Free Republic

A private space exploration company's plans to build a novel moonship to return human explorers to the lunar surface has moved one step closer to reality. Aerospace giant Northrop Grumman has completed a lunar lander feasiblity study for the Golden Spike Company, which aims to begin ferrying paying customers to the moon and back by 2020. Click to enlarge:

Golden Spike has detailed plans for a lunar return using existing assets. The recent successful Spacex flights are improving the viability of Golden Spike and its plans to return to the moon before 2020. Golden Spike estimates that they could repeat Apollo 11 for about $6.4 billion and make repeated manned trips to the moon for about $1.5 billion for each trip. Here are the budgets of different space agencies.

A couple of fairly unlikely developments are pointing to a scenario that could result in an unexpected return to the moon mission involving two unlikely partners if a number of parties are willing to think and work outside the box. That return to the moon could be a joint Israeli/Saudi Arabian project, fostered by an American commercial company.