Moon Express
In late 2017 Moon Express outlined their ambition to build a lunar base on the south pole of the Moon within three years. They will start by deploying a number of robotic explorers, ranging from their small MX1 to the larger MX9. All of these explorers will be powered by the ‘eco-friendly’ PECO engine, whose fuel will be drawn from basic elements found across the solar system – hydrogen and oxygen. This is critical because the greatest obstacle to a viable space industry is refuelling of planet. The PECO engine, and others like it, will need to operate in space with fuel produced wherever they find themselves.
The ambition is for these autonomous, unmanned vehicles to be deployed as either landers or orbiters. The MX9 is intended to deliver an MX1 to the Moon’s surface, where it will make and then use fuel from lunar ice in order to return to Earth. That said, the name Moon Express shouldn’t mislead you about the scope of the company’s ambitions. While their initial target is the Earth’s only natural satellite, the broader objective is to establish a self-sustaining architecture that can be used to prospect every planet, moon and asteroid in the solar system for resources. Naturally these primarily include minerals but, given the PECO engine will run on oxygen and hydrogen, ice as well. While mining metals like cobalt or platinum is the primary aim, the company also wants to transform the Moon, Mars – and anywhere else with substantial deposits of frozen water – into giant gas stations.
While the premise for most science fiction is that our descendants travel among the stars because of a desire to explore, to go where others have never been, the impulse driving all of this is far from altruistic. Nowhere is this clearer than in the ‘Global Exploration Strategy’ (GES) published in 2007, months before the first rumbles of the global financial crisis, by NASA and thirteen other space agencies. Detailed inside is the framework determining coordination among the most powerful countries in the world, establishing the basis for private enterprise to make profits in space in the not-toodistant future.
Mining the Sky
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