On a similar wavelength is Dennis Laurie, Chief Executive Officer for TransOrbital in San Diego, California.

TransOrbital is pursuing the Trailblazer Mission to the Moon. Next year, the group expects to hurl its craft onto a lunar-bound trajectory courtesy of a Russian booster. Once on task, Trailblazer would crank out high-definition video and maps of the lunar surface and transmit that data to Earth. The plan at mission end is for the private lunar probe to nose-dive into the Moon. In doing so, it delivers a time capsule carrying such items as customer messages and photos.

In August, TransOrbital asserted it had become the first private company in the history of space flight to win approval and licensing from the U.S. State Department to explore, photograph, and land on the Moon.

Obtaining that go-ahead took two years to complete.

"We're not returning to the Moon simply to explore…we're returning because there are true opportunities there… true revenue streams," Laurie said in a press statement. "TransOrbital has the technology, the desire - and now we have the licensing," he said

That's the matter-of-fact view of lunar researcher, David Schrunk, a former aerospace engineer and founder of the Science of Laws Institute in San Diego, California.

Schrunk believes that succeeding generations of commercial projects to the Moon will speed up space exploration and development. "They will make possible a synergistic 'division of labor' for space missions. Specifically, government will be able to focus their resources on the return of scientific knowledge, and commercial enterprises can supply governments with needed services, at a profit, in support of government operations," he said.

With existing technology and a prudent long-term plan for international lunar development, Schrunk suggests, it would be possible to build a continuously energized 100-megawatt solar power grid around the circumference of the Moon at the South Pole.

"With that capability, large-scale space exploration and development projects throughout the solar system would be possible. We would become a spacefaring civilization, and human activities in space would be unbounded," Schrunk said.

There's no doubt in the mind of physicist David Criswell that the Moon is the key to prosperity on Earth. He is an energetic advocate for a Lunar Solar Power (LSP) System and director of the University of Houston's Institute for Space Systems Operations in Houston, Texas.

"It is technically and environmentally feasible to provide commercial solar electric power to Earth from solar power facilities on the Moon," Criswell recently advised a meeting of the World Energy Council, based in London, England.

The LSP System uses bases on opposing limbs of the Moon as seen from Earth. Each base collects and converts sunlight falling onto the Moon into microwave energy, forming a "lens" that can direct a narrow power beam toward our energy-craving Earth.

An LSP System can enable global energy prosperity on our home planet by 2050.

By putting the energy system in place on the Moon, the depletion of terrestrial resources can be stopped. "It would bring new non-polluting net energy into the biosphere and greatly accelerate the creation of new net wealth on Earth," Criswell said.

A proposal to grant ownership of land on the Moon and Mars to companies that establish settlements is championed by Alan Wasser, a long time space advocate living in New York City. He is a member of the Board of Directors for the public membership group, the National Space Society.

As the father of the Internet-based Space Settlement Initiative, Wasser argues that lunar and Red Planet real estate is currently worthless. But that real estate will acquire enormous value after there is a settlement, regular commercial access, and a system of space property rights.

"Lunar or Martian property ownership could then be bought and sold back on Earth, raising billions of
dollars. To promote space development we must have a way to be sure that money is used as an incentive and reward for those who invest in a way to get there and stay there," Wasser told SPACE.com.

Wasser said that a "pot of gold" waiting on the Moon must be created. That would attract and reward whatever companies can be the first to assemble and risk enough capital and talent to establish a 'space line' and lunar settlement.

How you do that is by making it possible to claim and own -- and re-sell to those back home on Earth -- the product that has always rewarded those who paid for human expansion: land ownership.

"Private enterprise doesn't move forward when there is little or no expectation of profit to be made large enough to compensate for the risks," Wasser added. "As things now stand, there is little or no expectation of such profit to be made by going to the Moon. Therefore there will be little or no forward motion until something like the Space Settlement Initiative comes along to change that," he concluded.