Golden Spike space firm plans $1.4bn Moon trips

Dugganator · 7 Dec 2012 at 10:33

Linky
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20635597

Summary
"A team of former Nasa executives has launched a private venture to send two people to the Moon for $1.4bn (£871m).

Golden Spike Company says it will use existing rocket and capsule technology, and will aim for a first launch before the end of the decade."

Personally I love the idea of people visiting the moon yes i know we have been there but I really would like a space race to take place going to the moon,mars and beyond. I'm hoping that this wont be over hyped and not take place. Ideally I would hope it pushes more companies or countries to push towards space travel.

Dugganator · 7 Dec 2012 at 11:25

also forgot to add they hope be doing this before 2020. 8 years is a long time but I wonder if they will be able to stick with this date..... Come on moon base for 2030 lol.

Cool Breeze · 7 Dec 2012 at 11:26

Good best place for some of the worlds billionares , is it a one way trip?

xMarkie · 7 Dec 2012 at 12:32

ha, Richard Branson has booked himself a place to lose his space virginity...!

Aren't things like this fascinating -we don't have the collective ability to feed starving children or cure diseases which kill 1 in 3 people but yet we think up needless ventures to travel to a big rock in the sky.

Its ironic really seeing as the USA at one point were pondering over whether to Nuke the moon...

Russinating · 7 Dec 2012 at 12:36

xMarkie said:
Aren't things like this fascinating -we don't have the collective ability to feed starving children or cure diseases which kill 1 in 3 people but yet we think up needless ventures to travel to a big rock in the sky.

Its ironic really seeing as the USA at one point were pondering over whether to Nuke the moon...

Not sure if serious.

The rewards of space travel are infinite and could have a profound and lasting effect on the human race far beyond supplying more rice to Africa.

VoG · 7 Dec 2012 at 12:47

Duggan said:
also forgot to add they hope be doing this before 2020. 8 years is a long time but I wonder if they will be able to stick with this date.....

Screw the date, i wonder if they'll be able to stick to the price tbqh as it seems far to cheap.

xMarkie · 7 Dec 2012 at 13:04

Russinating said:
Not sure if serious.

The rewards of space travel are infinite and could have a profound and lasting effect on the human race far beyond supplying more rice to Africa.

erm, you'll need to expand on this...

1. This post is not about 'space travel' and exploration of the galaxy but sightseeing trips to the moon - think London Sighseeing Bus Tours - but 42.5m more expensive - how is this going to have a lasting effect on the human race?
2. The 'human race' hasn't yet travelled outside our own Galaxy (see point 1 for the extent of our space adventures) all we have managed so far is to 'see' other galaxies.
3. We have no space exploration technology yet - we still use solid/liquid fuel rockets - we haven't yet invented any sort of craft which travels close to the speed of light - a trip to mars would currently take us 6 months+ (and that depends on a number of factors).

SO first, the human race needs to GREATLY advance its technology and perhaps a starting block to doing this is to firstly cure little things like diseases which kill 30% of the population and invent a rice which can grow in Africa.

THEN we'll move onto building space craft which travel at light speed.....

danza · 7 Dec 2012 at 13:13

wow - I thought the wife talked a lot of rubbish until I joined some forums...

Hilarously apt.

Morba · 7 Dec 2012 at 13:20

xMarkie said:
erm, you'll need to expand on this...

1. This post is not about 'space travel' and exploration of the galaxy but sightseeing trips to the moon - think London Sighseeing Bus Tours - but 42.5m more expensive - how is this going to have a lasting effect on the human race?

I'd bet that the initial was said about motor vehicles. Then the most common mode of transport became a car. Look how much cars have advanced.

When going to the moon becomes a common thing surely you realise the effect that will have on the potential for further travel in our galaxy.

Russinating · 7 Dec 2012 at 13:58

As above, almost all technology starts its life as a luxury splurge for the rich.

McGray · 7 Dec 2012 at 14:02

Wont someone think of the Africans!?

Tibbz2 · 7 Dec 2012 at 14:05

McGray said:
Wont someone think of the Africans!?

I doubt sending them to the Moon would be that useful

xMarkie · 7 Dec 2012 at 14:06

Morba said:
I'd bet that the initial was said about motor vehicles. Then the most common mode of transport became a car. Look how much cars have advanced.

You're absolutely right, now its only taken us 10 years to develop an electric car that can travel 100miles and costs £25k. We've made so much progress because rich celebrities in California have been buying Toyota Priuses...

Morba said:
When going to the moon becomes a common thing surely you realise the effect that will have on the potential for further travel in our galaxy.

We'll be taking the wife and kids to one of Uranus's moons on a Sunday afternoon if the kids were well behaved on Saturday?

Real life changing event....

orderoftheflame · 7 Dec 2012 at 14:06

Duggan said:
also forgot to add they hope be doing this before 2020. 8 years is a long time but I wonder if they will be able to stick with this date..... Come on moon base for 2030 lol.

NASA managed it in 9 years, and JFK promised the end of the decade when the US only had 15 minutes of manned space flight experience.

They've got 5 decades of knowledge to build on.

xMarkie · 7 Dec 2012 at 14:07

Tibbz2 said:
I doubt sending them to the Moon would be that useful

We'll tell them its not made of cheese as initially thought, but full of water....

xMarkie · 7 Dec 2012 at 14:09

orderoftheflame said:
NASA managed it in 9 years, and JFK promised the end of the decade when the US only had 15 minutes of manned space flight experience.

They've got 5 decades of knowledge to build on.

So why haven't they been back to the moon in all that time or sent a person to another planet yet?

Tazzfalcon · 7 Dec 2012 at 14:10

Nothing ever comes of these ideas. It needs someone of the type of wealth possessed by Bill Gates to do what Bill Gates is doing with his foundation and plow all of their wealth into the venture essentially 'until the job is done'. Attaching the 1.whatever billion figure to it and saying we'll do this thing by 2020 isn't going to work. Structures need to be built and orders of magnitude more money need to be spent.

It's not impossible though. I reckon Carlos Slim (or someone of that order of wealth) could do it in 10-15 years if they put everything they had behind it. Relatively easily in fact.

It's just that sort of commitment is difficult to come by!

Tefal · 7 Dec 2012 at 14:11

xMarkie said:
1. This post is not about 'space travel' and exploration of the galaxy but sightseeing trips to the moon - think London Sighseeing Bus Tours - but 42.5m more expensive - how is this going to have a lasting effect on the human race?

provides money to expand on rocket technology.

xMarkie · 7 Dec 2012 at 14:14

Tefal said:
provides money to expand on rocket technology.

True but largely depends on how much of that $1.4bn is costs, shareholder profit and if whats left over will be reinvested in research...

drunkenmaster · 7 Dec 2012 at 14:14

Morba said:
I'd bet that the initial was said about motor vehicles. Then the most common mode of transport became a car. Look how much cars have advanced.

When going to the moon becomes a common thing surely you realise the effect that will have on the potential for further travel in our galaxy.

The car was invented, it was a massive technological leap, travelling to the moon using existing technology, is like driving from London to New York(you can drive from Russia to Alaska at various points of the year can't you?) just because you can, when the real interesting things were planes being invented that made that trip possible in a fraction of the time.

There was no technologic increase, or change in human life by continuing to use existing technologies to visit a place with no worth.

They aren't talking about making the plane, or improving the car, but using something already invented, to do something already done, more often, for no real reason.

Creating new space based travelling options is likely long term one of the most significant things human beings will ever achieve, but revisiting the moon with the same old rockets, does nothing to achieve anything beyond visting the moon.

If they dumped the 1billion(ish) into technology research for new propulsion and ignored the moon visits, I'd be interested, they've got this completely backwards and it won't take us anywhere we haven't been before.

ultimately 99% of the things needed to for instance, visit the moon safely/quickly/with some reason beyond looking at it, gooing "ooooohhhh, ahhhhhh" and coming back, proper space travel, are all things that earth will need as well and are being researched here and don't need round trips to the moon to push forwards.

New kinds of propulsion, new power sources, new materials, etc, etc.

What Branson is doing is a heck of a lot more useful. A delivery vehicle that can get us too space quickly and cheaply with a lot less hassle, is pretty much essential. Much like the ISS, any serious ship to send to Mars/beyond will be bigger and likely need to be assembled in space, in multiple parts, when we can deliver parts and people to space fairly quickly and efficiently rather than using rockets taking years to plan every trip and using insane amount of fuels and at huge risk for short trips. Well, quick easy delivery to such a staging point in space is crucial for building anything in space in the future.