Tourism on the Moon

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Lunar tourism may be possible in the future if trips to the Moon are made available to a private audience. Some

space tourism startup companies A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that never intend t ...

are planning to offer tourism on or around the Moon, and estimate this to be possible sometime between 2023

body, Tranquility Base, has been determined to have cultural and historic significance by the U.S. states of California and New Mexico, which have listed it on their

heritage register This list is of heritage registers, inventories of cultural properties, natural and man-made, tangible and intangible, movable and immovable, that are deemed to be of sufficient heritage value to be separately identified and recorded. In many ...

s, since their laws require only that listed sites have some association with the state. Despite the location of Mission Control in Houston, Texas has not granted similar status to the site, as its historic preservation laws limit such designations to properties located within the state. The U.S. National Park Service has declined to grant it National Historic Landmark status, because the Outer Space Treaty prohibits any nation from claiming sovereignty over any extraterrestrial body. It has not been proposed as a World Heritage Site since the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which oversees that program, limits nations to submitting sites within their own borders. An organization called

For All Moonkind, Inc. For All Moonkind, Inc. is a volunteer international nonprofit organization which is working with the United Nations and the international community to manage the preservation of history and human heritage in outer space. The organization believes t ...

is working to develop enforceable international protocols that will manage the protection and preservation of these and other human heritage sites in outer space. Interest in affording historical lunar landing sites some formal protection grew in the early 21st century with the announcement of the Google Lunar X Prize for private corporations to successfully build spacecraft and reach the Moon; a $1 million bonus was offered for any competitor that visited a historic site on the Moon. One team, led by

Astrobotic Technology Astrobotic Technology is an American privately held company that is developing space robotics technology for lunar and planetary missions. It was founded in 2007 by Carnegie Mellon professor Red Whittaker and his associates with the goal of w ...

, announced it would attempt to land a craft at Tranquility Base. Although it canceled those plans, the ensuing controversy led NASA to request that any other missions to the Moon, private or governmental, human or robotic, keep a distance of at least from the site. A company called

PTScientists Planetary Transportation Systems (PTS), formerly known as PTScientists and Part-Time Scientists, is a Berlin-based aerospace company. They developed the robotic lunar lander "ALINA" and seek to land on the Moon with it. They became the first Germ ...

plans to return to the Taurus-Littrow Valley, the site of the

Apollo 17 Apollo 17 (December 7–19, 1972) was the final mission of NASA's Apollo program, the most recent time humans have set foot on the Moon or traveled beyond low Earth orbit. Commander Gene Cernan and Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt walked on ...

mission landing.

is a partner of

and has pledged that its mission will honor heritage preservation and abide by all relevant guidelines.

Proposed missions

Space tourism companies which have announced they are pursuing lunar tourism include Space Adventures, Excalibur Almaz,

Virgin Galactic Virgin Galactic is an American spaceflight company founded by Richard Branson and his British Virgin Group retains an 11.9% stake through Virgin Investments Limited. It is headquartered in California, and operates from New Mexico. The company i ...

and

SpaceX Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) is an American spacecraft manufacturer, launcher, and a satellite communications corporation headquartered in Hawthorne, California. It was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk with the stated goal of ...

. * The company Space Adventures has announced a planned mission, titled

DSE-Alpha Deep Space Expedition Alpha (DSE-Alpha), is the name given to the mission proposed in 2005 to take the first space tourists to fly around the Moon. The mission is organized by Space Adventures Ltd., a commercial spaceflight company. The plans invo ...

, to take two tourists within of the lunar surface, using a

Soyuz spacecraft Soyuz () is a series of spacecraft which has been in service since the 1960s, having made more than 140 flights. It was designed for the Soviet space program by the Korolev Design Bureau (now Energia). The Soyuz succeeded the Voskhod spacecraf ...

piloted by a professional cosmonaut. The trip would last around a week. * In February 2017, Elon Musk announced that substantial deposits from two individuals had been received by

for a Moon loop flight using a free return trajectory and that this could happen as soon as late 2018. Musk said that the cost of the mission would be "comparable" to that of sending an astronaut to the International Space Station, about US$70 million in 2017. In February 2018, Elon Musk announced the Falcon Heavy rocket would not be used for crewed missions. The proposal changed in 2018 to use the BFR system instead. In September 2018, Elon Musk revealed the passenger for the trip, Yusaku Maezawa during a livestream. Yusaku Maezawa described the plan for his trip in further detail, dubbed the # dearMoon project, intending to take 6–8 artists with him on the journey to inspire the artists to create new art.

Cancelled proposals

* Excalibur Almaz proposed to take three tourists in a flyby around the Moon, using modified Almaz space station modules, in a low-energy trajectory flyby around the Moon. The trip would last around 6 months. However, their equipment was never launched and is to be converted into an educational exhibit. * The

Golden Spike Company The Golden Spike Company was an American space transport startup active from 2010 to 2013. The company was chartered for business in Colorado with the objective to offer private commercial space transportation services to the surface of the Moon ...

was an American space transport startup active from 2010–2013. The company held the objective to offer private commercial space transportation services to the

surface of the Moon Selenography is the study of the surface and physical features of the Moon (also known as geography of the Moon, or selenodesy). Like geography and areography, selenography is a subdiscipline within the field of planetary science. Historica ...

. The company's website was quietly taken offline in September 2015.

References

External links

*
The Future of Lunar Tourism : Patrick Collins

The Moon & Space Tourism : The Moon Society
{{Spaceflight Moon Space tourism

Proposed missions

Cancelled proposals

See also

References

External links