The Moon Page #6

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not only because it's difficult.

It also is an opportunity

to have somebody else verify

that you have all your connections

secure and safe.

Hmm...

Not sure what this is, here.

Their aim is to establish not

just a human colony on the moon,

but a full-scale industrial complex.

So they spend their days in the Utah

desert testing out the technology

that could one day be part

of their mission to the moon.

I think you always start

with kind of a thought experiment.

What would it be like

to go to the moon?

And what would it be like

to live on the moon?

What would

it be like to work on the moon?

Then you take it to paper,

start making drawings,

and then

you take it to the next step.

Eventually you get

to a life-size prototype

and you try to make things more

and more realistic as time goes on,

so that you flesh out the problems

in order to get there.

So the more realism

you can introduce,

the more of your homework you can do ahead of

time to make sure the mission's successful.

And as they trundle around

practising being on the moon,

they can't help but dream.

People on the moon

would be involved in using resources

to start manufacturing...

First of all, they wanna manufacture

their own building materials

and other things that they need.

Anything they manufacture there

would be cheaper

than it is to bring up

from Earth's surface.

They could also, you know, if we

were to start a settlement on Mars,

the moon and Mars could trade,

and they'd be much more viable

together than either one separately.

But there's a problem.

They don't actually have

a spaceship.

Or any money.

But their optimism is unquenchable.

It's WHEN people move to the moon.

It's not a... It's an eventuality.

It's not something that's probably

going to happen or might happen,

it WILL happen.

Others are less ambitious

than the Moon Society.

For some, the moon represents a

straightforward commercial opportunity.

We started out as a group

of engineers and space enthusiasts,

got together online

and posed ourselves the challenge

of what is the lowest-cost but

commercially-viable lunar mission

that we could come up with?

We came up

with the Trailblazer Mission.

Unlike the Moon Society,

Trailblazer have at least found

a rocket to take them to the moon.

Although not an entirely

conventional one.

The launch vehicle

is a converted SS18 Satan ICBM.

That's a Cold War nuclear missile.

They essentially take the missile

out of the launch silo,

remove the warhead,

recondition the payload bay

to accommodate commercial payloads.

But these commercial payloads

do not include people.

Instead, the converted missile

will deliver much cheaper, lighter

items to the surface of the moon.

This is a line of cosmetics.

This is actually a lipstick.

You can see the obvious space theme.

One of the more popular cargo items

is with artists.

This is from a gentleman

in Minnesota who has an art gallery.

And this is Alchemist

and this is Intelligence Of Beauty.

These are original artworks.

We also have several customers

who have asked us to carry

representative samples

of cremated remains...

from loved ones

to the lunar surface.

Your going rate for cargo

is $1000 a gram,

including handling and packaging

and delivery to the lunar surface.

It's not immediately clear what the point is of

delivering lipstick to the surface of the moon.

But if someone's willing to pay,

the technology is there to do it.

This is the Penetrator,

which will carry cargo

to the surface of the moon.

Down the middle of the Penetrator

is a 1 inch, 2.5cm,

open cargo space

into which we can

load various objects

to be carried

to the surface of the moon.

It's carried internally

inside the spacecraft,

and when the spacecraft impacts

at the end of the mission,

this will punch through the front

and come to rest about ten metres

into the lunar soil.

This is very much

a commercial proposition.

They're even offering to deliver business

cards to the surface of the moon.

Or rather,

ten metres under the surface.

We have a standard rate

for regular-sized business cards.

One business card just happens

to weigh about one gram.

We expect these items to be there

practically forever,

unless somebody goes up

and removes them.

But the big prize is still

to get a person back to the moon.

And there is one private sector challenge to

NASA's moon monopoly that might just succeed.

Government always plays a big role

in getting things started.

But after a while,

the citizenry has to take over.

I mean, after all, the world and

the universe belongs to all of us.

It's not just

individual governments.

So I think you're starting

to see that now.

Greg Olsen

has already been to space.

But he's not an astronaut

and he's never worked for NASA.

He's a businessman.

Last year, he paid $20 million

for a week-long trip

to the International Space Station.

I know, with my spaceflight,

the money I thought about

for five minutes,

and it was a simple

yes or no decision,

and once I made it,

I never thought about money.

Olsen is one of

the new breed of explorers -

the space tourists who are prepared

to spend millions of dollars

to fulfil a lifelong dream.

And now, there's a company who

aim to make their dreams come true.

They've already

sent three people into space

and now they're adding a new

destination to their brochure.

It gives me great pleasure

to be here today to talk to you.

Because today is a historic day.

Space Adventures

is going to the moon.

The moon mission

is open to the public,

meaning anyone who has

the financial capability

to afford the price of the seats.

They're each priced at $100 million.

At the front of the queue

is Greg Olsen.

Who wouldn't

want to see the moon up close?

You may not want to go through

the space ride to get there,

but just imagine if you could

look out and there's the moon,

there's this big moon, the way

we're looking at the Earth now.

Just... to me,

it would be mind-boggling.

I'd really like to do it.

And the company thinks

there'll be no shortage of takers.

You really don't have to sell

a moon mission.

It's making history, it's going where

less than 30 people have gone before.

You really don't need a sales tactic

for that.

In a neat twist from the

Cold War rivalry of the 1960s,

the company works in partnership

with the Russian Space Agency.

Rich clients provide the funds and the

cash-strapped Russians provide the hardware.

And it's technology straight out of

the 1960s - the Soyuz Rocket System.

The Soyuz Rocket System

was first designed in the 1960s

for the Soviet lunar programme.

Once the Americans

landed on the moon,

the Soviet's lunar programme

was almost just abandoned.

But one of the reasons

why it was abandoned

was that the Soviet manned lunar

programme of the 1960s was a failure.

Not only did they fail

to get a man on the moon,

but they also failed to even put

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