Pie in the sky

These days, everybody wants a piece of Luna

By Jess Kilby

As many major newspapers reported early last month, we’re going back to the moon.

Actually, there’s no “we” involved: The TrailBlazer mission, as it’s been christened, will be unmanned. But more significantly, there’s no “we” sending this mission into orbit — TrailBlazer will hurtle into space without the Stars and Stripes, or any other team colors, splashed across its side. (Although, the rocket is a retrofitted Soviet warhead, so the Russians may be getting some free advertising out of the deal.)

Yes, folks, the first commercial mission to the moon has been authorized, and is set to launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan during the early summer of 2003.

This unprecedented event has brought to light some interesting facts about the way we regulate space. (Did you know, for example, that American companies must get a “remote sensing permit” from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration in order to take pictures of Earth from space?) It has also spawned a new twist in the age-old debate between capitalism and environmentalism, given that the TrailBlazer mission has implications — both overt and implied — for the future exploration and exploitation of space.

TransOrbital, the San Diego company that spent two years gathering permits from NOAA and the US State Department for its TrailBlazer launch, makes no secret of its long-term goals for the moon. The company plans to finance its maiden voyage into space by hawking high-res footage of the Earth and moon taken during the four-day journey to, and 60- to 90-day orbit of, the moon — footage TransOrbital intends to sell for educational and entertainment purposes alike. (If their price is right, they’ll likely have takers: during the first day of orbit, TrailBlazer will document our blue planet cresting over the moon’s horizon, in a spectacular-sounding “earthrise”; the remainder of the orbit will be dedicated to mapping the lunar landscape at unprecedented one-meter resolution.)

TransOrbital is also selling space in a specially-designed time capsule, for those who would like to send a little something to the moon, because — and this opens the door to the environmental debate — TrailBlazer is not coming back. The whole shebang will crash down on the moon when it runs out of fuel, taking care to avoid natural landmarks and previous landing sites. (Which brings up another interesting point, being that, if TransOrbital is able to capture any images of the Apollo lander, Buzz Aldrin can stop punching people in the face to prove his point.)

At the hefty price of $2500 per gram, it’s unlikely that TrailBlazer will be carrying too much frivolous crap to the moon. (Though TransOrbital president Dennis Laurie says they’ve already received orders for “business cards, artwork, jewelry, ashes, computer disks, and other miscellaneous items.”) But this trip is just the beginning; TransOrbital already has two more missions planned — Electra and Electra II — which will land on the moon in 2004 and 2005. And, as Laurie has noted in an interview with astronomy.com, “We’re not returning to the moon simply to explore. We’re returning because there are true opportunities there — true revenue streams.”

So far, TransOrbital has publicly ruminated the possibility of developing communications and navigation systems for moon exploration and tourism, including a network of navigational beacons. Ultra-secure data storage facilities have also been mentioned. And TransOrbital isn’t the only company eyeing the moon: The Virginia-based LunaCorp (a name straight out of sci-fi if there ever was one) hopes to send a high-bandwidth, live-video satellite called SuperSat into lunar orbit in 2003, as well as deploy a rover called IceBreaker to explore for lunar ice in craters at the poles. Additionally, Europe and Japan are already rolling out state-sponsored programs to explore the moon with an eye toward both mining and colonization.

Back here in the States, uber-radicals from democracy.com (not affiliated with the political party) are shrieking that the Bush administration has violated international law by turning the moon over to a private, for-profit corporation that has a “far-reaching, frightening agenda for the corporate domination of space.”

While this is technically not true — as per the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 (didn’t know that existed, did you?), TransOrbital had to prove to NOAA that it wouldn’t be making strategic use of flags (i.e., land grabs) on its mission — it does get at a larger issue. Are we ready to start cruising around the moon, stripping it of any natural resource we deem valuable? Do we know enough about the impact such strip-mining could have on the moon, our own planet, or the rest of the solar system?

The speculation that further exploration of the moon could lead to significant exploitation of its resources is not idle, either: scientists say the one million tons of helium 3 that exists there (and is in scant supply here on Earth) could be our next energy source.

“Helium 3 could be the cash crop for the moon,” says Gerald Kulcinski, Director of the Fusion Technology Institute at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, in a recent interview with space.com. Kulcinski estimates that the moon’s current supply of helium 3 would have a cash value of $4 billion a ton, based on its energy equivalent in oil.

Littering the moon with a modicum of trash and trinkets is one thing, and it’s hard to deny the value — both aesthetically and educationally — of the images TrailBlazer will likely produce. But maybe now is the time for us to revisit that whole “one planet” approach to environmental stewardship and resource management, before we find ourselves fighting yet another war over oil.

Jess Kilby can be reached at jkilby@phx.com. “Technophilia” highlights the latest and greatest of the tech world and runs once a month.