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US Set to Approve Private Moon Mission
- jesuslop 10y agohm why do they need permission?
- EdwardMSmith 10y agoThe article is paywalled, but if they are launching from a US Government owned launch facility, they would need permission to use it. They would also need US airspace approval as well. There are probably quite a few other regulations they would need to adhere to as well. I would imagine it would be the same for any other country that has launch facilities as well.
- jonknee 10y agoIt needs US approval because it's a US company. The launch site is in New Zealand.
- oddevan 10y agoFrom the article (search the URL on Google to get around paywall), it sounds like the biggest hurdle is ensuring a private company complies with international treaties concerning space and the moon. They described it as a regulatory Catch-22 because there was no template, no precedent for a private company sending something past orbit.
- kirrent 10y agoHaven't read the article because of paywall but it's likely a requirement of the outer space treaty where the government is required to ensure conformity to the articles of the treaty by private entities. Specifically, article VI requires - "the activities of non-governmental entities in outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, shall require authorization and continuing supervision by the appropriate State Party to the Treaty" Interestingly I don't know of any established processes for monitoring the activities of companies in outer space apart from getting approval from the FAA. It's not really ever been a problem up 'til now.
- hirsin 10y agoWho is the appropriate State Party if, e.g. SpaceX decides to start launching off of Of Course I Still Love You out in the ocean, in international waters? Do they go with the country where the launch platform is registered? Where the owing corporation is registered? Each of these seem to fall apart once you register a shell corp and launch platform in a non-space-faring nation like... Monaco ?
- greglindahl 10y agoITAR makes that illegal.
- hirsin 10y agoAn interesting notion - it would be an interesting case to see if exporting rocket components to "not a country" would violate ITAR. That hasn't stopped Iran from getting launching satellites into orbit though, and misses that e.g. ULA buys their rocket engines from Russia where ITAR obviously isn't a problem.
- jonknee 10y agoIf by interesting you mean certain Federal prison time, sure I guess that would be interesting.
- snowwrestler 10y agoIt seems like it would be very difficult to export to "not a country." Every dry rock in the world is claimed by some nation, and ships and platforms on the open ocean are flagged and/or operated by citizens of some existing nation. Many U.S. laws apply to U.S. citizens no matter where they are in the world.
- detaro 10y agoSeems like the Sea Launch project, which had multinational partners and started rockets from a floating platform outside of all 200 mile zones, is the closest thing you can look at for comparison (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Launch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Launch). Here it seems everybody just sort-of agreed that the rules are not entirely clear and that the US as the closest nation invested in the project should do the oversight. I found this old article that mentions some of it, but isn't terribly detailed when it comes to regulations either: https://web.archive.org/web/20120730201527/http://isanet.ccit.arizona.edu/archive/Sea%20Launch%20notes.html https://web.archive.org/web/20120730201527/http://isanet.cci...
- Overtonwindow 10y agoPaywall
- gpm 10y agoClick the web link, then click the first result. Going through google bypasses the paywall.
- gkoberger 10y agoHere's a version without a paywall: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/first-commercial-mission-to-the-moon-nears-approval-2016-06-05 http://www.marketwatch.com/story/first-commercial-mission-to... (Alternatively, there's a "web" link on HN to bypass the WSJ paywall)
- awinter-py 10y agoguessing the '20 pound scientific payload' isn't a solar-powered 3d printer
- bunkydoo 10y agoI really don't understand why SpaceX doesn't do the Moon. A Moon base relay is FAR more meaningful to our established presence in space, and a fallback location for global conflict.
- bbcbasic 10y ago> and a fallback location for global conflict. Or something else to fight over
- Exras 10y agoI'm reminded of the ending in Iron Sky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uimh2EBB1yQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uimh2EBB1yQ
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- robzyb 10y agoSpaceX's care about "our established presence in space" is secondary to their care of revenue and profit.
- mwfunk 10y agoThat's hardly surprising given that they wouldn't exist without the possibility of revenue. I'm not sure why you think this should be disturbing to anyone though.
- readams 10y agoYou can buy space on a Falcon 9 today and go to the moon. It's just that nobody wants to since there's nothing there. But some of the Lunar X-Prize participants plan to use a Falcon 9.
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago> I really don't understand why SpaceX doesn't do the Moon SpaceX wants to colonise another world [1]. The Moon is more difficult to colonise than Mars because it has no atmosphere. This means no aerobraking, no aerodynamic flight (e.g. for drones or parachutes) and no carbon dioxide from which to make rocket fuel [2]. Furthermore, while the Moon being close to the Earth makes supplying a colony easier, it also reduces its as an independent hedge for humanity. Any gamma-ray burst, nearby supernova or supercharged solar flare hitting the Earth will probably take out a base on the Moon, too. Mars has a chance of hiding behind the Sun. > A Moon base relay is FAR more meaningful to our established presence in space I think an independent colony is a far more valuable. > and [could be] a fallback location for global conflict See above. A lunar base would be dependent on terrestrial re-suppply. Knocking out those logistics knocks out the base. [1] http://www.techinsider.io/elon-musk-mars-colonies-human-survival-2015-10 http://www.techinsider.io/elon-musk-mars-colonies-human-surv... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction#Manufacturing_propellant_on_Mars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction#Manufacturin...
- Animats 10y agoA one-way robotic mission to the moon is reasonable enough. It's been 50 years since the first one. The USSR's Luna I landed on the moon on February 3, 1966. The US's Surveyor I landed on the moon on June 2, 1966.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- ColinWright 10y agoThere was one in 2013: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yutu_%28rover%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yutu_%28rover%29
- distances 10y agoI wasn't aware of this, somehow totally flew beneath my radar.
- snowwrestler 10y agoAlso in 2013, NASA's LADEE mission orbited the moon for a few months to study the lunar atmosphere. When that mission was over they crashed it into the far side. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Atmosphere_and_Dust_Environment_Explorer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Atmosphere_and_Dust_En...
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- alberthartman 10y agoIf some other criminal hijacks their gear is the government responsible for protecting their assets?
- nostrademons 10y agoThis is one of 16 teams competing for the Google Lunar X-Prize: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Lunar_X_Prize https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Lunar_X_Prize My bet would actually be on SpaceIL or Astrobotics to win the prize. Astrobotics has been the consistent winner when it comes to demonstrating intermediate goals; they won the prizes for Landing, Mobility, and Imaging, and seem to have a solid engineering effort based out of CMU with partnerships with major U.S. corporations. SpaceIL has some interesting design choices that limit risk, eg. they're launching on a SpaceX Falcon 9 and they aren't building a rover, instead lifting off via rocket and flying to a second destination 500M away. Moon Express has two major risk factors against it: they're launching on an Electron, which is a rocket that has never successfully flown before and won't be commercially available until 2017, and their founder has a reputation for making grandiose promises and then running away with the money. (He founded InfoSpace during the dot-com boom, sold all of his stock at the peak even while revenues were declining, then was ordered to pay $247M in insider-trading fines by the SEC.)
- runholm 10y agoOut of interest: What is the correct way to sell your stock in your company? What made the way that the founder of InfoSpace did it illegal?
- 11thEarlOfMar 10y agoIn principal, publicly traded stock has the attribute that all investors make buy and sell decisions on the same information. In order to enforce that, laws prohibit persons who know what is happening within the company before the general public investor knows from profiting specifically from that insider knowledge. There are a lot of restrictions, policies and processes for buying or selling stock "while in possession of material, nonpublic information about the security." [1] There are literally 'black out days' where employees of companies that have stock traded on the public market are prohibited from buying or selling company shares. From my days at a public company, this period was generally 4-6 weeks per quarter, encompassing the quarterly reporting period. In particular, officers, director and senior staff have to file a form with the SEC in order to trade shares at all. Those trades are subsequently reported to the public in SEC Form 4 [2]. From the SEC [3]: "Examples of insider trading cases that have been brought by the SEC are cases against: - Corporate officers, directors, and employees who traded the corporation's securities after learning of significant, confidential corporate developments; - Friends, business associates, family members, and other "tippees" of such officers, directors, and employees, who traded the securities after receiving such information; -Employees of law, banking, brokerage and printing firms who were given such information to provide services to the corporation whose securities they traded; - Government employees who learned of such information because of their employment by the government; - and Other persons who misappropriated, and took advantage of, confidential information from their employers." [1] https://www.sec.gov/answers/insider.htm https://www.sec.gov/answers/insider.htm [2] http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/tsla/insider-trades http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/tsla/insider-trades [3] http://ir.tesla.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1494730-16-7&CIK=1318605 http://ir.tesla.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1494730-16-7&CIK=...
- andreasvc 10y agoWhat are the scientific goals of such a mission? The article only talks about the regulatory hurdles.
- larrydag 10y agoHere's some ideas. I have no idea if anyone is working on it. 1. Telescope 2. Dark matter research 3. Effects of radiation in low atmosphere environment 4. Remote habitat research 5. Testing unmanned rocket/vehicle landings and launches
- snowwrestler 10y agoIt is probably primarily an engineering mission--with goals to see if it can be done, how efficiently it can be done, and what can be learned along the way. It is similar in this respect to SpaceX or Virgin Galactic or Blue Origin. The science of rocket engines is pretty well understood, but it's still an interesting problem to optimize. To some extent future science depends on future engineering, so advances in engineering can still have scientific value.