Armchair Lunar Exploration

One big key to successfully expanding the human economy into space is directly linking space commercial activities to consumers. Various space tourism companies are attempting to do that, but at least early on, the cost of a ticket on ome of their flights will be prohibitive for all but the extremely wealthy.

A small company called Lunacorp had a different approach in the 1990s. It wanted to land rovers on Earth's Moon and allow ordinary people to drive the rovers around the surface for a fee. Obviously, that project never came to fruition, but it's a neat idea. The Planetary Society, a space advocacy group with 100,000 members around the world, also tries to involve ordinary people in space exploration projects, though that is a non-profit group. The potential early market for a scheme like Lunacorp's would seem to be substantial-- not just individual enthusiasts, but, say, schools around the world, professional and academic scientific researchers, and commercial interesets looking at potential lunar projects.

Lunacorp dissolved in 2003. That was before the extraordinary successes of NASA's Spirit and Opportunity rovers on Mars, which are driven each day by someone at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Remotely driving a rover on Mars while pursuing scientific objectives is much more challenging than remotely driving a lunar rover would be. Radio signals take several minutes to travel between Earth and Mars, but only a little more than a second to go from Earth to the Moon. A commercial lunar rover need be far less complex than NASA's Mars rovers, and therefore less expensive per unit. If a fleet of such vehicles were built, the per unit cost should drop still more. Versions meant for more serious explorations would no doubt be slightly more expensive.

Imagine going to your local ExploraStore, putting down a few dollars, and getting to remotely control a rover on the Moon for an hour or two, seeing things no human had seen before. The chance to make an exciting discovery would be ever-present. Imagine simply logging on to the Internet from home, going to a website, and exploring Luna whenever you wanted for however long you wanted. Such an approach could be cheap enough to let most people try it out. That could bring the public along as we expand into space with bigger projects.