Lunar Tourism

I have started this thread as a place to discuss realistic ideas for my favorite topic, commercial lunar tourism. What will it cost? How soon will it begin? What will the technology be like?
Like this maybe: http://sun3.lib.uci.edu/~jsisson/youmoon.htm

Peter Campbell

This was rather an inevitable next thread posted wasn't it?

OK. I mentioned on another thread that the Russians are exhibiting their Kliper craft in Paris in June and it seems like they are trying to drum up some support and possible funds for this craft to get it built.

According to what I've read it has a lunar capability and seats a crew of 6 but it might be better to use it as a ferry to an orbiting taxi waiting to make the journey to the moon.

If the Russians could be convinced to build this and sell the craft it would make a beginning craft to start flights with. Knowing how strapped for cash they normally are the Russians might see this as a way of gaining an income for their space program.

They havent been to worried about exporting space technology to other countries like Korea and since they will be launching Soyuz from Guiana, they might sell it to ESA. I dont know about the US though as I dont think their treaty would let them buy the craft.

What a brilliant thought, a Russian production line producing these at 1 a month for anyone who wants one. If current 747s cost over $200m then they should be able to charge a fair bit plus spare parts contracts it could be quite lucrative.

Have you checked out the Artemis project?
http://www.asi.org

Their site looks cool but some of the stuff could do with a bit of updating, it'll take me a while to trawl though most of it but they seem to like the idea of launching the crew on a separate vehicle up to their orbiting transfer craft.

If you leave the crew vehicle attached after you deliver the crew it has the benefit of acting as a crew escape vehicle in case there is a problem. Better still launch it with enough fuel unused and it can act as an decent/accent vehicle when you get to the moon, although you might want something like a small X-33 design initially launched on a booster rather than a Russian Kliper. Perhaps an armadillo derived craft would work.

Docking the Lunar vehicle to a base already on the surface would mean the crew would not need to wear space suits to enter it. Crew or tourist could then gat aclimatised to the moon's gravity before performing an EVA. In the case of tourists they could then have an experienced guide show them around the base.

The Artemis project looks realistic because it is based on existing technology, but their funding model looks questionable.

I assume everyone on this forum wants to go to the Moon, but what % of the general population wants to go? I bet it is not as many as I would like to think.

I have not seen any market research on lunar tourism, so maybe the members of this group could generate some. I have decided to start asking random people (OK not really random, but people I happen to meet) two simple questions.

One:
If you could take a trip to the Moon, would you?
Two:
How much do you think it would cost?

So far I have asked 2 people.
The first person said, “Yes!” and “$100,000”. He qualified the price as being after it got going.
The second person looked at me like I was crazy and said he would have to think about it. When I pressed him to guess cost, he just shook his head. I asked if he thought it would be a lot and he agreed.
So, I am going to say I have one “yes” and one “no” to the “would you go” question and “$100,000” and “a lot” for the cost question.
Maybe everyone in this forum could ask random people (OK, not random, but people you happen to meet) and post your results here.

No one in my family would go to space even if you paid them They just don't see the point, yanking around throwing up and for what? rocks...

So sad.

The meek will inherit the Earth. The rest of us will escape to the stars.

So far, I have asked 12 people these 2 questions.

If you could take a trip to the Moon, would you go?

How much do you think it would cost?

Here are the results.

Go?, Cost?
Not sure, a lot
It depends, $12,000
Maybe, millions
No, $1,000,000
No, a lot
No, $400,000
No, $2,000,000
No, $20,000,000
Yes, $100,000
Yes, $750,000
Yes, several million
Yes, no idea

Two of the yes answers were from a group of people taking the Segway tour of Austin. http://www.austin360.com/search/content ... ytour.html
The fact that they were doing this novel activity probably separates them from the average person on the street.

I think you've highlighted a problem that most of us overlook, because we would like to go into space and or conversations here with others tell us that they do too we tend to ignore the other 99% of the population who have little interest in space activities and do not wish to leave the Earth.

I asked my wife and 2 young children whether they would like to go to the moon and all of them looked at me as if I was mad. When I tried to persuade them that this would be brilliant thing to do they offered to club together and send me as long as I sorted out a good insurance policy before I left.

How times have changed, if someone had asked me when I was a kid I would have asked when are we going.

As to how much it would cost, they hadn't a clue.

Apollo 11 captured the public attention completely. Almost nobody cared about Apollo 12 (do you know the names of the Apollo 12 crew?), and the live broadcast from Apollo 13 just before the accident was not even shown on TV.

If you ask anyone in this forum if they want to go to the moon, I bet 100% do. If you ask the man in the street, maybe 10% do. If you ask rice farmers in Bangladesh, they don’t even know what you are talking about. However, if only 1% of Americans and Europeans want to go, that is millions of potential customers. That is enough. We just need to get the cost down and safety up. A lot.

My guess is that lunar tourism will be on the order of 1000 times as expensive as suborbital tourism. That price needs to come down hundreds of times to make it affordable, and even then you need to be rich. The low cost (as low as $10,000) Virgin may eventually be able to offer still implies lunar travel costing $10,000,000. So now all is lost, unless someone can find a way to cut costs about a hundred times more.

Paul Allen paid $25,000,000 for tier one. A group of artists have paid $21,000,000 of their own money to put 7500 fabric gates in New York’s central park for 16 days.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/02/12/the.ga ... index.html
Which is a better use of money? It depends on who you ask.

cambelp2002 said:


Funny you should bring that up. I just spent a couple of hours yesterday taking pictures of Christo's "Gates" in the drizzling rain, for the benefit of my mom who is a fan of his work, and I got Absolutely Nothing Out Of It.

Back on topic, there are a lot of people who go in for skydiving and bungee jumping and mountain biking, spelunking, mountain-biking, scuba-diving, hang-gliding, etc. Well, most people consider THEM a bit odd. But there's lots of them. The reason people lost interest in Apollo was because they knew it wasn't likely to be THEM going anytime soon. IF you could open up the moon to where you have a viable product to sell, it won't be a tough sell. Of course, it's got to be in their price range.
Artists would be another group that would be interesting to poll. I could hear my mum; "Oh I wanna take pictures of these rocks and then I'm gonna paint them and show it to my watercolor group!" Or maybe that Christo guy could put a bunch of flags or umbrellas up all over the place.

I'm thinking that what we need more than anything is another Carl Sagan: a publicizer [sp?]. We need to kick space travel out of the realm of geeks and rocket scientists -- not that there's anything wrong with either of those categories; just that football fans don't like guys with glasses and briefcases (WE DON'T WEAR LABCOATS, DAMMIT!) -- and bring artists, musicians, poets, writers, orators, and others into the fold.

None of the astronauts were trained to "emote" over the radio (as Mike Collins said); they were test pilots. They had been trained for years to suppress all emotion, and become the ultimate computer: cataloging and reacting to every possible tiny malfunction ("The eject instructions are on the canopy railing." "So?" "So blowing off the canopy is the second step." "So what?" "So there's fifteen more steps that are now floating down towards Farmer Joe's cornfield, that's what! Tell those engineers to find someplace else to put the instructions!"). Thus, when they were presented with a view of Earth, the only Earth, no bigger than your thumbnail, they were rendered speechless.

The single greatest (and usually unvoiced) complaint of the astronaut is that they can't find the words to explain what they saw and felt.

We need to reinvent the imagined glory of the Conquistadores, the hair-raising adventures of the Wild West. Nevermind that they never existed in the first place, the public will attach to it. They will accept it, and when you give them the chance to become part of it, they will jump at it.

Bigelow Aerospace has posted pictures on their website of one of the inflatables with a engine attached that can be flown. Its called a Nautilus Moon Cruiser. Perhaps lunar tourism is closer than we think.

Definitely. That is the market. Several people who said no to my poll even said that.


Now you’re talkin! This is exactly what we need. And these guys have the money too.


All we need to do is get to LEO. A suspect for double the price of LEO you could get an Apollo 8 type lunar orbit tour. For less you could get a free return trajectory swing once around the Moon trip. I definitely see that before the more expensive surface tours start.