As mentioned in my BLOG last week, Micro-Space and every other Google Lunar X PRIZE team will have to break through the “Credibility Barrier”. It will take both an interesting financial “Up Side Potential” and a fair Chance of Success to attract investors for these projects. The “Chance of Success” will be judged by each individual investor, and the credibility of each team's plans and promises, supported by relevant achievements, will be a critical factor.

Micro-Space has spent this week investigating low cost options for space testing in detail. The price for the standard UP Aerospace “SpaceLoft XL” flight is $250,000. At about 1/30 the cost of the least cost orbital service (with the Falcon 1) this radically lowers the threshold for producing an extensive demonstration of our “Lunar Lander” hardware flying in space. On top of the cost saving is the fact that the SpaceLoft system is operational and has achieved its promised flight performance. I am confident that SpaceX will also succeed, but when will that company be ready to fly customer payloads?

In the real world, the chance of imperfect test results must also be faced. With a test cost of $250K, several attempts could be absorbed into our low ($10 Million) project budget if necessary. Since the SpaceLoft XL can carry 110 pounds of payload (50 times the CubeSat limit), multiple flight components and subsystems can be included and partial, if not complete, test success is very likely. These test systems can also be full size modules from the Micro-Space “Lunar Lander” system, which avoids specialized development and guarantees that results are representative of modules in our Google Lunar X PRIZE competition system.

The SpaceLoft XL flight will allow ignition and restart of our rocket motors to be well documented in the vacuum, zero G conditions that exist near the Moon. Predicted motor performance and temperatures can be verified. The attitude determination and control functions can be documented in a series of maneuvers coordinated with the motor firings. Performance of our optical navigation systems can be verified in space as well as the radio and tracking links. A wide range of other details will be verified as well, from launch load tolerance to zero G fuel settling procedures.

Micro-Space has made a serious effort to maximize the “Up Side Potential” of our project, by making human transport to the Moon an integral part of our development and maximizing the research potential of our unmanned exploration system on the Moon or Mars. The addition of suborbital spaceflight for the testing phase radically reduces the investment required to demonstrate spacecraft capable of reaching the Moon. Proven spacecraft systems, combined with multiple spacecraft in a Falcon 1 payload, make the success of a Micro-Space competition flight highly likely.

We are still working out the details of our spaceflight tests with UP Aerospace, but the addition of these modest cost tests radically improves the Risk/Cost pattern for the Micro-Space Lunar program.