A
Texas-based firm has drawn up plans for a manned expedition to the Moon to seek out the raw ingredients for
what amounts to an orbital gas station for future spacecraft.
Under the
plan, from Bill Stone of Austin's Stone Aerospace, Inc, a vanguard team of
industrialists would explore the Shackleton
Crater at the Moon's south pole to determine how much, if any, frozen water
and other materials sits locked beneath the lunar regolith [image].
If enough
resources are found, they could then be processed into spacecraft fuels and
hauled into low-Earth orbit (LEO) for propellant-thirsty spacecraft at
one-tenth the cost of launching them from Earth,
according to the plan.
"Once
initial funding is received to initiate the detailed planning effort, we expect
to be open for business in LEO in the 2015 timeframe," Stone said in a
statement, adding that the ambitious plan would likely cost about $15 billion
and require significant international partnerships. "Only by operating
commercially will this enterprise be successful."
To that
end, Stone has formed Shackleton Energy Company (SEC). He discussed his plan in
a March 10 presentation at the Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED)
Conference in Monterey, California.
"This is
water exploration first," SEC president Dale Tietz told SPACE.com
Wednesday. "And if it's there, then our whole business plan is based upon, by
2015, having a very aggressive program to then process that with our own
crews...bring it to low-Earth orbit and then open for business."
Among
potential customers for SEC is NASA,
which plans to launch astronauts aboard its new spacecraft - the Orion
Crew Exploration Vehicle - no later than 2015,
with lunar missions slated for 2020. The Virginia-based firm Space Adventures,
too, has announced plans in the past for space tourist flights
around the Moon aboard a Russian-built Soyuz spacecraft.
NASA's
plans for crewed flights to the Moon, coupled with other programs in
development by China,
Russia, India and a host of space tourism firms, led the Shackleton Crater
Expedition's announcement, Tietz said.
"If we have
fuel up there at a reasonable price, they will come," he added.
A likely
lunar base camp
Etched into
the south pole of the Moon, Shackleton Crater is 12-miles (19 kilometers) wide
with a floor perpetually cast in shadow, though regions of its rim are nearly
constantly bathed in sunlight.
Scientists
have long thought the crater, and others like it [image]
that serve as cold traps, are the most likely hunting ground for buried water
ice on the Moon based on data from NASA's Lunar Prospector mission and the U.S.
Pentagon's Clementine Moon orbiter [image].
If present, such resources could be separated into liquid oxygen and hydrogen
that serve as modern rocket fuel. Shackleton Crater, in particular, has been an
attractive
focus for possible future Moon bases among experts in and outside of NASA.
Stone's
plan calls for a privately-funded industrial team would to set up base camp in
inflatable structures on Shackleton's sunlight rim, burying the habitats
beneath the lunar regolith for heat insulation and radiation protection.
The
scenario is based, in part, on a 2003 proposal entitled "The Shackleton Crater
Expedition: A Lunar Commerce Mission in the Spirit of Lewis and Clark" and
rejected by the Bush Administration, Stone Aerospace officials said. In
addition to water, liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, an SEC refueling station
could also possibly offer gaseous hydrogen and oxygen, nitrogen and methane,
they added.
NASA chief
Michael Griffin said
in 2005 that a private spacecraft refueling depot in low-Earth orbit, among
other commercial spaceflight services, could aid the U.S. space agency's future
goals of returning astronauts to the Moon. The U.S. space agency is actively
pursuing activities with several private firms,
among them California's Space
Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and Oklahoma's Rocketplane
Kistler, to support future crew and cargo
services to and from the International Space
Station.
"We have a
long way to go," Tietz said. "But we have a plan and we think we can execute it
if we have the right kind of relationships and funding."
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