Video: Moon Express’ Naveen Jain Discusses Moon Plans
Moon Express Co-founder Naveen Jain talks to the folks at CNBC’s Squak Box about mining the moon, honeymooning on the moon, dinosaurs and the moon. He’s very, very excited about the moon thing.
13 responses to “Video: Moon Express’ Naveen Jain Discusses Moon Plans”
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Pretty fun! That guy’s infectious 😀
He lost me for a moment there with that Helium 3 mention, but I was soon back on board! I guess that $10 million price to the moon though must be NASA mission style — that is, not including the price of the launch in the mission price (Falcon 9 launch costs $62 million, iirc)? Either that, or they’re already counting on rapid reuseability and variable costs coming down to mostly just fuel. Or having rides to the moon they can share?
Anyway, the first step is to actually get to the moon, which they’re working on. And costs are definitely going in majorly the right direction.
Good luck to Moon Express!
Gotta hit all the NewSpace greatest hits in your song and dance. The $10M is the approximate unit price for a Rocket Labs small sat launch (which has yet to be built or flown) of their little lander (which also hasn’t been built or flown yet).
A Rocket Labs Electron launch is actually about $5 million. The remaining $5 million presumably covers Moon Express’s lander hardware and profit margin.
It will be $10M by the time they get around to actually flying. :/
Rocket Lab says it’ll be making initial test flights before year-end 2016. Moon Express only has until 12-31-2017 to win the Google Lunar X-Prize (unless the deadline is extended again). Rocket Lab has already publicly stated its launch price. Based on what the company has publicly stated about its technology, I see no reason to think the variable costs of fabricating an Electron vehicle would be so high as to mandate an increase in the currently stated launch price in order to make a very tidy profit. Doubling said price on short notice wouldn’t be a good business strategy and would void any MOU’s or contracts already signed. Unless you know something the rest of us aren’t privy to, I see no basis for your comment.
That said, if 12-31-2016 arrives with no Rocket Lab test flight yet notched, then the credibility of the company takes a big hit and everything any other company is planning to do that depends on Rocket Lab launches is also called into serious question. I’m content to await developments.
It is because they have yet to actually test or fly their rocket. Their costing is based on their previous hobbyist scale rockets and probably more than a little bit of WAGing. Fabricating a “real” orbital launch system, testing it, debugging it, shipping it across the planet, learning to play by CCAFS’s rules, and myriad other things is a lot different and more expensive than shooting rockets down in NZ.
Their schedule is full of wishful thinking. It would be highly ambitious for a National Agency with copious resources. The odds of a testing and flight program running perfectly and being able to successfully put a payload into LTO is… long. And even then its going to require resources they aren’t budgeting now to make it in time, and that will cost more.
You speak with such authority, sir, that, in a bad light, one might almost suppose you actually know what you’re talking about.
It occasionally happens.
I sincerely hope to be around for one of those occasions.
Trolling on a space blog. For shame.
Snarking on a space blog.
Its great to see that level of passion for the Moon. It is really the economic key to the Solar System.
Naveen Jain?! The old swindler is working in Commercial Space?!