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The moon is a rather sterile place. Of course, there are some buggies, golf balls, a flag, urine bags, a family photo. But it's mostly empty. If a society called ispace has its place, the next closest neighbor to Earth will soon be the site of a bustling industrial city filled with workers and tourists. Moon Valley, dreamers call it. Yesterday, these dreamers announced the first small step in this trip, stating that the SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets would take a space orbiter-lander and its rovers to the moon in 2020 and 2021.
After that, according to the plan, frequent missions will begin to focus on future infrastructure – for example, to flush out water that could be used as fuel. Industrialization will begin, building a "platform for stable lunar development," according to the company's website. Ispace has 66 employees and head offices in three countries, and its first round of financing has generated approximately $ 95 million, more than almost all space companies. One of his lucrative ideas is to attach customer payloads to his future rovers and landers.
The lunar ambitions of Ispace are not unique. The Moon is perhaps the hottest place in space right now: Jeff Bezos' blue origin has a lunar regulation on the brain. Smaller organizations like SpaceIL and Moon Express, formerly Google Lunar X Prize nominees, go from front to back. Then there is the Indian government's Chandrayaan-2 mission, with its lunar orbiter, its lander and its mobile. China Chang'e 4 is similar. Trump urges NASA to visit this gray lady and then go to Mars red. The list of lunar ambitions is long. But the reasons for making the Moon a destination also come from its proximity, its personality and its political and financial whims, which are elements of space policy.
People like to quote the speech of John F. Kennedy that sparked the Apollo era. "We choose to go to the moon," they say, feeling important. If they feel so wordy, they quote more words from Kennedy: "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are difficult. Space is difficult, usually as an excuse for delays and accidents.
Space types allude to this talk more than anything else, with the exception of the small steps and giant jumps of Buzz Aldrin. This linguistic penchant reveals how much today's explorers aspire to this good old days, or at least how much they love their own original story. A few weeks ago, when SpaceX announced that it was going to launch a billionaire and seven creative lunar orbit, billionaire Yusaku Maezawa said, "I chose to go to the moon with artists. the last 50 years.
Nevertheless, Maezawa could reuse Kennedy's phrasing because SpaceX makes essentially the same thing that NASA did half a century ago. Been there, do that, so differently. We could better serve by quoting a different part of Kennedy's speech: "But why do some say the moon? "Why choose this as an objective?" Kennedy's questions were rhetorical, their answers being provided in other paragraphs: to be the first, to establish a peaceful purpose, to do it because it is difficult, to go because it is there. But today is a more complicated question with complicated answers.
Ispace and other organizations that have eyes on lunar resources seek to develop the Moon and an economy around it. This has changed Moon could be a launch pad and a refueling station for trips going further. It could be a scientific research center. A place to learn to live and work in the long term in an isolated place without atmosphere. A national security outpost. An Apollo-esque fight.
The Moon, in other words, has many things for many people. But for some, it's an obstacle.
The debate over whether humans choose to go on the moon or on Mars (or on the Moon then on Mars) has been raging for a long time. The first lunar are sometimes called "lunatic", the Martians are the first on Mars. Mars is more interesting geologically, more interesting chemically, maybe once habitable and could tell us more. infernal landscapes. In addition, it is more difficult and we have not done it yet.
On the other hand, it's harder and we have not done it yet. And the moon is probably more lucrative: with Mars as far away as possible, the lunar economy may panic much earlier than a Martian country. "If you are a company interested in going into space and making money, the moon is a much better investment for you," says Lucianne Walkowicz, director of astrobiology at the Library of Congress and astronomer of the planetarium Adler, Chicago. . Walkowicz is organizing a conference later this week entitled "Becoming Interplanetary" and has already organized a conference entitled "Decolonizing Mars". As a scientist, she is more interested in exploration to collect and interpret information that places our planet in a proper cosmic context. Other planets and moons show us how the planets job. But even among scientists, the debate over the destination is not really about whether the Moon or Mars is worthy of our footsteps: it's about scarcity.
"I think people would like to do all these things," Walkowicz says – go to the moon, go to Mars, send more ships to other places in the solar system. "A lot of talk comes from the fact that they require a lot of resources and are limited." This means limited financial support (especially since even private exploration companies often depend on government contracts) and time limit. The Moon, even as a prelude, probably delays the trip to Mars.
Chris Carberry, CEO of Explore Mars, Inc., strives to understand how lunatics and martians can work together because neither faction is going anywhere. Perhaps we could successfully choose to go to the Moon and Mars. "We are finding ways to achieve this goal that will not delay Mars by decades," he says. In addition to aligning R & D, commercial players might be able to do their moon work and governments could focus on Mars-ward.
Governments, however, are inconsistent. In the United States, each new president has the opportunity to change the priorities of space exploration. And while private companies can technically do their own work, savvy entrepreneurs sometimes turn to support. George W. Bush was no longer a guy from the first moon. Obama has looked over Marsward (with a trip next to an asteroid). Under Trump, the Moon is back in favor. "In an effort to define a space program that belongs to them in some way and bears their mark," says Walkowicz, "there is a tendency to pivot on what the last did not say."
The analysis, Carlos Manuel Entrena Utrilla explains, explains why private sector exploration is important. "If we see a sustained human presence beyond the low Earth orbit, and particularly on the Moon or Mars, it will be through commercially viable development," says Ultrilla, who works for the consulting firm McKinsey. "Any other approach based on public funding will eventually collapse when national priorities change, as happened with Apollo."
The trick, however, will be that many different companies will have to be ready at the right time, so that they all have things to buy and sell. "This means miners need to connect at about the same time as hardware processors," says Utrilla, "and that manufacturers must start producing once their customers operate."
In life as well as in lunar exploration, timing is everything. Theoretically, now (ish) is a good time for ispace to prove the technology that could make Moon Valley real. The design of its lunar spacecraft was recently reviewed by a group of 26 experts and plans to begin assembling the equipment next summer. The mobile design, although updated and updated, is based on the configuration space already developed and designed for the X Prize.
But what remains to be seen? For space, short-term success means an orbit around the Moon in the first round, and the landing and deployment of data collection rovers in the second round. If it goes well, the company will go to the third round (via not), turning the Moon – with the help of other companies and governments that have projects on the planet's satellite – into a useful in law. An industrial pit, a pit stop, a playground. And this time, the goal is different: it's not "we choose to go to the moon". "We choose to change the moon".
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