FYI,

"Moon Ventures Could Bring in Good Money
- Experts explore commercial spinoffs from lunar exploration
MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17227575

: Even as NASA moves ahead with its $100 billion plan to return to
: the moon, it's also making room for the private sector to get in on
: the ground floor, according to one of the agency's most vocal
: advocates for commercial space ventures.

: "I'm quite optimistic that privately funded science missions are
: going to be a wave of the future," said Pete Worden, director of
: NASA's Ames Research Center. "Probably some of the first ones will
: be astronomy-related."

: The prospects for private enterprise on the moon — ranging from
: astronomical telescopes to gee-whiz television to medical isotopes
: and fusion fuel — were listed during a weekend session at the
: annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of
: Science.

: But there should be opportunities for private profits along the
: way, he said.

: "The first thing that anyone's going to make money off of, from the
: moon, is probably going to be information of some kind," he said.
: That could take the form of interactive television, virtual-reality
: tours or remote control of lunar probes, leading to "a huge
: entertainment/educational market that will develop around the lunar
: return," Spudis said.

: Worden touted the idea of lunar surface observatories: "There is
: already a reasonable investment that's been made by a private group
: for putting telescopes on the moon for scientific purposes, much in
: the way that private investors have built many of the large
: telescopes in the world," he said.

: That group is the International Lunar Observatory Association,
: which is still being organized by Space Age Publishing's Steve
: Durst. The concept calls for sending a 10-foot-high (3-meter-high)
: probe, equipped with a radio dish antenna as well as communication
: and power-generating equipment, to the lunar surface. In a
: telephone interview, Durst told MSNBC.com that the likeliest site
: would be Malapert Mountain near the lunar south pole.

: Based on two feasibility studies conducted by California-based
: SpaceDev, the mission could be done for $50 million, with a target
: date in the 2010 time frame, Durst said. A "founders' meeting" for
: potential funders is being planned for this November, he said.

: Durst said astrophysical institutes have voiced interest in the
: idea, and compared the venture to the telescope village that has
: sprung up on Hawaii's Mauna Kea mountain. "First there was one
: observatory, and once that was tested to be highly efficient, every
: nation wanted to have a telescope up there," he said.

: As the pace of NASA's plans accelerates, Durst hopes the
: International Lunar Observatory will serve as a relay for
: communications traffic between Earth and the moon. "We're looking
: at commercializing that capability," he told MSNBC.com.

: Once humans start arriving on the moon, the commercial
: possibilities should accelerate rapidly, said Harrison Schmitt, who
: was the last human to set foot on the moon as an astronaut on the
: Apollo 17 mission in 1972.

: "The sooner you can get your workers and support personnel and
: settlers, the better," he said. "That would lower your cost of
: extracting lunar resources, particularly those that you're going to
: bring back to Earth. So there's a very strong commercial bias
: toward having settlements begin almost immediately."

: Of course, harnessing fusion power is still decades down the road,
: but Schmitt said helium-3 could come in handy even earlier for
: producing positron-emitting isotopes. Such isotopes have come into
: wide use for diagnostic purposes in medical PET scanners.

: "We think that's probably the first business opportunity to come
: from this kind of investment," he said.

Mark Reiff