I doubt crowd funding as such, but what New Space companies are publicly listed in the US?
I’d love to see a private effort to raise money to do a lunar mission. I think there’s support out there. One could do worse than starting with Golden Spike as a prime contractor.
A firm I was working with priced out the basic cost for a lander/rover at about $50 million using mostly commercial off the shelf elements. Because of the proximity to Earth you could do more science in 3-4 months than has been done on Mars over the last decade by the rovers there. But unfortunately a Moon rover is just not exciting enough for those with deep pockets to fund.
Our home is on the northern edge of Goodstuff’s lunar crater and we are claiming squatters rights. We are also claiming mineral and ice rights on the northern ridge and slopes of Goodstuff crater. Furthermore, we have the right of surface and space access to our home.
It should be noted that Goodstuff’s cyber world would like to create a lunar settlement. If you would like to help or support this endeavor please respond via the comments section at
The intent of this declaration is to give future Goodstuff’s Cyber World generations a “lunar advantage”.
yeah Ken Dude – it could very well be a pipe dream. However, it only costs a few man hours a year
when you think really big, really grand, there’s less competition
I see in some cases people got success after they died – their posthumous work understood later such as Galileo and other great authors/scientists discoveries.
The point is you’ll never know ‘when’ this may happen. you can be a billionaire in terms of money or in terms of fame and honor.
BTW – like your stuff
Thank you. Don’t let me be the wet blanket here. You are putting yourself out there and I respect that.
$35 billion seems pretty unlikely.
But maybe if done it in steps.
How about crowdfunding water payloads delivered lunar orbit- same location that little rock is planned to go. They determined that if rock delivered it could remain there for 20 year without station keeping.
So crowdsourcing buys one payload, then another, and another, etc.
Then crowdfunds a gas station to mine water and make rocket fuel.
And then use rocket fuel to land on the Moon.
So a series of goals achievable within short period of time which can be *relatively cheap* that gets you closer to going the Moon.
Hmmm… crowd sourcing a moon SSTO based on the Grasshopper?
Merlin 1D has a vacuum thrust of 690 kN. Moon gravity is 1.6 N.
Does this mean a single Merlin engine could lift 431,250 kg. on the moon? That seems way off to me?
I’ve done this calculation before.. you’re not wrong. Merlin 1D is massively overspec for something like a lunar lander.
The vacuum thrust is actually 720 kN. The lunar gravity is ~1.622 m/s^2. So the gross liftoff mass of a vehicle with a single Merlin 1D engine is 443,896 / 1.1 = 403,542 kg.
If your SSTO is to follow an Apollo style ascent trajectory, you’ll need 2334 m/s of delta-v to get to LLO, but presumably you’ll want to land back on the Moon, so let’s say 5 km/s total. The vacuum ISP is 311s, so the burnout mass is 78,324.
With zero payload, that’s a propellant mass fraction of 80%, which is pretty low tech for an SSTO. For a pmf of 90% you can deliver 42 tons to LLO (and bring the same amount back to the surface). For a pmf of 95%, it’s 61 tons. 97.5% will get you 70 tons.
If you prefer to come back to the surface with no payload, it’s a little more complicated.
Fantastic Trent. Thanks.
F=MA, So 720,000/403,542 gives us a nice gentle 1.784g ride assuming we could throttle down as we used up our fuel.
So I could safely say we could have a 30mt lunar SSTO with a 10 mt payload? The Dragon mass is only about 5mt with 18 regular dracos. This seems pretty doable.
I was also thinking a BA330 in lunar orbit would be your starting point for refueling.
It seems to me that gives you a really good start on a lunar base?
I doubt crowd funding as such, but what New Space companies are publicly listed in the US?
I’d love to see a private effort to raise money to do a lunar mission. I think there’s support out there. One could do worse than starting with Golden Spike as a prime contractor.
A firm I was working with priced out the basic cost for a lander/rover at about $50 million using mostly commercial off the shelf elements. Because of the proximity to Earth you could do more science in 3-4 months than has been done on Mars over the last decade by the rovers there. But unfortunately a Moon rover is just not exciting enough for those with deep pockets to fund.
Trent got me thinking.
Our home is on the northern edge of Goodstuff’s lunar crater and we are claiming squatters rights. We are also claiming mineral and ice rights on the northern ridge and slopes of Goodstuff crater. Furthermore, we have the right of surface and space access to our home.
It should be noted that Goodstuff’s cyber world would like to create a lunar settlement. If you would like to help or support this endeavor please respond via the comments section at
http://goodstuffsworld.blogspot.com/2012/09/goodstuff-lunar-squatting-declaration.html
Until you go to the moon you are going to have a hard time defending your claim. The easiest thing for people to do would be to ignore you. Good luck.
Don’t write him off until you check out his blog. Lot of good stuff there…
Thanks Wodun Dude
your photo looks like my dog Namcoke
http://tinyurl.com/goodstuff-puppies
The intent of this declaration is to give future Goodstuff’s Cyber World generations a “lunar advantage”.
yeah Ken Dude – it could very well be a pipe dream. However, it only costs a few man hours a year
when you think really big, really grand, there’s less competition
I see in some cases people got success after they died – their posthumous work understood later such as Galileo and other great authors/scientists discoveries.
The point is you’ll never know ‘when’ this may happen. you can be a billionaire in terms of money or in terms of fame and honor.
BTW – like your stuff
Thank you. Don’t let me be the wet blanket here. You are putting yourself out there and I respect that.
$35 billion seems pretty unlikely.
But maybe if done it in steps.
How about crowdfunding water payloads delivered lunar orbit- same location that little rock is planned to go. They determined that if rock delivered it could remain there for 20 year without station keeping.
So crowdsourcing buys one payload, then another, and another, etc.
Then crowdfunds a gas station to mine water and make rocket fuel.
And then use rocket fuel to land on the Moon.
So a series of goals achievable within short period of time which can be *relatively cheap* that gets you closer to going the Moon.
Hmmm… crowd sourcing a moon SSTO based on the Grasshopper?
Merlin 1D has a vacuum thrust of 690 kN. Moon gravity is 1.6 N.
Does this mean a single Merlin engine could lift 431,250 kg. on the moon? That seems way off to me?
I’ve done this calculation before.. you’re not wrong. Merlin 1D is massively overspec for something like a lunar lander.
The vacuum thrust is actually 720 kN. The lunar gravity is ~1.622 m/s^2. So the gross liftoff mass of a vehicle with a single Merlin 1D engine is 443,896 / 1.1 = 403,542 kg.
If your SSTO is to follow an Apollo style ascent trajectory, you’ll need 2334 m/s of delta-v to get to LLO, but presumably you’ll want to land back on the Moon, so let’s say 5 km/s total. The vacuum ISP is 311s, so the burnout mass is 78,324.
With zero payload, that’s a propellant mass fraction of 80%, which is pretty low tech for an SSTO. For a pmf of 90% you can deliver 42 tons to LLO (and bring the same amount back to the surface). For a pmf of 95%, it’s 61 tons. 97.5% will get you 70 tons.
If you prefer to come back to the surface with no payload, it’s a little more complicated.
Fantastic Trent. Thanks.
F=MA, So 720,000/403,542 gives us a nice gentle 1.784g ride assuming we could throttle down as we used up our fuel.
So I could safely say we could have a 30mt lunar SSTO with a 10 mt payload? The Dragon mass is only about 5mt with 18 regular dracos. This seems pretty doable.
I was also thinking a BA330 in lunar orbit would be your starting point for refueling.
It seems to me that gives you a really good start on a lunar base?