US Set to Approve Private Moon Mission | Hacker News Reader

US Set to Approve Private Moon Mission

wsj.com

122 pointspaulsutter66 comments

This is one of 16 teams competing for the Google Lunar X-Prize:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Lunar_X_Prize

My bet would actually be on SpaceIL or Astrobotics to win the prize. Astrobotics has been the consistent winner when it comes to demonstrating intermediate goals; they won the prizes for Landing, Mobility, and Imaging, and seem to have a solid engineering effort based out of CMU with partnerships with major U.S. corporations. SpaceIL has some interesting design choices that limit risk, eg. they're launching on a SpaceX Falcon 9 and they aren't building a rover, instead lifting off via rocket and flying to a second destination 500M away.

Moon Express has two major risk factors against it: they're launching on an Electron, which is a rocket that has never successfully flown before and won't be commercially available until 2017, and their founder has a reputation for making grandiose promises and then running away with the money. (He founded InfoSpace during the dot-com boom, sold all of his stock at the peak even while revenues were declining, then was ordered to pay $247M in insider-trading fines by the SEC.)

Out of interest: What is the correct way to sell your stock in your company? What made the way that the founder of InfoSpace did it illegal?

In principal, publicly traded stock has the attribute that all investors make buy and sell decisions on the same information. In order to enforce that, laws prohibit persons who know what is happening within the company before the general public investor knows from profiting specifically from that insider knowledge. There are a lot of restrictions, policies and processes for buying or selling stock "while in possession of material, nonpublic information about the security." [1] There are literally 'black out days' where employees of companies that have stock traded on the public market are prohibited from buying or selling company shares. From my days at a public company, this period was generally 4-6 weeks per quarter, encompassing the quarterly reporting period.

In particular, officers, director and senior staff have to file a form with the SEC in order to trade shares at all. Those trades are subsequently reported to the public in SEC Form 4 [2]. From the SEC [3]:

"Examples of insider trading cases that have been brought by the SEC are cases against:

- Corporate officers, directors, and employees who traded the corporation's securities after learning of significant, confidential corporate developments;

- Friends, business associates, family members, and other "tippees" of such officers, directors, and employees, who traded the securities after receiving such information;

-Employees of law, banking, brokerage and printing firms who were given such information to provide services to the corporation whose securities they traded;

- Government employees who learned of such information because of their employment by the government;

- and Other persons who misappropriated, and took advantage of, confidential information from their employers."

[1] https://www.sec.gov/answers/insider.htm

[2] http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/tsla/insider-trades

[3] http://ir.tesla.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1494730-16-7&CIK=...

Adding on one thought, many insiders of publicly traded companies will sell shares through pre-established 10b5-1 plans. This can help to provide liquidity to insiders while limiting the potential for accusations of insider trading as insiders can set up defined trading plans for their stock that act independently of their knowledge or day-to-day intentions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEC_Rule_10b5-1

Here's a version without a paywall: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/first-commercial-mission-to...

(Alternatively, there's a "web" link on HN to bypass the WSJ paywall)

hm why do they need permission?

The article is paywalled, but if they are launching from a US Government owned launch facility, they would need permission to use it. They would also need US airspace approval as well. There are probably quite a few other regulations they would need to adhere to as well.

I would imagine it would be the same for any other country that has launch facilities as well.

It needs US approval because it's a US company. The launch site is in New Zealand.

From the article (search the URL on Google to get around paywall), it sounds like the biggest hurdle is ensuring a private company complies with international treaties concerning space and the moon. They described it as a regulatory Catch-22 because there was no template, no precedent for a private company sending something past orbit.

Haven't read the article because of paywall but it's likely a requirement of the outer space treaty where the government is required to ensure conformity to the articles of the treaty by private entities.

Specifically, article VI requires - "the activities of non-governmental entities in outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, shall require authorization and continuing supervision by the appropriate State Party to the Treaty"

Interestingly I don't know of any established processes for monitoring the activities of companies in outer space apart from getting approval from the FAA. It's not really ever been a problem up 'til now.

Who is the appropriate State Party if, e.g. SpaceX decides to start launching off of Of Course I Still Love You out in the ocean, in international waters? Do they go with the country where the launch platform is registered? Where the owing corporation is registered? Each of these seem to fall apart once you register a shell corp and launch platform in a non-space-faring nation like... Monaco ?

ITAR makes that illegal.

An interesting notion - it would be an interesting case to see if exporting rocket components to "not a country" would violate ITAR. That hasn't stopped Iran from getting launching satellites into orbit though, and misses that e.g. ULA buys their rocket engines from Russia where ITAR obviously isn't a problem.

If by interesting you mean certain Federal prison time, sure I guess that would be interesting.

It seems like it would be very difficult to export to "not a country." Every dry rock in the world is claimed by some nation, and ships and platforms on the open ocean are flagged and/or operated by citizens of some existing nation. Many U.S. laws apply to U.S. citizens no matter where they are in the world.

Seems like the Sea Launch project, which had multinational partners and started rockets from a floating platform outside of all 200 mile zones, is the closest thing you can look at for comparison (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Launch). Here it seems everybody just sort-of agreed that the rules are not entirely clear and that the US as the closest nation invested in the project should do the oversight. I found this old article that mentions some of it, but isn't terribly detailed when it comes to regulations either: https://web.archive.org/web/20120730201527/http://isanet.cci...

> Who is the appropriate State Party if, e.g. SpaceX decides to start launching off of Of Course I Still Love You out in the ocean, in international waters?

A tangible way to explore this is to ask "What if a craft, launched by SpaceX from international waters, fell on country X?"

If X is Canada, the resolution process seems straightforward. American and Canadian courts and law enforcement are sufficiently cross-linked to allow the latter to pursue SpaceX's assets and personnel.

But what if X is Iran, or Venezuela or North Korea? We would have to consider diplomatic and geopolitical factors. That looks much more like the anarchic environment of international relations rather than a sovereign-corporate dispute.

SpaceX is still an American company and they'd be launching from an American registered ship. I think an argument could certainly be made that the US would remain the appropriate state party to regulate such a launch but finding ways to legislate that within its jurisdiction could be amusing.

In other words, the United States and the Soviet Union along with a few insignificant states to lend a plurality got together and granted a monopoly on space exploration to nation-states.

> the United States and the Soviet Union along with a few insignificant states to lend a plurality got together and granted a monopoly on space exploration to nation-states.

International conventions require ships in international waters be flagged. This comes in handy when e.g. a ship needs help or causes trouble. I don't see the extension of this principle to spaceflight as being unreasonable. If Bezos's bird comes down on my house, I'd prefer there exist a venue in which to sue him.

It would be amusing if a Liberian flagged space ship was the first to land people on Mars.

Doubly-so, if they used feet, inches, °F, and pounds to do so! It would prove the superiority of our great measurement units :)

I don't think they are "yours", but more so an anachronism from your colonial days ;)

Well shit, nobody else seems to want 'em, so they're "ours" now.

There's an honest-to-goodness Congolese space program.

https://www.vice.com/read/hows-the-congolese-space-program-d...

If Bezos's bird comes down on my house, I'd prefer there exist a venue in which to sue him.

This doesn't seem to have much to do with outer space treaties, unless perhaps your house is on the moon. Assuming that isn't the case, your house is protected by the laws of the nation in which it is located, and perhaps those of other nations as well.

Presumably to get to space you still have to take off from somewhere on the planet, no?

Existing legal frameworks would suffice for pretty much anything in-atmosphere. The fact that the rocket is heading into space is largely irrelevant.

To add onto this: I know the movie "Gravity" was just a bit of an exaggeration, but a situation whereby two different satellites are competing for the same spot in the sky and collide or otherwise negatively interact with each other is totally possible. If nothing else, there should probably be some international governance when it comes to orbits, positioning, and mission planning to make sure no one interferes with each other.

There's no requirement for state parties to sign up to the treaty. In effect there's no difference between each signatory implementing national laws independently from the treaty or implementing them because they're required to under the treaty. It's voluntary to join up. If the holy see, which hasn't ratified the treaty, wants to launch nuclear weapons from the Vatican then they're entirely welcome to do so. I'm sure there'll be objections from other avenues but this treaty is not one of them.

I mean, they also granted a monopoly on ICBMs to nation-states as well. What's your point? Some countries passed some laws?

A one-way robotic mission to the moon is reasonable enough.

It's been 50 years since the first one. The USSR's Luna I landed on the moon on February 3, 1966. The US's Surveyor I landed on the moon on June 2, 1966.

There was one in 2013: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yutu_%28rover%29

I wasn't aware of this, somehow totally flew beneath my radar.

Also in 2013, NASA's LADEE mission orbited the moon for a few months to study the lunar atmosphere. When that mission was over they crashed it into the far side.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Atmosphere_and_Dust_En...

What are the scientific goals of such a mission? The article only talks about the regulatory hurdles.

Here's some ideas. I have no idea if anyone is working on it.

1. Telescope

2. Dark matter research

3. Effects of radiation in low atmosphere environment

4. Remote habitat research

5. Testing unmanned rocket/vehicle landings and launches

It is probably primarily an engineering mission--with goals to see if it can be done, how efficiently it can be done, and what can be learned along the way.

It is similar in this respect to SpaceX or Virgin Galactic or Blue Origin. The science of rocket engines is pretty well understood, but it's still an interesting problem to optimize.

To some extent future science depends on future engineering, so advances in engineering can still have scientific value.

guessing the '20 pound scientific payload' isn't a solar-powered 3d printer

I really don't understand why SpaceX doesn't do the Moon. A Moon base relay is FAR more meaningful to our established presence in space, and a fallback location for global conflict.

> and a fallback location for global conflict.

Or something else to fight over

I'm reminded of the ending in Iron Sky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uimh2EBB1yQ

SpaceX's care about "our established presence in space" is secondary to their care of revenue and profit.

That's hardly surprising given that they wouldn't exist without the possibility of revenue. I'm not sure why you think this should be disturbing to anyone though.

> I really don't understand why SpaceX doesn't do the Moon

SpaceX wants to colonise another world [1]. The Moon is more difficult to colonise than Mars because it has no atmosphere. This means no aerobraking, no aerodynamic flight (e.g. for drones or parachutes) and no carbon dioxide from which to make rocket fuel [2].

Furthermore, while the Moon being close to the Earth makes supplying a colony easier, it also reduces its as an independent hedge for humanity. Any gamma-ray burst, nearby supernova or supercharged solar flare hitting the Earth will probably take out a base on the Moon, too. Mars has a chance of hiding behind the Sun.

> A Moon base relay is FAR more meaningful to our established presence in space

I think an independent colony is a far more valuable.

> and [could be] a fallback location for global conflict

See above. A lunar base would be dependent on terrestrial re-suppply. Knocking out those logistics knocks out the base.

[1] http://www.techinsider.io/elon-musk-mars-colonies-human-surv...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction#Manufacturin...

There is water (ice) on the moon at the poles and carbon in the rocks so it would be possible to make rocket fuel. Wanting to colonise Mars does not mean you should avoid the moon.

Edit. Spelling

Interesting point. Do you think Elon Musk would ever create a expedition to the Moon even though he's so focused on Mars right now? I always thought he would've tried at least once

Von Braun wanted to go to Mars too, but ended up choosing the Moon as being the more viable option.

Yeah, in the 60s when nearly every occurrence in space was a "world first"

> There is water (ice) on the moon at the poles and carbon in the rocks so it would be possible to make rocket fuel

Both requiring advanced, energy-intensive chemistry to extract small amounts of water and trace amounts of carbon. All running on specialised gear built out of elements difficult to find on the Moon. Compare that to heating a fluid containing 95% CO2 to 400 degrees C and running it over a catalyst which makes up over 5% of Martian soil (aluminium).

> Want [sic] to colonise Mars does not mean you should avoid the moon.

There's value in focus. Mars is the easier and superior target, given present technology and Elon's goals. Someone else can focus on the Moon if they want to.

I am not sure Mars is the easier target given how much further it is up the gravity well, but certainly Elon is welcome to focus on whatever he wants. I was just making the point that the Moon is able to be used as a source of rocket fuel if so desired and in my opinion it is a worthy target.

> Want to colonise Mars does not mean you should avoid the moon.

But does going to the moon do anything to further the cause of colonising Mars? Elon has specific goals he is pursuing. Going to the moon would consume resources that could otherwise be used going to Mars, and there's nothing useful he could do on the moon that would help him in his actual goals.

I agree that colonizing another world is important as a "backup policy" but I'm still skeptical that Mars is inhabitable in the long term with current technologies. I feel like human civilization would have a better chance of surviving deep underground or in the oceans than spending so many resources attempting to colonize Mars.

> I'm still skeptical that Mars is inhabitable in the long term with current technologies.

Then the Moon is, as well.

I would argue the moon is more difficult than Mars to colonize. No atmosphere means landing will always be, at best, a giant pain in the ass, and at worst, extremely dangerous. A lack of water of any kind makes life nigh-on impossible, as well as the moon's extremely long days; Imagine being in the sun (albeit at a toasty 100C or something, but whatever) for fourteen days straight, followed by the longest, coldest night you've ever experienced (to the tune of -120C or worse) for fourteen days straight. That would be a nearly insurmountable engineering feat in and of itself, totally neglecting the other problems.

I think Mars will ultimately prove much easier to colonize. Getting there isn't necessarily hard once we've figured it out; we have the life support systems to keep the ISS going (albeit with constant support from the ground) for 15 years, and we can already do all the orbital math and whatnot. It's just a matter of doing it.

In general, I agree.

Temperature changes will likely be dealt with by living underground, and there's something to be said for the ability to nope out of there in a couple days instead of months/years.

I think there's value to figuring out both - a giant space telescope on the far side of the Moon would be amazing for science - but Mars seems like the more logical first spot.

Putting a semi-permanent colony on Mars is cheaper than you might think, on the order of $50 billion [1]. That's about 10 aircraft carriers, or 1/3 of the cost of the ISS. Making it independent of the Earth is of course orders of magnitude more expensive, but making a self-sufficient underground habitat on Earth isn't exactly cheap either.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Direct

I'm pretty sure a nearby gamma ray burst would sterilize the whole solar system.

I was under the impression that it is not the gamma rays that would get you but the destruction of the ozone layer [1].

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-Earth_supernova

Mars doesn't have an ozone layer, so it's not clear that it would be more inhabitable than Earth with a degraded ozone layer. Even if we had to live underground for a while and lots of things died, we'd still be breathing oxygen and using tools that already exist here.

Right, so a perfect starting place to test things out, instead of going to mars straight away

You can buy space on a Falcon 9 today and go to the moon. It's just that nobody wants to since there's nothing there. But some of the Lunar X-Prize participants plan to use a Falcon 9.

I think we have enough time to care about fallback location for human civilization.

What I would be interested in is, could Moon be used to build radio telescope array? Shielded from Earth's noise. More importantly, would the benefits outweigh the costs?

If some other criminal hijacks their gear is the government responsible for protecting their assets?

Paywall

Click the web link, then click the first result. Going through google bypasses the paywall.

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