With the new addition of all three "Jurassic Park" movies on Netflix, I have been keeping my eye out for someone trying to recreate it. Although it’s not huge dinosaurs, another fabled science fiction story seems to be coming true. I remember in school there was a story about a young boy. He and his family paid the money and traveled to the moon for Christmas. It was like they took a flight to Europe, but they left the planet. With dwindling funds in NASA, the hope of being able to pay to go to the moon has vanished, or so we thought.
A new company has been perusing the idea of making commercial trips to the moon. They will be the first business (not government) to travel past low earth orbit. Moon Express hopes to make their first tourist trip to the moon in as early as 2017. The CEO, Bob Richards stated, "The holy grail of our company is to provide, a full-services capability -- not just landing, but coming back from the moon.”
In 2007, Google started a competition for large companies. This competition was for $30 Million in prizes. The prize will go the first privately-funded company to land a robot on the moon that successfully travels 500 meters (0.3 miles). Recently there have been many people in the running for this prize, could Moon Express claim the $30 million?
The biggest question on everyone’s mind: is it safe? The company is doing several trial runs in order to help with insurance. But how do we go forward in this new area? Will the trials begin a new space race among corporations around the world? The rules for space exploration are extremely vague, and there is little to no enforcement.
The moon would be an amazing sight, but if I have learned anything from all these recent space travel movies, it rarely goes as planned. I am not looking to become a new Matt Damon sitting on the moon trying to survive. I sure wouldn’t want to become Sandra Bullock trying to hang onto an exploding spacecraft. I will not even bring up Apollo 13. I still have nightmares about that.
Are you going to buy a ticket? Will you go on this trip? I think I’ll need some more information. Right now I am a little too scared to jump in. Maybe in a decade or so, this will be common place. That would be strange. What do you think? Are you excited or scared?
