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Private Company Granted Approval by U.S. to Land on the Moon

posted by janrinok on Wednesday August 03 2016, @05:29PM   Printer-friendly
from the treaty-obligations dept.

takyon writes:

http://www.theverge.com/2016/8/2/12275980/moon-express-private-mission-spaceflight-us-government

Private spaceflight company Moon Express will soon announce it has been granted regulatory approval by the US government to send a lunar lander to the surface of the Moon, according to a source familiar with the matter. If so, that means the company will be the first private company to have received permission from the government to send a vehicle beyond Earth orbit and on to another world.

Moon Express is a private spaceflight company with long-term hopes of mining the lunar surface. But in the short term, the company is focused on simply getting to the Moon first. The venture is developing the MX-1 — a 20-pound lunar lander designed to "hop" across the Moon's surface. MX-1 is in the Google Lunar X Prize competition, an international contest to send the first privately funded spacecraft to the Moon. In order to win that competition, Moon Express has to get its lander to the surface of the Moon before December 31st, 2017.

[...] Currently, there's no regulatory framework in place that allows the US government to oversee private missions beyond Earth orbit.

And that's a problem, since the US has to adhere to obligations set by the Outer Space Treaty — an international agreement that guides how nations conduct missions in space. Specifically, the US has to adequately oversee private missions to other planetary bodies, as well as ensure that companies don't violate planetary protection.

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Adamsjas on Wednesday August 03 2016, @11:07PM

    by Adamsjas (4507) on Wednesday August 03 2016, @11:07PM (#383809)

    Actually there are a lot of us around here that see the whole social justice, anti-corporation, May-day riots, collectivist, fuck the constitution ranters as the same big ball of dung. Those that scoff like none of that exists are the ones that lose credibility.

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Wednesday August 03 2016, @11:19PM

    by aristarchus (2645) on Wednesday August 03 2016, @11:19PM (#383814) Journal

    Five is not a lot. Anti-social Injustice Quibblers need to learn some maths, or at least counting and the "greater than" function.

  • (Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Thursday August 04 2016, @06:04PM

    by kurenai.tsubasa (5227) on Thursday August 04 2016, @06:04PM (#384143) Journal

    It's possible to recognize the harm SJWs cause and hate them for that without going full retard in the other direction. People who go full retard in the other direction are merely using the growing backlash against political correctness as a guise for their own bigotries.

    I say that as a full-blown misogynist.