Golden Spike Partners With Draper Lab to Conduct Lunar Landing Site Studies
BOULDER, CO, January 22, 2014 (Golden Spike PR) – The Golden Spike Company—the world’s first enterprise planning to undertake human lunar expeditions for countries, corporations and individuals— announced today a partnership with Draper Laboratory to examine the range of landing sites that Golden Spike can offer for its commercial human missions to the Moon.
Draper provides advanced Guidance, Navigation and Control (GN&C) systems, high-performance, reliable space science instruments, and processing systems for NASA and the U.S. military. Draper provided similar landing site selection studies to NASA’s Constellation lunar landing program.
The study with Draper is one of a number that Golden Spike is undertaking with industry partners in preparation for future flight system procurements. Market studies already conducted for the company show the possibility of 15 to 25 expeditions in the decade following a first commercial landing.
Working with technical staff at Golden Spike, Draper engineers will:
- Evaluate the compatibility of the Golden Spike lander concepts to determine how the constraints of safely landing, lighting, terrain, orbit, delta-V capability, etc. affect the fraction of the lunar front side available as potential landing areas
- Evaluate potential enhancements to the Golden Spike landers that may further increase the potential area available for landing
- Define a recommended notional architecture for Golden Spike lunar mission guidance system including functional allocation, algorithms functionality and electronic architecture
The results of the work will be complete by mid-2014.
“We’re proud to be working with Draper, the gold standard for lunar mission landing site selection, dating from Apollo to the present,” said Dr. S. Alan Stern, Golden Spike’s President and CEO.
“Draper has provided the GNC and flight computers, for all crewed lunar landings. We are excited to bring this expertise to assist Golden Spike in its ambitious objective of opening the lunar frontier,” said Draper study lead John West.
20 responses to “Golden Spike Partners With Draper Lab to Conduct Lunar Landing Site Studies”
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love to see a launcher study.. with lander masses and such..The landing sites..while they are of interest..it is a ..well..how do I say it.. a “yawn” compared to other unknowns of the misson profile…..lets talk hardware
“Draper provided similar landing site selection studies to NASA’s Constellation lunar landing program.”
Couldn’t they be saving money by evaluating the taxpayer-funded study that’s already been made, and then focusing their efforts on building actual hardware? I doubt that Altair had exotic requirements for terrain or delta-V…
Well, one of the goals behind Constellation was to establish a base near the lunar south pole. so they’d be studying landing sites there for NASA.
I imagine they are looking at lunar equatorial sites for Golden Spike, which actually does require less delta-V to go to.
While delta-v would be less, I would think that Spike would want the poles for one simple reason: Energy.
Unless they are using nukes, they are out of work for 2-3 weeks out of 4 weeks.
what? do you honestly think that Golden Spike will be doing launches every 3 days? in the above: there’s the “possibility of 15 to 25 expeditions in the decade following a first commercial landing.”
i think they can pick and choose what lunar day they want to go.
How will they power the robots on the surface during the cold nighttime?
Indeed how will they get kit to work in “high noon heat” on the moon. Apollo missions were timed to take place ont a particular day in the Moon cycle.
I agree Best, a launcher study would be good but with the SpaceX revolution currently rumbling on they may well be waiting for Falcon Heavy to become established.
As for a lander they’re just pretty pictures at the moment.
A landing site study will probably be a game of pin the tail on the donkey at the moment…. I am joking honestly.
Who chose the site for the recent Chinese lunar landing?
China chose it. IIRC, it was based on minerals.
Last thing Golden Spike want is them and the Constellation program in the same article…
i’d say part of an effective sales pitch for tourism is “we’ll take you HERE” with a nice map of the area all highlighted and colorful, etc. true for Hawaii or the Moon!
ok. book a trip to Russia sometime. imagine they tell you they don’t know where your plane will land. are you really going to use that travel agent?
Not the same thing.
obviously. it’s an analogy.
yeah, but not a matching one.
close enough.
Not really. Plenty of places in russia to go to, and loads of civilization. In addition, plenty of ppl have gone and live in Russia.
There is NO civilization on the moon, only 17 men have been on it, and simply being able to say that you have been on the moon will put you in a unique class for the next 30-50 years.
exactly. now imagine your travel agent said they had no idea where their plane is going to go.
You mean the way that Pac West used to do ‘mystery’ rides?
It was a cool idea that worked great.
i don’t know what that is, but it sounds terrible.
generally if you call a travel agent, you say “i want to go to Russia” they say “sure, we’ve got flights to Moscow, Kiev, Vladivostok, Omsk,” etc.
so Golden Spike looking to find good places to land on the Moon is not surprising. it’s a good business idea. now they can say “we offer travel to Mare Ibrium, Mare Sereninatis, Mare Tranquilitatis, and Copernicus Crater,” or whatever.
it’s not that difficult of an analogy. i’m shocked i had to spell it out for you.