“We already have much of the technology. We know how to get into Earth orbit, how to land on the moon, and how to return to Earth. There are only a few key problems to solve,” he says.
According to Jain, NASA is collaborating with Moon Express on a lunar lander that is being tested at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California. The lander is intended to hop and hover, which Jain says is the best way to move long distances around the lunar surface. (To understand why, consider NASA’s rover Spirit, whose wheels got stuck in the Martian soil in 2009 and never got out.) Jain is hoping to send the vehicle to the moon on a rocket built by SpaceX, another private foray into the space business, in late 2013 or early 2014.
Moon Express or any other group faces several challenges if it’s to establish a long-term robotic mining operation on the moon. (Few in the industry are talking about founding a human colony anytime soon, Gingrich’s ideas notwithstanding.)
First, there has to be a way to power the operation.
That’s where the water comes in. Lunar water could be split into hydrogen and oxygen for fuel cells, similar to the hydrogen fuel cells that car manufacturers are trying to develop. “The moon could represent a gas station in the sky,” Zarnecki says. That gas could fuel other space missions in addition to lunar mining.
Another major problem is economics. Jain thinks he can land his hovering rover on the moon for less than $100 million. Part of that is coming from private investors and part from a contract with NASA. But he also has some ideas about how to earn some money before the mining operation is up and running.
“Once you’re on the moon, all sorts of opportunities arise,” he says.
“What if you could pay $30 or $40 to drive a remote-controlled lunar rover around for a few minutes using a Web-based platform? What if I could write messages — like a wedding proposal — onto the lunar surface and send you a digital picture for $50? These things add up quickly. Mining isn’t the only potential revenue source on the moon.”
Another challenge is the legality. No country, corporation or individual owns the moon. That hasn’t been an issue, because only a minimal amount of material has ever been removed from it. But that’s going to change when the mining starts. Jain draws an analogy to the sea.
“No one owns international waters, but those who invest their money and effort to find fish are entitled to profit,” he says. It’s an intriguing analogy but untested in any court.
The lawyers better start working on their arguments: Jain says he plans to start mining in earnest by 2016, although that timelime is incredibly ambitious, to say the least. And China has announced plans to bring back small amounts of lunar rock by 2020 in advance of a manned mission and lunar mining several years later.
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