Can you imagine commuting to space or sending a package to the Moon, as if it were just another destination on Earth? Such exciting prospects lie at the heart of this DLD26 expert panel with Ariel Ekblaw (Aurelia Institute), Dominik Feiden (UnternehmerTUM), Bernard Foing (Space Renaissance International) and Carolyn van der Bogert (University of Münster), moderated by Luca Maltagliati (Nature Portfolio).
The reason we’re suddenly seeing so many Lunar missions, both private and by governmental agencies, is a convergence of factors that have made a return to the Moon more viable than ever before.
A proliferation of private space companies and startups is one big factor. “We’re doing it now because it’s gotten more diversified into allowing smaller missions to do this faster, better, and cheaper”, Carolyn van der Bogert says. “My role as a scientist to support this is to help the companies pick their landing sites.”
Another big factor is a “dramatic drop in launch costs”, Ariel Ekblaw, the former director of the MIT Space Exploration Initiative, points out. Sending a kilogram of cargo to space will soon cost just $200, she notes. “That’s like DHL or FedEx. If you can ship it around the world, you can ship it to space.”
In addition, NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program now acts as a “taxi to the Moon”, Ekblaw says, enabling private companies to ship experiments and, potentially, entire habitats to the Moon.
Watch the video to explore this session in detail.
