mining colony on the Moon yet? I've read stuff from the 60's and 70's before that claims we would be mining the Moon by now.

Given that you would have spend many billions building a mining complex on the moon, and more to get every kg of ore back, what exactly do you think is on the moon that would be worth it? Everything you can find on the moon's surface, or under it, can be found on Earth much cheaper. Like, a few orders of magnitude cheaper. Some of that 60's and 70's stuff assumed we would be running out of resources on Earth in just a few decades, driving prices up to (literally) astronomical levels thus making the ROI on lunar mining reasonable; others assumed it would "just happen" by extrapolating from the history of colonization and exploitation of the western hemisphere by Europe, which is a false analogy (and overlooks how long even that took). And all of them underestimated the cost and complexity of actually stepping up from a handful of Apollo landings done to win the space race to a full industrialization of the lunar surface with the transportation infrastructure to support it.

The only good reason to mine the moon is to build other things in space: it's much cheaper to lift resources out of the lunar gravity well than out of Earth's, and there's no atmosphere to contend with (not to mention pesky people-filled cities or environmental considerations) so you could just build a solar- or nuclear-powered linear accelerator a few miles long with just enough upward slope to clear the horizon when you fire buckets of smelted moon rocks through it at escape velocity. Those smelted moon rocks will still cost many times more than the same ores on Earth, but much less than the cost of lifting those ores off the Earth. Once somebody is building something really big in space, the moon starts to look like a desirable source of materials. As long as we're sitting here doing things on Earth, it doesn't.

We could have started small scale projects to develop the the tech and then slowly build stuff in space. And there are some Rare Earth Metals in Near Earth Objects that are worth enough money to mine and send back to Earth.

Captain Ned wrote:

I watched Neil live as he bunny-hopped down that ladder on 20 July 1969 and am 100% pissed that we haven't put people there since December 1972 and Apollo 17.

Oh, and the private space companies need to listen to their inner Delos D. Harriman (I urge the Gen X/Millennial crowd to look it up and start reading the underlying author).

What we need is a tunnel in the sky. But all we got are orphans on an Earth going nowhere.

Richard M. Nixon and his gutting of Apollo just after the success of Apollo 11 (it was JFK's deal, the goal had been met, Nixon hated JFK, lather/rinse/repeat). Manny, Mike, Adam Selene, and Professor Bernardo de la Paz await us still.

And fair dinkum Chinese, who'll likely get there next.

whm1974 wrote:

So how come no one has setup a mining colony on the Moon yet? I've read stuff from the 60's and 70's before that claims we would be mining the Moon by now.

Yeah well, I want my flying car, and I want it to be powered by both cold fusion and perpetual motion.

Captain Ned wrote:

I watched Neil live as he bunny-hopped down that ladder on 20 July 1969 and am 100% pissed that we haven't put people there since December 1972 and Apollo 17.

Oh, and the private space companies need to listen to their inner Delos D. Harriman (I urge the Gen X/Millennial crowd to look it up and start reading the underlying author).

whm1974 wrote:

So how come no one has setup a mining colony on the Moon yet? I've read stuff from the 60's and 70's before that claims we would be mining the Moon by now.

Richard M. Nixon and his gutting of Apollo just after the success of Apollo 11 (it was JFK's deal, the goal had been met, Nixon hated JFK, lather/rinse/repeat). Manny, Mike, Adam Selene, and Professor Bernardo de la Paz await us still.

Until we can make it significantly cheaper to launch material beyond LEO and make a massive breakthrough in space propulsion tech. Manned space exploration is just a fool's errand.

Physics is a bitch and humans are just too damn squashy when they are outside of their element a.k.a surface of the Earth.

The 1960s Space Race in retrospect was little more than a more PR friendly guise of aerospace competition between the USSR and USA.

trackerben wrote:

And fair dinkum Chinese, who'll likely get there next.

Speaking of China, their Jade Rabbit lunar rover has been pronounced dead after 31 months on the moon. The lunar rover was originally only designed for a lifespan of three months, and the rover was part of the Chang'e-3 lunar mission. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_L ... on_Program

By 2018 the country aims to land its Chang'e-4 probe - named for the moon goddess in Chinese mythology - on the dark side of the moon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chang'e_4

whm1974 wrote:

We could have started small scale projects to develop the the tech and then slowly build stuff in space.

Problem is, until you've got all the mining, refining, and manufacturing infrastructure up there, you can't do even small-scale projects without shipping stuff back and forth between Earth's surface. This drives costs sky-high (heh). Huge chicken-and-egg issue.

whm1974 wrote:

And there are some Rare Earth Metals in Near Earth Objects that are worth enough money to mine and send back to Earth.

...and you base this claim on what evidence?

just brew it! wrote:

whm1974 wrote:

We could have started small scale projects to develop the the tech and then slowly build stuff in space.

Problem is, until you've got all the mining, refining, and manufacturing infrastructure up there, you can't do even small-scale projects without shipping stuff back and forth between Earth's surface. This drives costs sky-high (heh). Huge chicken-and-egg issue.

Basically that in a nutshell. There are WSJ articles and others to the effect that it's far more economical to keep most mined resources up in space for use in space, because all the ingredients to live in space are already up there. We already have the ability to adjust orbits of asteroids to park one in lunar orbit if we really wanted to. The only problem is as you said it requires launching all the mining, refining, and manufacturing gear into space to get the process jump-started... and even if they did the foreseeable demand isn't high enough to make up for the upfront costs within the investor's lifetimes.

I only see it happening if another Elon Musk comes along that throws money at it while at the same time figures out a method for finding a super-valuable chunk of rock with enough expensive metals worth shipping back to earth to partially offset some of the initial costs. But even that seems like a stretch right now. Or maybe in a few centuries when the overpopulation of the earth leads to a scarcity of certain resources so the cost of those resources eventually makes it financially viable, which isn't exactly a pretty picture.

Kougar wrote:

just brew it! wrote:

Problem is, until you've got all the mining, refining, and manufacturing infrastructure up there, you can't do even small-scale projects without shipping stuff back and forth between Earth's surface. This drives costs sky-high (heh). Huge chicken-and-egg issue.

Basically that in a nutshell. There are WSJ articles and others to the effect that it's far more economical to keep most mined resources up in space for use in space, because all the ingredients to live in space are already up there. We already have the ability to adjust orbits of asteroids to park one in lunar orbit if we really wanted to. The only problem is as you said it requires launching all the mining, refining, and manufacturing gear into space to get the process jump-started... and even if they did the foreseeable demand isn't high enough to make up for the upfront costs within the investor's lifetimes...

SBSP is one project type that would be worth a $Trillion jump start cost. Solar-power satellites can literally beam power for re-conversion through terrestrial grids. It's a Reagan-era proposal for unlimited 24x7x365 clean energy via orbiting transmission nodes fed by huge collection arrays. Maintenance issues and costs will be extremely high. Militarized beam sats *might* be useful in rasterizing ground zones and aerospace tracks with energetic microwaves, so the Army could conceivably help with budgetary allotments.

Having an unlimited power source that can transfer RF energies at light speed to any point within clear line of sight will do wonders for jump starting lots of other projects. Missions equipped with light sails to harness both power and push (for initial propulsion) from a paired laser-type beam sat will especially benefit.

But as others said, manned missions other than military/geophysics observation and development of economic space lift is a mostly foolish use of resources given current technologies. Human bodies degrade in zero-gravity conditions, thus larger teams up there means increased costs from the constant shifting of crews. The exception would be if the current ventures can operationally fix and snag rich asteroids, nudge these closer to orbital factories, then exploit profitably at scale. Teleoperations and maintenance will remain very hard, though.

And there's a further risk to this. The methods of moving these bodies deeper into cislunar space also lend to these or their resource shipments being turned into bolidic weapons. So in this industrial scenario, there's a risk of eventually militarizing the inner planetary shells unless such ventures are joined with Chinese and Russian interests.

I'm not convinced that SBSP makes economic sense either.

A third of the Earth's land area is desert; put solar generation facilities out in the desert and run HVDC transmission lines to connect them to an upgraded grid. Yes, this is a massive undertaking; but still far less massive than switching to SBSP.

Or if you want to do solar on a large scale without the investment in upgrades to the transmission grid, park generation facilities on autonomous high-altitude aircraft and beam the power down using the same wireless transmission tech you would've used for SBSP. This approach would have most of the advantages of SBSP at a cost that would be orders of magnitude lower.

"including cremated human remains"

Not too sure I agree with that..............

anotherengineer wrote:

"including cremated human remains"

Not too sure I agree with that..............

Intellectually, I definitely *disagree* with it. It's irrational, sentimental, and wasteful of resources. Emotionally, I can see the attraction. Humans are basically irrational and sentimental when it comes to our loved ones.

just brew it! wrote:

I'm not convinced that SBSP makes economic sense either.

A third of the Earth's land area is desert; put solar generation facilities out in the desert and run HVDC transmission lines to connect them to an upgraded grid. Yes, this is a massive undertaking; but still far less massive than switching to SBSP.

Or if you want to do solar on a large scale without the investment in upgrades to the transmission grid, park generation facilities on autonomous high-altitude aircraft and beam the power down using the same wireless transmission tech you would've used for SBSP. This approach would have most of the advantages of SBSP at a cost that would be orders of magnitude lower.

Wouldn't be easier still to simply put solar panels on buildings?

whm1974 wrote:

Wouldn't be easier still to simply put solar panels on buildings?

We should probably do that too, where practical. But it isn't going to be enough by itself. And what about cities located in areas with a significant percentage of overcast days? Solar is less practical/efficient in, say, the coastal Pacific Northwest.

just brew it! wrote:

whm1974 wrote:

Wouldn't be easier still to simply put solar panels on buildings?

We should probably do that too, where practical. But it isn't going to be enough by itself. And what about cities located in areas with a significant percentage of overcast days? Solar is less practical/efficient in, say, the coastal Pacific Northwest.

Personally I highly doubt that we should allow ourselves to become dependent on only one power source.

whm1974 wrote:

So how come no one has setup a mining colony on the Moon yet? I've read stuff from the 60's and 70's before that claims we would be mining the Moon by now.

There were also claims that we'd have efficient nuclear fusion reactors by now too though, and that was sort of the main reason we'd mine the moon AFAIK (helium-3)

whm1974 wrote:

Personally I highly doubt that we should allow ourselves to become dependent on only one power source.

If the sun goes out we're kinda screwed regardless.

just brew it! wrote:

whm1974 wrote:

Personally I highly doubt that we should allow ourselves to become dependent on only one power source.

If the sun goes out we're kinda screwed regardless.

Well, if the stellar physicists are within shouting distance of correct, we've got some time on that one. If humanity (in Bob knows what form) still exists then and is still confined to this rock, that's an evolutionary fail.

just brew it! wrote:

whm1974 wrote:

Personally I highly doubt that we should allow ourselves to become dependent on only one power source.

If the sun goes out we're kinda screwed regardless.

Yeah we are completely dependent on the Sun.

Captain Ned wrote:

Well, if the stellar physicists are within shouting distance of correct, we've got some time on that one. If humanity (in Bob knows what form) still exists then and is still confined to this rock, that's an evolutionary fail.

Roughly a billion years before the sun gets hot enough to turn the planet into the next Venus. Of course we might end up looking like Venus before that point due to reasons.

Odds are we'll have moved on and technically there are solutions that could give the Earth a little more time to live. Some of the proposed solutions for terraforming Venus could help Earth. They would be by todays standards immense feats of engineering.

Even if we haven't mastered interstellar travel by then, I would hope we'd at least have progressed to the point where we have the ability to relocate ourselves further out in the solar system. This is, of course, assuming we're still around, and haven't bombed ourselves back to the Stone Age; as the Cap'n notes, "evolutionary fail" is a possibility.

just brew it! wrote:

I'm not convinced that SBSP makes economic sense either.

A third of the Earth's land area is desert; put solar generation facilities out in the desert and run HVDC transmission lines to connect them to an upgraded grid. Yes, this is a massive undertaking; but still far less massive than switching to SBSP...

SBSP setup is technically ultra hard and risky when compared to ground-based, but the advantage is that the light collectors don't have to be shadowed and won't be subject to atmospheric aerosol effects. They can continually generate with the highest availability that's possible on or off-planet, and the transmitters can get production to any point they can cleanly aim. Most of the generation infrastructure will be far away from civilization, there will be much fewer environmental and third-party liability issues once most of the supporting industry is in orbit.

...Or if you want to do solar on a large scale without the investment in upgrades to the transmission grid, park generation facilities on autonomous high-altitude aircraft and beam the power down using the same wireless transmission tech you would've used for SBSP. This approach would have most of the advantages of SBSP at a cost that would be orders of magnitude lower.

The limitations still cap economic margins though, for collection will still be attenuated and shadowed. The need to maintain flying infrastructure against attack and catastrophic incident under gravity and atmospheric conditions will drive up costs. On the plus side, this should be far less risky to finance and manage and should be more robust against single-point failures developing later on.

whm1974 wrote:

Wouldn't be easier still to simply put solar panels on buildings?

Easier, yes. Efficient, no. Rooftop solar relies on small inverters feeding back into local distribution and are highly dependent on the distribution system having a strong source, otherwise you can risk nuisance flicker and general instabilities. This limits residential rooftop to a few hundred kW at most and maybe several hundred kW to a MW for commercial rooftop installations. The economics are sufficient to make it work in many cases (well, so long as China continues to dump cheap panels into the US market and eat the environmental cost) but for true economies of scale you need desert-installed, multi-MW-to-GW scale installations with their own collector substations, feeding directly into transmission.