LunaCorp
LunaCorp was a company headed by David Gump, and established in 1989 and based in Arlington, Virginia.[1][2] It was designed around a privately funded mission, using Russian technology, to put a rover on the Moon. The goal of the company was to fund the mission by the entertainment value of having customers drive the rover.[3] The program's advisor was Dr. Buzz Aldrin.[1][4]
In 1995, the company intended to have two rovers on the moon by 1998.[3] The rovers were never launched.[5] The company received funding from Radio Shack in 2000 to build a rover to search for ice at the moon's poles.[4] It was expected that the commercial lunar rover would bring in revenue by selling science data and entertainment.[5] Gump also proposed sending back live visuals and movement data that could be translated into an amusement park ride.[6][7] He hoped to recoup one-third of the rovers' cost by selling the ability to control its rovers to theme parks and science museums.[8][9]
After producing no tangible results the company was dissolved in 2003.[1]
The details of the mission evolved with time. Because the Moon is hotter than boiling water at noon and colder than liquid nitrogen at night, in the final version of the design the robot would avoid those extremes by circumnavigating the Moon every 29.5 days (the length of a lunar day) to stay in sunlight, a strategy originally proposed by Geoffrey Landis. "Our robot, by driving completely around the Moon at a high latitude at only a few kilometers per hour, will enjoy lunar morning temperatures all the time by staying in sync with the sun", said the mission's controller.[10]
References
[edit]- ^ a b c "Snapshots of LunaCorp History | Lunacorp.com". lunacorp.com. Retrieved 2025-02-11.
- ^ Wilson, Jim (June 2000). "Postcards From the Moon". Popular Mechanics.
- ^ a b Baker, Stephen (September 25, 1995). "Is There Money on the Moon?". Business Week (3443): 142–144.
- ^ a b Dasch, E. Julius; O'Meara, Stephen, eds. (June 21, 2018). A Dictionary of Space Exploration. OUP Oxford. ISBN 9780192526595.
- ^ a b "Radio Shack signs on as first LunaCorp sponsor; lunar rover set for 2003". Aviation Week. June 16, 2000. Retrieved 19 February 2025.
- ^ Koehl, Carla; Rogers, Adam (December 5, 1994). "A Private Trip to the Moon". Newsweek. 124 (23): 10.
- ^ Dudek, Gregory; Jenkin, Michael (February 28, 2000). Computational principles of mobile robotics. Cambridge University Press. pp. 243–244. ISBN 9780521568760.
- ^ Wilson, Jim; Gleaves, Kathleen; Gromer, Cliff; Rosenberg, Barry; Schrader, Richard (July 1996). "Japanese Industry Aims For Moon's Resources". Popular Mechanics.
- ^ "Drive Your Own Moon Rover". Popular Mechanics. June 1994.
- ^ "LunaCorp Launches Plan for Multimedia Moon Robot". Space News. June 15, 2000. Retrieved 19 February 2025.
External links
[edit]- LunaCorp press release (2000) from Space Frontiers.org Archived 2006-09-27 at the Wayback Machine
- Snapshots of LunaCorp History, 2007.
- Interview: LunaCorp and Orbital Outfitters Archived 2011-07-14 at the Wayback Machine, Daily Spaceflight News, 15 December 2010.
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