CONQUERING THE MOON
Now it’s time for the real deal!
To conquer the Moon we must start small, especially if we are to begin as an small private entity. Unlike NASA of the early 1960s, we do not have a supersized budget of US $20 billion. However, we do have over 50 years of incredible technological advancement that has taken place since then and the priceless knowledge of knowing for certain that it can be done, as it was by them in 1969. All we have to do is take the best of all that has been and come up with a way to get there that is simple, safe, highly cost-effective and, of course, reliable.
It can be done. After all, it was Sergei Korolev who became the Chief Architect of the Soviet space program in the 1950s (after spending years in one of Stalin’s unbelievably inhumane gulags (forced labour camps)) and who achieved huge feats with his team in unbearable Siberia on a limited budget and not even having a calculator for technological aid. Such feats include launching the first ever probe in space (Sputnik in 1957), the first probe to reach and land on the Moon (1959), the first man in space (Yuri Gagarin in 1961) and the first manned spacewalk (1965). The American space program, of course, achieved the first landing of men on the Moon. It was led by the famous and well-known Werner von Braun, who left Germany for America at the end of World War II after working on the V-2 missile under Hitler’s Nazi regime. He used that same technology for developing his space rockets.
We propose embarking on this incredible endeavour in stages by first sending a simple and small rocket from earth into space, which starts at about 100km above the planet’s surface. We call this initial project Project Alpha and will strive to do it on a budget of just NZ $100,000. If it is successful its payoffs and further fundraising will be used to embark on the next step to send a probe into space (as done by the former Soviet Union) and reach Low Earth Orbit (LEO), which is about 200km above the planet’s surface. This is Project Beta and, at this point, will require a budget of NZ $1,000,000 to $2,000,000. Following that, if it is also a success, is sending a probe to the Moon to reach Low Lunar Orbit (LLO), which is about 100km above the Moon’s surface. This one is Project Gamma with a shoestring budget (for what it involves) of NZ $20,000,000. Of course, there are already a number of private firms, big and small, that are focused on space but most of them are concentrating on either sending satellites or people to LEO (or near it). People (usually the extremely wealthy) are being sent mainly for space tourism to enjoy ‘out-of-this-world’ experiences such as weak gravity and a view of the earth from space. By operating from the Southern Hemisphere and focusing on colonising the Moon, we immediately have a point of difference. The next project, Project Delta, will be to send a probe that not only reaches LLO but also dispatches a small lander with various exploration equipment to descend and land on the Moon’s surface. Following this is Project Epsilon: a plan to send robots to the Moon. Finally, there is Project Zeta: a much more ambitious project to send a crew of human beings to the surface of the Moon where they can live and work for a period of time before returning to earth and being replaced with another crew, in order to develop a continuing human presence on the Moon and slowly begin the process of its colonisation. To find out more about these six projects please click on their link above and note that they are still work in progress and far from complete, even at the planning stage.
