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Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX.Mike Blake / Reuters
- Politico announced Monday that former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, had developed a plan to offer $ 2 billion to private companies for being the first to establish a lunar base..
- Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, praised the plan on Twitter, calling it a "good idea."
- President Trump has questioned NASA's ability to return astronauts to the moon by 2024.
- Visit the Business Insider home page for more stories.
On Monday night, Elon Musk tweeted his approval for a plan led by Newt Gingrich to offer a $ 2 billion reward to the first private company to land and settle on the moon.
Gingrich's proposal, which was first reported by Politico on Monday, was crafted by the Republican and a host of different characters, ranging from NASA advisers to a former publicist of Michael Jackson and Prince. The idea is to reduce public spending on space exploration by encouraging private companies to get the price in cash.
"In the past, building permanent housing on the moon would cost between $ 50 billion and $ 500 billion, but several private companies have developed lunar programs," the plan says, Politico said. "So we are now able to buy transportation and housing from private US companies with unbelievable lower costs."
Read more: Here are some of the gaping holes in the plans of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos to conquer the space
The prize pool would be divided into $ 1 billion for the first company to establish a "spacious and comfortable human base" on the moon, and $ 1 billion to the company that could create and manage the base successfully – although the company is not the only one in the world. One of the architects of the plan explained Ars Technica estimates that the pot could be raised to $ 5 billion.
"It's a good idea," Musk tweeted in response to Ars Technica 's report on the idea. Gingrich's plan specifically mentioned SpaceX company Elon Musk, Blue Origin by Jeff Bezos, Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
According to Politico, President Trump has not yet given his opinion, although he has expressed his frustration with NASA, whose goal is to bring astronauts back to the moon. here 2024. The NASA administrator, Jim Bridenstine, said in June that the project, dubbed Artemis, would cost something between 20 and 30 billion dollars.
Trump questioned NASA's ability to meet this deadline, and in June tweeted that NASA should not target the moon, but rather Mars (that said, Trump has confusingly described the Moon as a part of Mars).
Trump granted NASA an additional $ 21.5 billion in 2019 (up $ 800 million from 2018) and asked Congress for an additional $ 1.6 billion in 2020.
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