Private Sector Explorers Enthusiastic About Potential of Moon Jaunts

Private Sector Explorers Enthusiastic About Potential of Moon Jaunts

TACOMA, Wash. (August 28, 1998 11:13 a.m. EDT http://www.nandotimes.com) -- It takes about 118 minutes for the Lunar Prospector satellite to complete an orbit of Earth's closest neighbor, and Alan Binder's faith in the commercial value of the moon grows with every orbit.

"We're showing that space exploration and space science can be done far cheaper than NASA has ever been able to do them," said Binder, the principal investigator for the world's first private-sector moon mission.

The mission drew international headlines last March when it found near-certain evidence that vast quantities of water ice exist around the moon's north and south poles.

If that ice can be extracted from the moon's rocky soil, it could sustain a colony of humans and serve as a kind of interplanetary filling station, providing hydrogen fuel for spacecraft going on other missions.

But dreams of space travel have been around for decades, if not centuries. Binder now wants people -- especially business people -- to take a down-to-earth look at his bottom line as well.

"NASA missions take 10 to 12 years and cost at least $1 billion a pop," he said earlier this week on a visit to the Puget Sound area. "Our mission took 22 months to launch and cost $63 million.

"This shows we're past the time when huge government bureaucracies were needed to handle the vast complexities of space."

Ironically, Binder's project was funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration -- although not in the government agency's traditional way.

Lunar Prospector is the first private project funded under the agency's Discovery Program, created in 1994 to encourage low-cost space science missions. Binder's venture was backed by Lockheed Martin, his former employer, and used off-the-shelf hardware from space suppliers. Binder was in Redmond this week visiting Primex Aerospace Co., which built the tiny rocket thrusters that keep the satellite in a stable orbit.

"I wanted to thank everybody who helped with this project," Binder said. "Primex and the other suppliers were really more like partners. And they paid us a real compliment when they told us they really had fun working on this."

That degree of personal involvement has long been lost at NASA, according to Binder. He says a full 50 percent of every project's cost goes to bureaucrats involved in noncreative paperwork.

"If NASA had done this mission itself, it would have cost 10 times as much and taken years, not months," he said.

A scientist now playing the role of business entrepreneur, Binder fairly bubbles as he describes the discoveries made so far by his low-budget satellite. He says Lunar Prospector, after only eight months orbiting the Moon, has:

-- Confirmed the existence of enough water ice to ensure the survival of a moon colony and, later, the production of rocket fuels that wouldn't need to be shot into space against Earth's much heavier gravitational pull. When the discovery was first announced in March, Binder said the findings showed at least 11 million tons of ice. Now he puts the total at between 1 billion and 10 billion tons.

-- Verified the moon contains all the minerals needed to build solar panels, houses -- virtually anything -- rather than shipping pre-fabricated items up from Earth. One of the satellite's instruments has confirmed the existence of what Binder calls "The Big Seven" minerals: oxygen, silica, iron, titanium, magnesium, aluminum and calcium.

-- Mapped the locations of all those minerals, plus uranium, thorium and potassium.

-- Mapped the most likely spots to drill for nitrogen and carbon dioxide, two gases essential for lunar agriculture.

-- Completed the first gravitational map of the entire moon, a map later satellites can use to keep their orbits stable and reduce the need to carry extra fuel.

"The key thing to remember here is that it costs $10,000 a pound to get things to the moon from Earth," Binder said. "We're already talking about orbital factories that can take advantage of low gravity and vacuum conditions. This project shows we can feed raw materials to these factories from the moon a lot cheaper than we can from Earth. And it would be cheaper still to put the factories on the moon."

He calls the minerals discovered on the moon "the building blocks for a lunar base" and predicts he'll lead a commercial venture to put such a base on the moon in the next 10 years.

"I think it can be done for $5 billion to $8 billion. And when you consider that NASA is going to spend at least $40 billion on the space station, you can see how much more cost effective the private sector can be."

How will private investors be attracted to the moon? How will he make money up there?

"The first customers, I grant you, will probably be NASA and other such government agencies around the world," Binder said. "After all, the Russians got between $200 million and $300 million per man-year to have foreign scientists aboard the Mir space station. With revenues like that, you can see it wouldn't take long to pay off a $5 billion investment."

And beyond that?

"The possibilities are limitless," Binder added. "I'm going to hold a workshop next March and invite all kinds of interested people to see just exactly who's willing to pay to put people on our base on the moon."

MIKE MAHARRY writes for the News Tribune of Tacoma, Wash. Distributed by Scripps-McClatchy Western Service.