Getting There

Abstract

This is in many ways the most obvious first step to answering the question about who will be selling what to whom on the Moon. There will be the commercial business of someone paying someone else for the means of getting there in the first place. And for repeat trips for both people and goods. The category in the market sector descriptions (Fig. 6.1) of the LCP is sector 1—Transportation to/from the Moon, Launch Providers, and Lunar Landers. We are considering both the means of getting to lunar orbit, and from there to the lunar surface. We are considering both deliveries of cargos and of humans (and eventually some animals—eggs for breakfast, anyone?). And, of course, this is a two-way street. Sometimes, humans and cargos will be returning from the Moon back to Earth. Or simply from the lunar surface to lunar orbit. A component of the Artemis program is a Lunar Gateway Space Station in lunar orbit (Lunar Gateway, 2023). This market sector 1, therefore, is probably the best understood of the 11 market segments at this stage.

This is in many ways the most obvious first step to answering the question about who will be selling what to whom on the Moon. There will be the commercial business of someone paying someone else for the means of getting there in the first place. And for repeat trips for both people and goods. The category in the market sector descriptions (Fig. 6.1) of the LCP is sector 1—Transportation to/from the Moon, Launch Providers, and Lunar Landers. We are considering both the means of getting to lunar orbit, and from there to the lunar surface. We are considering both deliveries of cargos and of humans (and eventually some animals—eggs for breakfast, anyone?). And, of course, this is a two-way street. Sometimes, humans and cargos will be returning from the Moon back to Earth. Or simply from the lunar surface to lunar orbit. A component of the Artemis program is a Lunar Gateway Space Station in lunar orbit (Lunar Gateway, 2023). This market sector 1, therefore, is probably the best understood of the 11 market segments at this stage.

Technologically, it makes sense to consider in turn the different classes of vehicles needed for different purposes. There will need to be launch vehicles which can deliver a payload from Earth to lunar orbit (and sometimes even that step might involve more than one type of vehicle). The payload itself, whether human or cargo, will need to be carried within a spacecraft atop the launcher. And there will need to be the means of getting from lunar orbit (i.e., at the lunar gateway station) down to the lunar surface. And the vehicle which conducts that part of the mission is called the lunar lander. And generally speaking, the lander needs to have the capability to take off again to reach at least lunar orbit. Although, in some cases, the lander might remain on the surface to serve as a “habitat,” or even be able to relocate, as a hopper, across the surface (as was proposed by the GLXP team Moon Express—and observed by GLXP judges during tests). There could also emerge a class of simplified shuttle spacecraft which is designed simply to operate between lunar orbit and Earth orbit, not needing any of the complexities and weight associated with re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere and gravity well, or of landing on the Moon.

From a financial standpoint, some of these craft will be bought and sold as a taxi service, with ownership remaining with the service provider. That will particularly be the case when a spacecraft is reusable. That will probably apply generally to lunar landers, and Earth–Moon shuttle craft. Sometimes the customer for the product or service will be the government; sometimes it will be a commercial entity. The trend over time will be away from the government as customer, and toward a commercial transaction on both sides, i.e., as provider and customer of the service. However, it is almost a certainty that there will not develop a true lunar commerce economy unless there is possible a massive shift in the economics of getting into space, and specifically in getting to the Moon. The attempt to make this change in launcher economics is taking place, both with regard to getting into Earth orbit, and to the Moon, as this book is being written. And the key is reusability. As discussed in Chap. 5, SpaceX is leading the way in this respect.

At present, the primary delivery system intended to transport both cargo and humans to the lunar surface as part of the US-led Artemis Program, in the period up to 2030, is the US government owned and operated Space Launch System (SLS), which is a very expensive proposition (SLS, 2020). It is always something of a mystery to obtain and understand the exact costs of NASA launchers. At least in part that is because it varies with the expected launch rate. But also, because they are contracted on a cost-plus basis, which encourages escalating costs. Estimates vary, but it seems that each SLS mission will cost about $2 B (yes, billions), excluding the development costs of probably more than about $23 B. It is indeed a remarkable thing that, a full half-century after the Apollo flights of the Saturn V vehicle, and given all the space launches since then, that NASA was not able to come up with a design approach for this new generation of Moon-launcher which included all the advancements that had been introduced by the commercial launch business since those early days. Nowadays, building launch vehicles has become quite routine. With modern developments in commercialization of both vehicles and home-built spacecraft (e.g., cubesats), it is nowadays possible (as demonstrated by the GLXP) for a high school class to build and afford to launch their own satellites, via ride-sharing arrangements.

Alternative commercial delivery systems being developed, and some already operational, involve reusability, which therefore offers the possibility of massive orders-of-magnitude reductions in price to Earth orbit and to lunar surface. This will be essential to the creation of the proposed commercial lunar economy. For example, estimates for the trip costs of the SpaceX Starship are around $100 M each (some say the figure could become as low as $2 M with experience and full reusability). There are also other commercial contenders which will also offer prices to the lunar vicinity at a tiny fraction of the SLS approach. For full detail of the alternatives, go to the Annexes of the Lunar Commerce Portfolio (LCP, 2022). So, let’s now look at the assumptions we made for the vehicles designed to get cargo and people from lunar orbit to the lunar surface (and sometimes back again), the lunar landers.

The first contracts for landing systems for both humans and cargo are just being written as we write. There are a series of contracts, named the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program awards (CLPS, 2018), which are designed for getting relatively small robotic landers down to the lunar surface. They do not use the SLS. They have to find their own (commercial) way to the Moon. And then there are the human landing system alternatives being developed (at present with contracts to two commercial providers, Blue Origin and SpaceX).

The series of CLPS missions, which will take place from now until around 2030, are for robotic missions to the lunar surface, and many of them are being provided by the entrepreneurial companies created in attempts to win the Google Lunar XPRIZE (GLXP, 2015), which was indeed designed to bring about a low-cost solution and private access to the lunar surface. The objective was to build a spacecraft, effectively without government funding, and have it land on the Moon, travel for 500 m, and take and send high-definition images back to Earth. These GLXP craft were originally designed and built by “guys in garages” in 16 teams around the world and hence are a low-cost solution. All of the contracted CLPS missions include both the arrival on the lunar surface by a lander sent directly from Earth as part of a commercial cargo launch from Earth, and the subsequent deployment of a surface rover, or hopper (to be discussed under Chap. 8 below). In the GLXP, there was a total of $40 M of prize money available, with only $20 M for the Grand Prize, and lesser amounts for additional achievements, such as surviving the lunar night, or finding water, or even for photographing a lunar heritage site. The US space agency NASA is paying for these CLPS robotic lunar services via fixed price service contracts, in a change of philosophy which trades the old NASA way (owned, designed, expensive cost-plus contracting) versus a new way (buying only a service, low cost, high risk). In principle, it becomes possible to afford many such CLPS commercial missions for the price of a single NASA mission conceived and operated in the old way. These GLXP spacecraft, both landers and rovers, were very low-cost solutions. They had to be. Because they were originally competing for prizes that only amounted to $40 M in total, and they were not allowed by competition rules to secure any governmental funding (beyond a maximum of 10%).

The GLXP teams cut costs by using off-the-shelf equipment, such as Go-Pro cameras for imaging, and also by employing highly efficient trajectories, which needed relatively low fuel requirements, even though they took a long time to reach the lunar vicinity. In the course of the competition, and in pursuit of some interim milestone prizes proposed by the judges (designed to help with developments in landing, mobility, and imaging areas respectively), the several international teams learned how to reduce their risks by addressing problems such as how to handle lunar dust. The judging team attended demonstrations and development tests in the USA, India, Israel, Japan, Germany, and elsewhere, to observe and monitor how the young enthusiastic engineers were approaching the problems. There were 22 technical reviews in six different countries presided over by the GLXP judges. The team members learned how to navigate both en route to the Moon, and then subsequently on the surface. They needed to be able to accurately demonstrate that their rovers could arrive safely at the Moon, avoiding the Heritage Sites (which was a GLXP competition requirement introduced by the judges, following discussions with the Smithsonian Museum). And then, that they had moved 500 m, in order to claim the prize money (in the absence, of course, of the familiar terrestrial GPS system support). The judges were able to compare the results of several alternative approaches to the lunar navigation problem, and thereby decide on a compensation factor to be applied to the future lunar telemetry readings, in order to be able to certify the potential award for distance traveled. In the event, a decade after the competition had been conceived and announced, it ended in 2018 before any of the teams succeeded in winning the Grand Prize. But NASA realized that the competition had nevertheless ensured that there was a ready pool of candidates for meeting their CLPS goals. Three teams (Astrobotic and Moon Express from the USA, and Team Indus from India) each did, however, receive $1 M interim GLXP landing milestone prizes for demonstrating their advanced readiness level.

Two of the former GLXP teams have already made attempts at Moon landings, and have reached the lunar vicinity (Team SpaceIL, and Team Hakuto), but have not at the time of writing achieved soft landings. SpaceIL did make a hard landing in April 2019 after launching in February 2019. Team Hakuto (working with iSpace) had the same result in April 2023 after launching in December, 2022. Others of the old former GLXP teams have now reconfigured, have received CLPS funding from NASA, and so are now getting a second chance to land and perform on the Moon. The young engineers deserve success for all their efforts, starting with their engagement with the Google Lunar XPRIZE process as early as 2007. The many GLXP team members enjoyed the opportunity to meet with other international team members at various Team Summit events, compare notes, and continue to make their dreams of private access to the Moon a possibility and indeed a reality.

We should make specific reference again to lunar space tourism. Under our assumptions, lunar tourists will likely be a significant part of the “cargo” for this market sector. This will emerge in two forms—both as lunar orbit (or vicinity) experiences, and as lunar surface operations. There have already been contracts signed for lunar orbit (or vicinity) space tourism experiences (see Appendix A). Both of the contracts have been signed with SpaceX. One was signed by a Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa in September 2018, and he intends to take some of his artist friends along for the ride. His project is called “Dear Moon,” and yes, you can Google it. Subsequently, in October, 2022, another contract for lunar orbit tourism was signed, this one by former Earth-orbital space tourist Dennis Tito, who intends to take his wife Akiko with him on a circumlunar mission. Fly me to the Moon, indeed. At present, there are no deals yet for lunar surface tourism, and indeed, there are as yet no lunar tourism hotels in the design phase. However, market surveys (Adventurers’ Survey, 2006) indicate that there will be demand for such offerings, once the service can be provided, and prices established. The terrestrial-based suborbital space tourism experience has now become operational—and indeed one of the earliest Blue Origin missions using New Shepard carried Sara Sabry, who was our LCP Team Lead for sector 2! We shall discuss these other aspects of lunar space tourism (habitations, food, etc.) in the appropriate sections below, but in the current section we are including the necessary launch provider and lunar lander services to support the expected demand. Indeed, the expected number of humans arriving at the lunar vicinity for lunar tourism purposes is an important indicator of lunar commercial activities in general, and so is included in the list of key driving assumptions discussed earlier. As a reminder, there is a detailed discussion and assessment of lunar tourism demand in Appendix A.

Fig. 7.1

Summary of LCP data for sector 1—transportation to/from the Moon. (Credit: DW/MVA)

Figure 7.1 summarizes the Sector 1 dataset. With regard to the landers designed to deliver humans to the lunar surface, there are currently two teams under contract. The first one is SpaceX, which is contracted to provide the lander for Artemis 3, the mission which is intended to return humans to the Moon for the first time since 1972 (Apollo 17). Then, a consortium led by Blue Origin has also received a contract to perform the same service for NASA, on a subsequent Artemis mission. These two proposed human landers are shown in Figs 7.2 and 7.3.

Fig. 7.2

Proposed SpaceX Artemis Lunar lander. (Credit: SpaceX)

Fig. 7.3

Proposed Lunar Lander by Blue Origin consortium. (Credit: NASA/Blue Origin)

Let’s now be methodical, and consider systematically what is the status and expectation for this market segment # 1—transport to/from the Moon, as we begin this first quantification effort of lunar commerce as represented by the findings of the Lunar Commerce Portfolio, Version 1. The format we shall use is the best we could come up with right now so that, at our present state of knowledge, we could compare the market across all sectors, and ultimately make possible investment portfolio decisions. We will stick to this standardized setup (i.e., market, suppliers, customers, drivers/constraints, and value chains) throughout all of the 11 market sectors in this primer. I figured that you unfortunately must embrace this somewhat repetitive approach in order to be able to access the level of detail in the findings that you justifiably need. Forgive me if, on this point, I reckoned that providing you with the information is more important than the literary merits, or otherwise, of the exposition, accepting the downside. So, hang in there. You will find that even if the format is repetitive, the content will be enlightening and even surprising. And if you subsequently just want to make reference to one particular market segment, then you will find it a benefit to be able to find all the associated material complete and self-contained. So, here, as the first example of our standard information format, is the data portfolio for market segment 1—Transport to/from the Moon.

FormalPara What Is the Formal Description of the Segment?

The definition is “The movement of people, cargo, propellant, etc., between the Earth and the Moon and lunar vicinity.”

FormalPara Who Are the Potential Suppliers?

During the data collection of the Lunar Commerce Portfolio, Version 1, 57 potential cis-lunar transportation service providers were identified, clearly with a considerable variation in readiness, with full details available in Annex B of the Excel model which accompanies the Lunar Commerce Portfolio (LCP, 2022). In the Early Phase, cargos are assumed to be delivered by CLPS landers (Astrobotic, Deep Space Systems, Firefly Aerospace and Orbit Beyond), and also possibly by the ESA lander. People are assumed to be delivered by combinations of Artemis providers (launched on NASA’s SLS vehicle in the Orion capsule (Orion, 2020), then landing via the SpaceX or Blue Origin, or maybe Dynetics, lander). During the Mature Phase, many more providers may emerge, including providers from China and India. When we consider the full scope of this market sector, we need to include the terrestrial spaceport part. There are existing spaceports around the world, plus several being contemplated. A new spaceport creates opportunities for construction and A & E firms. Suppliers are particularly interested in the possibilities of lunar tourism opportunities, because this can result in special needs which suppliers can address. In this first issue of the Lunar Commerce Portfolio, some 15 Earth Launch and Recovery Sites (ELRS) were identified in 8 different countries (China, India, Japan, Europe/Guiana, Russia, Kazakhstan, New Zealand, and the USA). In addition, two companies were identified who were addressing the building of the spaceport launch and landing sites on the Moon. There are about 22 companies aiming to provide commercial lunar cargo lander services, in addition to four or five governmental potential suppliers (China, India, USA, Russia, and ESA). With regard to the crewed launch and lunar landings, at present 4 countries are making plans to provide capability (Canada, Russia, USA, and China), and one or two commercial firms are also lined up. And of course, the mainstay of this sector is the basic launch vehicle supplier, of which eight commercial entities in three countries were identified, augmented by four governmental providers (China, India, Russia, and the USA). Incidentally, in some architectures using Starship, it would be possible to conduct the entire mission from launch on Earth to landing humans on the Moon using the same vehicle.

FormalPara Who Are the Potential Customers?

For this sector, two tiers of customers were identified. In the Tier 1 category, the customers need the transportation services to pursue science, space exploration, national security and commercial venture development. In this category, there would be space agencies, governments, military, universities, research institutions, NGOs, High Net Worth individuals, and commercial entities. The Tier 2 category is reflected in all the other market segments from 2 thru 11, and represents service providers to the Tier 1 customers. All the rest of lunar business depends at least initially on this sector to get them started. Among the governmental customers are all signers of the Artemis Accords (discussed later). At present (a reminder that this means August 2023), this list consists of 28 separate states. Then there are the academic research institutions and commercial operators with payloads on the early CLPS missions (CLPS, 2018)—about 15 were identified in LCP Version 1. Examples of such already-contracted customer missions include Embry-Riddle University (USA) flying a cubesat camera system on Astrobotic Mission 1, University of Colorado (USA) with a low-frequency radio spectrometer on Intuitive Machines IM-1 mission, The Arch Mission Foundation, a nonprofit flying a payload to demonstrate the ability to host lunar archives of humanity’s heritage, and Celestis, a space burial company with a payload on Astrobotic Mission 1. The Hungarian company Puli Space Technologies also has a payload scheduled for Astrobotic Mission 1. Incidentally, Puli was a small startup during the GLXP, and demonstrated an early rover prototype to GLXP judges during mission reviews in Budapest in 2014.

FormalPara What Are the Likely Drivers and Constraints?

Drivers of demand for this sector are the prices which determine the numbers of people and mass of cargo arriving and the trip frequency. Among the constraints are various supply chain challenges including propellant production capacity and available payload capability per launch system, including maximum number of passenger seats per launch system.

FormalPara How Does It All Fit Together in a Value Chain?

Market sector 1 has interdependencies with all the other market sectors. In the Early Phase, transportation providers buy propellant and use spaceports and order systems from prime contractors (which in turn are supported by suppliers and subcontractors). Spaceports hire construction firms and support equipment, and they use cargo handlers to prepare payloads. They can become a major generator of employment and other economic benefits to a region or a country. Again, in the Early Phase, propellant providers are assumed to be Earth-based operations, and all customers and providers are assumed to be Earth-based. In the Mature Phase, however, it is assumed that some propellant providers will be Moon-based.

A summary of this market sector is provided in Fig. 7.1. We adopt this same format for each of the 11 subsequent market sectors, to make it easy to make comparisons.

FormalPara How Can the Data Be Improved?

Simply by continuing to monitor and update, as new specs and pricing is published.

OK, so how do you feel about investing in this sector? You have a choice of many possible providers, some already well established. And their supply chain contributors are also generally well known and understood. So, you have alternative entry points within the value chain to consider. This is certainly the least-risky sector for investment today—as reflected in the lowest range of uncertainties. Some of the future lunar commerce segments may offer bigger rewards, but at a higher level of risk. We’ll figure out the revenue potential later in this primer (Chap. 11), but for now, this represents the most visible face of the return to the Moon, and to its future development. How reliable will the former GLXP team contributors turn out to be? NASA has taken a certain risk in using this nontraditional way of obtaining services.