Shackleton Energy Company was a Texas company (2007–mid-2010s) formed to build equipment and technologies necessary for

mining Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic via ...

the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...

. They failed to secure funding and have met no public milestones.

History

Shackleton was formed in 2007 in Del Valle,

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

to build equipment and technologies necessary for

the

. Shackleton Energy was a subsidiary of Piedra-Sombra Corporation until March 2011, when it was incorporated as an independent C-corporation in the State of Texas. In November 2011, Shackleton announced an intent to undertake lunar

prospecting Prospecting is the first stage of the geological analysis (followed by exploration) of a territory. It is the search for minerals, fossils, precious metals, or mineral specimens. It is also known as fossicking. Traditionally prospecting reli ...

, but failed to secure funding and met no public milestones. Shackleton began a million crowdfunding campaign in November 2011 for seed funding, working with

crowdfunding Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and alternative finance. In 2015, over was raised worldwide by crow ...

partner

RocketHub RocketHub was an online crowdfunding platform launched in 2010, its first use was September 1, 2009. Based in New York City, its users included musicians, entrepreneurs, scientists, game developers, philanthropists, filmmakers, photographers,Hai ...

. but was unsuccessful and raised less than (0.46%) of the goal.

Proposed Project phasing

The company planned in 2011 to develop an "industrial

astronaut An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'star', and (), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member aboard a spacecraft. Although generally r ...

corps" that would select individuals who have many of the characteristics of previous explorers—such as

Ernest Shackleton Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton (15 February 1874 – 5 January 1922) was an Anglo-Irish Antarctic explorer who led three British expeditions to the Antarctic. He was one of the principal figures of the period known as the Heroic Age of ...

Edmund Hillary Sir Edmund Percival Hillary (20 July 1919 – 11 January 2008) was a New Zealand mountaineer, explorer, and philanthropist. On 29 May 1953, Hillary and Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers confirmed to have reached t ...

and

Lewis and Clark Lewis may refer to: Names * Lewis (given name), including a list of people with the given name * Lewis (surname), including a list of people with the surname Music * Lewis (musician), Canadian singer * "Lewis (Mistreated)", a song by Radiohead ...

,Shackleton Energy's cislunar economic development plans
David Livingston interview with James Keravala, ''The Space Show'', 14 December 2012, at 1:22:35–1:23:50, accessed 2013-01-03. and stated that they could have humans stationed on the Moon by March 2021. In the belief that significant reserves of

ice Ice is water frozen into a solid state, typically forming at or below temperatures of 0 degrees Celsius or Depending on the presence of impurities such as particles of soil or bubbles of air, it can appear transparent or a more or less opaq ...

would be located, the company had hoped to establish a network of " refueling service stations" in

low Earth orbit A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an orbit around Earth with a period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial objects in outer space are in LEO, with an altitude never mor ...

(LEO) and on the Moon to process and provide fuel and consumables for commercial and government customers.Mining the Moon: How the extraction of lunar hydrogen or ice could fuel humanity's expansion into space
, ''

IEEE Spectrum ''IEEE Spectrum'' is a magazine edited by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The first issue of ''IEEE Spectrum'' was published in January 1964 as a successor to ''Electrical Engineering''. The magazine contains peer-revie ...

'', June 2009, accessed 2011-01-05. Shackleton planned to use that on-orbit logistics infrastructure to build a fuel-processing operation on the lunar surface and in

propellant depot An orbital propellant depot is a cache of propellant that is placed in orbit around Earth or another body to allow spacecraft or the transfer stage of the spacecraft to be fueled in space. It is one of the types of space resource depots that ha ...

s in LEO. Their equipment was stated to be designed to melt the ice and purify the water, "

electrolyze In chemistry and manufacturing, electrolysis is a technique that uses Direct current, direct electric current (DC) to drive an otherwise non-spontaneous chemical reaction. Electrolysis is commercially important as a stage in the separation of c ...

the water into gaseous

hydrogen Hydrogen is the chemical element with the symbol H and atomic number 1. Hydrogen is the lightest element. At standard conditions hydrogen is a gas of diatomic molecules having the formula . It is colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, an ...

and

oxygen Oxygen is the chemical element with the symbol O and atomic number 8. It is a member of the chalcogen group in the periodic table, a highly reactive nonmetal, and an oxidizing agent that readily forms oxides with most elements as wel ...

, and could condense the gases into liquid hydrogen and

liquid oxygen Liquid oxygen—abbreviated LOx, LOX or Lox in the aerospace, submarine and gas industries—is the liquid form of molecular oxygen. It was used as the oxidizer in the first liquid-fueled rocket invented in 1926 by Robert H. Goddard, an applica ...

and also process them into

hydrogen peroxide Hydrogen peroxide is a chemical compound with the formula . In its pure form, it is a very pale blue liquid that is slightly more viscous than water. It is used as an oxidizer, bleaching agent, and antiseptic, usually as a dilute solution (3%� ...

, all of which could be used as

rocket fuel Rocket propellant is the reaction mass of a rocket. This reaction mass is ejected at the highest achievable velocity from a rocket engine to produce thrust. The energy required can either come from the propellants themselves, as with a chemical ...

s. Should other volatiles like

ammonia Ammonia is an inorganic compound of nitrogen and hydrogen with the formula . A stable binary hydride, and the simplest pnictogen hydride, ammonia is a colourless gas with a distinct pungent smell. Biologically, it is a common nitrogenous was ...

methane Methane ( , ) is a chemical compound with the chemical formula (one carbon atom bonded to four hydrogen atoms). It is a group-14 hydride, the simplest alkane, and the main constituent of natural gas. The relative abundance of methane on Eart ...

be discovered, they, too, would be processed into fuel, fertilizer, and other useful products." They stated that the economics that would make the enterprise potentially

profitable In economics, profit is the difference between the revenue that an economic entity has received from its outputs and the total cost of its inputs. It is equal to total revenue minus total cost, including both explicit and implicit costs. It i ...

are based on the relatively low costs of getting fuels and other consumables from the Moon into low Earth orbit, because "such a haul requires just 1/14th to 1/20th of the fuel it takes to bring material up from Earth." Shackleton originally planned a phased project through 2020.Shackleton Energy's cislunar economic development plans
David Livingston interview with James Keravala, ''The Space Show'', 14 December 2012, at 55:25–57:40, accessed 2012-12-22. Their plans were funding dependent on a raise in early 2013. However, funding was not secured. There have been no updates as to their progress. # 2012 - 2014: Systems planning and enterprise planning were to happen . # 2014: Robotic precursor missions, lasting two to three years, were projected to begin as early as 2014. # 2014 (concurrent): Establish prototyping and engineering infrastructure in LEO to test interchangeable modules. # Establish production-scale equipment and transport vehicles, both in LEO and on the surface of the Moon. Once the lunar polar base confirmed and equipment is landed, human teams follow to monitor and operate facility for water ice extraction.

Legal regime absent

Although the requisite legal regime to enable the ice mining technology does not exist,Moon, Mars, Asteroids: Where to Go First for Resources?
SSI-TV video archive, recorded on November 9, 2010, 74:37, panel discussion held during the Space Studies Institute's Space Manufacturing 14 conference in California. "Moderated by tech investor

Esther Dyson Esther Dyson (born 14 July 1951) is a Swiss-born American investor, journalist, author, commentator and philanthropist. She is the executive founder of Wellville, a nonprofit project focused on improving equitable wellbeing. Dyson is also an ang ...

, the discussion included: Prof.

Michael A'Hearn Michael Francis A'Hearn (November 17, 1940 – May 29, 2017) was an American astronomer and astronomy professor at the University of Maryland College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences. He was also the principal investigator for NASA' ...

University of Maryland The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of M ...

, Dept. of Astronomy, Prof. Greg Baiden, Penguin Automated Systems, Mark Sonter, Asteroid Enterprises Pty Ltd, Prof. John S. Lewis,

Space Studies Institute Space Studies Institute is a not-for-profit organization that was founded in 1977 by Princeton University Professor Gerard K. O'Neill. In 2009 SSI moved its operations from its long-term base in Princeton, New Jersey, to Mojave, Californi ...

, Dr.

Paul Spudis Paul D. Spudis (1952–2018) was an American geologist and lunar scientist. His specialty was the study of volcanism and impact processes on the planets, including Mercury and Mars. Spudis was well known as a leading advocate of a return to t ...

Lunar and Planetary Institute The Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI) is a scientific research institute dedicated to study of the Solar System, its formation, evolution, and current state. The Institute is part of the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) and is supp ...

, and

Jeff Greason Jeff Greason is a co-founder and Chief Technologist of Electric Sky, a company developing the ability to wirelessly transmit power to moving vehicles. He also serves as chairman of the board of the Tau Zero Foundation. Career Greason has been ...

XCOR Aerospace XCOR Aerospace was an American private spaceflight and rocket engine development company based at the Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, California, Midland International Air and Spaceport in Midland, Texas and the Amsterdam area, the Netherla ...

." major world space agencies, including

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

, had put in place a "voluntary, non-binding coordination forum (the Coordination Mechanism) where

nations A nation is a community of people formed on the basis of a combination of shared features such as language, history, ethnicity, culture and/or society. A nation is thus the collective identity of a group of people understood as defined by those ...

could share plans for space exploration and collaborate to strengthen both individual projects and the collective effort."The Global Exploration Strategy: the Framework for Coordination
, ASI (Italy), BNSC (United Kingdom), CNES (France), CNSA (China), CSA (Canada), CSIRO (Australia), DLR (Germany), ESA (European Space Agency), ISRO (India), JAXA (Japan), KARI (Republic of Korea), NASA (United States of America), NSAU (Ukraine), Roscosmos (Russia), section 3 "Theme 3: Economic Expansion", pp. 10–12, May 2007, accessed 2011-01-05.

References

{{Reflist, 30em

External links

Shackleton Energy Company website

Stone Aerospace company website

"Exclusive: Shackleton Energy Company Launches Plan for First Lunar Mining Operation"
��Parabolic Arc article Companies based in Texas Private spaceflight companies Aerospace companies of the United States

History

Proposed Project phasing

Legal regime absent

See also

References

External links