The Lunar Mission One hopes to crowdfund a trip to the moon.

To promote their ambitious venture, the team announced a contest in a recent post in the Reddit picture community. They asked users to submit a picture—any picture they want—and the top submission will get sent to the moon in 2017.

And it looks like the Internet-infamous phenom dick butt will make it to space, considering this picture is currently winning the competition:

But the space sloth is a close second:



Reddit user omgitssomeguy

In all seriousness, the Lunar Mission One—founded by David Iron, a former project manager at the London Stock Exchange—raised over $1 million dollars last year on Kickstarter.

The first part of their mission seems relatively easy: The team will allegedly send a small disc of pictures to the moon aboard a private astrobotic spacecraft in 2017; the contract was confirmed earlier this year.

But their main 2024 mission sounds less feasible and much more complicated. According to the project’s website, they hope to “send an international unmanned robotic spacecraft to land at the south pole of the moon, an area which is yet unexplored.”

The robot would perform experiments that would ideally lead to a permanent manned lunar base in the future.

There’s just a few problems with this mission. Space travel is really expensive. Unbelievably expensive. The trip would cost millions—if not billions—of dollars. And so far, the team has only raised around $1 million.

And in a recent post in Reddit’s science community, David Iron admitted that they haven’t secured a contract with a major space agency for their 2024 mission.

Luckily, the Lunar Mission One has no plans to create a reality show (unlike other privately-funded aerospace “companies”). Instead, they hope to fund the trip by sending a “digital time capsule” to the moon, which anybody can pay to participate.

Iron explains:

He goes on to describe the economic model:

“The time capsule will also contain an epic digital record of Life on Earth. This archive will be made up of human history and civilisation, and a scientific record of the biosphere with a species database (animals, plants, bacteria etc) – the Public Archive. It will also contain personal information that anyone can pay to be included – the Private Archive.”

The gimmicky concept sounds an awful lot like the Mars One Mission, which begs the question: Is this just another scam or is it a ground-breaking new way to fund space travel?