How do the recent water-findings on the Moon affect the Google Lunar X PRIZE?
Today’s launch costs are unfortunately extremely expensive. On the average it costs something on the order of $20,000 per pound to get supplies into low-Earth orbit (where the Int’l Space Station is located) and, optimistically 10x to 20x that cost, or approximately $400,000 per pound, to land something on the Moon’s surface. So the cost of transporting water to the lunar surface, or oxygen, or hydrogen is about $400,000 per pound or $25,000 per ounce… about twenty-five times the price of gold today! Revealing water in significant quantities on the Moon could truly be a turning point in space exploration. Who will set up the first water mining plants? Given low-cost availability of water, hydrogen and oxygen, what type of off-Earth economies and exploration will this enable? The question is not too dissimilar to those questions asked when oil was discovered buried deep under the Earth or under the oceans. We eventually designed the technology to mine and extract this precious resourc
