Forty-seven years ago, Man made the giant leap. The three return tickets for astronauts Lt Col Michael Collins, Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin cost the American taxpayer a reported $25 billion. In today’s money, that would be roughly around $100 billion — a budget today that’s reserved for war machines. But fortunately for our species, inter-planetary travel has become cheaper, faster and more purposeful. Which is why, in 2017, a private company has secured permission to become the first-ever such firm to travel to the Moon. Moon Express, manned by a few engineers and over 20 entrepreneurs, will take off towards the Earth’s satellite sometime in the middle of next year. In every sense of the word, this privately-funded corporation will become the fourth superpower on the planet to deploy a mission of this magnitude... following in the footsteps of the United States, the former Soviet Union and China. Moon Express will ride a purchased rocket, land on lunar soil and thanks to recent regulations, will be able to keep what they mine. And the lunar surface is primed for drilling.

Naveen Jain, co-founder of Moon Express, tells Deccan Chronicle that this is “just the start”. “There are so many applications to this mission. When Steve Jobs and Apple created the iPhone, they didn’t really predict the device would be responsible for so many of these apps we see today. We just don’t know, what the Angry Birds of the space industry is yet.” According to Jain, the Moon business will create several hundred streams of business — from creating new energy resources to disrupting the diamond industry back on terra. We’re talking quadrillions here.

“On the Moon is enough Helium-3 to solve Earth’s energy crisis. Bringing back Moon rock will make it even rarer than diamonds and that means it will have the potential to disrupt the gems industry here. Lovers once asked for the Moon and well, you’ll have it soon. Like I said, this is just the start. On Earth we’re running out of space but when you look up, all you see is real estate. We were always meant to be a multi-planetary society and these are the early days of something phenomenal.”

Top on the list for Moon Express is the setting up of a permanent Moon outpose — a giant lunar port that’ll allow us to refuel spacecrafts, and continue. “Ninety-three per cent of a rocket’s weight is fuel. Now if you were to set up a refuelling station on the Moon, we could have an increased payload and an ability to prepare for a longer trip into Deep Space.” However, the best part is how the distance between the Earth and the Moon has shrunk. Key to this is the EM Drive propulsion tech that’s being prepared by Nasa. It’s an engine that can provide thrust in the vacuum of Space and once operational, it will cover the 3,84,400 kilometres separating us from a lunar landing spot in four hours. It will reach Mars in 70 days and Pluto will be just 18 months away.

“The cost of going to the Moon has already come down to single-digit millions and will continue to come down very significantly over the years to thousands of dollars which will be same as airfare from Los Angeles to Sydney. The EM drive will make the journey faster than a trip from San Francisco to New York City. Our future galactic net will provide seamless communication between Earth and the moon which will be no different than communicating from New Delhi to Washington D.C.”

And Moon Express is confident they are on the brink of the brave new age.

“Landing on the moon is symbolic of what’s possible. It shows that entrepreneurs are now capable of doing things that have only been done by superpowers before. It proves that the next set of entrepreneurs are likely to do things that used to be the domain of nation states. We are living in the most innovative decade of human history and convergence of exponential technologies will soon change the trajectory of how humanity lives in the future. We will have abundance of energy, abundance of fresh water, food and abundance of land that will bring world peace and unleash the creativity of humans on the next set of problems. More importantly, basic needs will be free for everyone,” adds Jain.

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