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The funding pill.

Mystery Team — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 08:28:40 -0700

One of the most difficult issues facing every team is funding. No matter how you slice it, this mission is likely to cost more than the prize purse. That's a hard pill to swallow for your average venture capitalist.

Wouldn't it be nice if there was already a built in consumer base that needed to purchase multiple vehicles in the near future?

Perhaps a nine nation consortium that wished to create a constellation of nodes on the surface of the moon to be used to gather scientific data, etc.?

Something, perhaps, like this...
http://www.livescience.com/blogs/2008/07/24/lunar-networking-multi-natio...

Hmmm ... potential sales of multiple craft to several different customers. Now this just might add a bit of candy coating to that pill.

Comments?

Still in flux

Mystery Team — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 21:37:23 -0700

The mystery team is still growing. On July 23rd the team gathered to meet with our newest member. We are excited by the level of expertise that they bring to the critical guidance, navigation and control design area.

One interesting discussion involved potential landing sites and target dates. One favorite target is the Apollo 12 - Surveyor III site on 11/19/2010 at 10:00pm EST. This is, of course, the 41st anniversary of the Apollo 12 landing. It has the additional advantages of being nearly "noon" on the moon (waxing, 96% full, important for solar power issues) and the moon is overhead on the eastern US coast during the landing window (good for communication issues). Our final target may be a different location and it may be sooner or later, but this discussion was useful in determining many of the critical factors that effect choosing a target location and date.

Many other topics were addressed to include vehicle configuration trades, GLXP rules and their implications, funding issues, and when to unveil the team. As to the latter, we expect to fill some final critical positions and achieve our next funding goal before we "go public". This could happen as early as this fall or perhaps as late as the Google rules deadline. We are anxious to move forward and to begin sharing our progress in detail.

Taking some of the "mystery" out of the Mystery Team...

Mystery Team — Fri, 30 May 2008 12:39:14 -0700

Just a few hints...

Our Team currently includes exerienced aerospace engineers, a mathematician, a physicist and a former USAF pilot.

We come from varied backgrounds but we all share the common dream of space exploration!

Feel free to ask us questions, we'll answer what we can, as often as we can. But our primary focus is the goal, not the hype!

Best!

Lunar Mystery