Posted on 09/03/2002 9:34:31 AM PDT by RightWhale
Landmark Decision Clears Way For First Commercial Lunar Flight
San Diego - Sept 2, 2002
TransOrbital, Inc. has become the first private company in the history of space flight to win approval from the U.S. government to explore, photograph, and land on the moon. The company expects to launch its Trailblazer Mission from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan within the next 9-12 months.
The approvals and licensing by U.S. State Department and The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) position TransOrbital as only company presently authorized by the U.S. Government to return to the moon.
Once launched, the Trailblazer will provide stunning, high-definition (HDTV) video and maps of the lunar surface (at 1 meter resolution), as well as new images of earth-rises over lunar craters.
The mission will culminate with the delivery of a time capsule containing personal cargo from Earth (such as messages and photographs), and a final "barnstorming" video as the probe impacts the lunar service. Additionally, the Trailblazer mission should provide the opportunity to view the equipment left behind from past Apollo and Russian landings.
The media collected during the mission will provide TransOrbital with an array of content vital to future scientific and exploratory endeavors, as well as educational and entertainment uses.
"We're not returning to the moon simply to explore ... we're returning because there are true opportunities there -- true revenue streams," said Dennis Laurie, TransOrbital CEO.
The regulatory approval is a significant hurdle for commercial space enterprises, as they must satisfy a number of design requirements and directives. For TransOrbital, the process took two years to complete.
"TransOrbital has the technology, the desire -- and now we have the licensing," said Laurie. "It's a significant moment for our company, and a significant development for all of aerospace.
People soon get to experience the moon in ways they never imagined."
Serious question: did the Russkies ever land on the Moon?
or did they give up after we beat them there?
It's probably that their plant, or part of it, is inside the US.
I thought it was agreed, Internationally, that the Moon belongs to no one nation, but the world as a whole.
I also thought this was a free country.
Since when does the U.S. Government have the right to regulate American travel into space?
Especially when this American company isn't even launching from the U.S., but Russia?
This is idiocy.
They do, and it is not just one agency. If they were launching from American soil, there would be a lot more hoops to jump through, some on fire.
The Russians made a series of unmanned landings on the Moon but never put a man on the Moon. They gave up after explosions destroyed two N-1 boosters (a Saturn V equivalent) in January and July of 1969. They did manage to pull off a soil-sample return mission in the early 1970s. More information can be found at:
http://www.astronautix.com/articles/sovstory.htm
Yes, but that's all. They won't be able to extract lunar resources according to the UN Treaty on Outer Space.
Agreed. Full scale exploitation of space will only happen when private enterprise figures out a way to make money there.
Plenty of time to renunciate the treaty after something worth extracting is found.
IF something worth extracting is found.
Right now, nothing's up there but a bunch of sterile rocks.
No harm with having them go take another looksee, though.
If they actually find anything worthwhile, the UN will fade into history so fast it'll make your head spin.
Maybe so, I don't know.
However, extracting resources would require licensing, and there are no countries who signed the UN Treaty who are empowered to grant resource extraction licenses.
About DAMN time! We should be on mars now exploring and conquering space like we did the american west!
The only reason we haven't is those in gov't are afraid that after we get out there they will loose power over us.
A country can license natural resource extraction only if it asserts some kind of ownership over the resource. The UN Outer Space Treaty allows no national ownership of natural resources of celestial bodies.
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