What RadioShack gets out of the deal is the chance to gain a foothold in dominating the broadband market, said Jim MacDonald, senior vice president for marketing at RadioShack.
Besides throwing its weight behind the project to connect RadioShack’s brand name to science and technology, "we’re also backing it because the last push to get to the moon leads directly to the development of wireless phones, satellite dishes and internet businesses," MacDonald said.
Through its website, RadioShack.com, the company will team with Microsoft to develop an online computer game simulator of lunar-robot driving.
"And once the robot is on the moon, there will be opportunities for customers to interact with the project over the internet and at RadioShack.com," MacDonald said.
"There is a huge audience for this," Gump said. He cited the 556 million page views that NASA’s Mars Pathfinder drew in 1997 in its first month of operation when the internet was only one-third its present size.
RadioShack will also be providing high-resolution, surround-sound mini-theaters at its 7,100 nationwide store locations that it now uses for its concert series called "Music in High Places."
"This project…allows us to provide an educational and personal involvement opportunity for the nearly 1 million customers who visit RadioShack everyday," MacDonald said.
"This is not a short-term stunt."
The company will begin in the next few months showing lunar footage and a message from astronaut Buzz Aldrin announcing LunaCorp’s and RadioShack’s plans. Aldrin, who is an advisor to LunaCorp, will play a big role in future campaigns for the partnership.
"A successful future for space exploration depends on involving the public directly," Aldrin said. "And I am delighted that RadioShack shares this vision of opening up the adventure to everyone."
"We are trying to demystify [space] technology for the masses to enjoy," MacDonald said.
RadioShack is expected to invest "several million" dollars over the next few years to shepherd LunaCorp’s plan to launch and operate its solar-powered robot dubbed the IceBreaker Moon Rover, MacDonald said.
"This is not a short-term stunt," he said.
Gump said they plan to use the most "cheap and efficient" launcher to hoist the 440-pound (200-kilogram) rover into space. "We are thinking maybe on a Soyuz or Proton as a primary payload, or maybe an Ariane 5 as a secondary payload," he said
The price tag for the entire project is about $130 million, Gump said. He said the company hopes to raise it from corporate sponsors, television deals, website fees, ticket sales at science centers and from the government.
LunaCorp has also been talking with current RadioShack partners such as Compaq Computer, Microsoft and RCA.
"We have been talking to a major aerospace company to build a lander for the robot," Gump said.
LunaCorp has already built and tested a prototype rover called the Nomad. The rover was developed by Dr. Red Whittaker, chief scientist of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
The rover will operate off solar panels when it is traveling in sunlit areas and batteries when it is in shadow. It will also carry a drill that will be able to penetrate about 4 feet (1.2 meters) into the lunar soil to search for water vapor in the samples.
The existence of ice would be a boon for future lunar exploration, since its chemical elements -- hydrogen and oxygen -- could be processed into drinking water and air for humans or fuel for spacecraft and surface equipment.
Scientists believe that any ice on the moon probably came from comets. In sunlit areas the water would be cooked immediately, vaporizing into space. But the perpetually dark craters at the moon’s poles just might trap water molecules in a deep freeze.
Data from NASA's
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