United States private company authorized flight to the Moon – The Universe

The US federal government authorized for the first time a private company, in this case Florida- carry a spacecraft beyond the Earth’s orbit and land on the moon.

The Federal Administration Aviation (FAA for its acronym in English) gave approval on Wednesday Moon Express to send to the moon’s surface a vehicle the size of a washing machine that would move on lunar soil by jumps startup engines instead of moving smoothly.

“Why crawl when you can fly?” said Bob Richards, director of Moon Express. Called the moon ship the company plans to create a “bolide phase space”.

Moon Express , based in Cape Canaveral, is planning the release of his ship to the end of next year, probably from New Zealand in a rocket that has not yet been tested, said Richards. The flight cost $ 10 million is the first of many planned missions that are expected to earn money through the extraction of lunar natural resources such as platinum and selling dust and moonstones for collection, he said.

obtaining approval-not technically a license, but a determination that would not cause harm and that the company can continue below-”is a landmark and is unlikely to succeed,” said John Logsdon, the George Washington University expert on space policy removed.

the company is also competing with other groups for the Google Lunar X Prize the prize of 20 million dollars will go to the first private company to put a rover on the Moon that can move after a little. But Richards said that is not the main way through which the company expects to make money.

Richards said the first flight has five customers, including a company that is selling the opportunity to send ashes people to the moon. The ashes of his father will be on the flight. He said they used to sing the song “Fly Me To The Moon” (Fly me to the moon) to his father, “and I’ll do it,” he added. The company used the version of the song recorded by Diana Krall and her tone telephone standby.

However, Richards said the company has not finished building the browser and expects to submit a new design in September, which, he said, “it is about the size of R2-D2″, an astromech droid fiction of Star Wars, and will be powered by hydrogen peroxide, which is environmentally friendly.

the plan is fly in a rocket built by rocket Lab, a company that has not yet released any ship. If that fails, the approval of the FAA allow them to simply hire another company like SpaceX, Richards said.

The governments of the United States, China and the former Soviet Union have landed rovers on Moon; Chinese Jade Rabbit explorer just stop working. No human has walked on the moon since 1972. (I)