Washington: Serial entrepreneur and founder of Infospace and Intellius Naveen Jain unveiled a plan that could put the first entrepreneurial venture on the Moon. “The moon has never been explored from an entrepreneurial perspective,” he told a crowd of at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif. “Think of the moon as just another continent that is part of our ecosystem,” he added.
Mr Jain’s Moon express company that's aiming to send the first commercial robotic spacecraft to the moon next year.
He believes that the moon holds precious metals and rare minerals that can be brought back to help address Earth’s energy, health and resource challenges. Among the moon’s vast riches: gold, cobalt, iron, palladium, platinum, tungsten and helium-3, a gas that can be used in future fusion reactors to provide nuclear power without radioactive waste.
It’s an exciting prospect, considering supply on Earth for such rare minerals as palladium—used for electronics and industrial purposes—is finite, pushing prices to $784 an ounce on April 2. Jain’s Moon Express is just one of 29 groups competing for the Google Lunar X Prize, which will award $30 million to the first team to put a lander on the moon by the December 2015.
The first customer — the International Lunar Observer Association — wants Moon Express to put a telescope on the far side of the Moon. The project may cost more than $70 million.
