Intuitive Machines awards SpaceX another lunar lander launch contract
Artist’s impression of Intuitive Machines lunar lander,
on the Moon
Capitalism in space: Intuitive Machines announced yesterday that it has awarded SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket the launch contract for its third unmanned lunar lander, making SpaceX its carrier for all three.
The key quote however from the article is this:
Intuitive Machines’ first two lander missions are carrying out task orders for NASA awarded under its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. However, IM-3 is not linked to any CLPS missions. Marshall said that the mission “has an open manifest for commercial and civil customers.”
In other words, this third launch is being planned as an entirely private lunar robotic mission. Intuitive Machines is essentially announcing that it will launch the lander and has room for purchase for anyone who wants to send a payload to the Moon. This opportunity is perfect for the many universities that have programs teaching students how to build science payloads and satellites. For relatively little, a school can offer its students the chance to fly something to the lunar surface. Not only will it teach them how to build cutting edge engineering, it will allow those students to do cutting edge exploration.
This is the whole concept behind the recommendations I put forth in my 2016 policy paper, Capitalism in Space. If the government will simply buy what it needs from the private sector, and let that sector build and own what it builds, that sector will construct things so that their products can be sold to others, and thus expand the market.
Since around 2018 NASA and the federal government has apparently embraced those recommendations, and we are about to see that policy bear fruit in unmanned lunar exploration. Below is a list of all planned robotic lander missions to the Moon, all scheduled for the next four years:
- Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander: SpaceX’s Falcon 9 in ’23
- NASA’s VIPER rover: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy in ’23
- Intuitive Machines’ three Nova-C landers: SpaceX’s Falcon 9, two in ’22 and one in ’24.
- Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander: ULA’s Vulcan Centaur, in ’21
- Ispace’s lander: SpaceX’s Falcon 9, in 22
- Ispace’s dual rovers: SpaceX’s Falcon 9, in 23
- Masten’s XL-1 lander: SpaceX’s Falcon 9, in ’22.
That’s nine lander/rovers, and all arriving on the Moon hopefully before 2024. While the majority are carrying government payloads, all also include private payloads. The private market for commercial planetary exploration is certainly heating up.
Furthermore, this list leaves out NASA’s manned lunar program, which is also shifting more and more to this commercial model.
The list above also reinforces what I have noted previously: SpaceX is garnering more than 90% of the launch market for these privately built lunar landers. It is doing so because its rockets are the cheapest available at this time, and are also most likely to launch on time with few problems.
Other rocket companies, such as Blue Origin, ULA, and Northrop Grumman, have an opportunity here, if they simply will start to compete. Their failure to do so, however, has left almost the entire market to SpaceX.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Artist’s impression of Intuitive Machines lunar lander,
on the Moon
Capitalism in space: Intuitive Machines announced yesterday that it has awarded SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket the launch contract for its third unmanned lunar lander, making SpaceX its carrier for all three.
The key quote however from the article is this:
Intuitive Machines’ first two lander missions are carrying out task orders for NASA awarded under its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. However, IM-3 is not linked to any CLPS missions. Marshall said that the mission “has an open manifest for commercial and civil customers.”
In other words, this third launch is being planned as an entirely private lunar robotic mission. Intuitive Machines is essentially announcing that it will launch the lander and has room for purchase for anyone who wants to send a payload to the Moon. This opportunity is perfect for the many universities that have programs teaching students how to build science payloads and satellites. For relatively little, a school can offer its students the chance to fly something to the lunar surface. Not only will it teach them how to build cutting edge engineering, it will allow those students to do cutting edge exploration.
This is the whole concept behind the recommendations I put forth in my 2016 policy paper, Capitalism in Space. If the government will simply buy what it needs from the private sector, and let that sector build and own what it builds, that sector will construct things so that their products can be sold to others, and thus expand the market.
Since around 2018 NASA and the federal government has apparently embraced those recommendations, and we are about to see that policy bear fruit in unmanned lunar exploration. Below is a list of all planned robotic lander missions to the Moon, all scheduled for the next four years:
- Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander: SpaceX’s Falcon 9 in ’23
- NASA’s VIPER rover: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy in ’23
- Intuitive Machines’ three Nova-C landers: SpaceX’s Falcon 9, two in ’22 and one in ’24.
- Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander: ULA’s Vulcan Centaur, in ’21
- Ispace’s lander: SpaceX’s Falcon 9, in 22
- Ispace’s dual rovers: SpaceX’s Falcon 9, in 23
- Masten’s XL-1 lander: SpaceX’s Falcon 9, in ’22.
That’s nine lander/rovers, and all arriving on the Moon hopefully before 2024. While the majority are carrying government payloads, all also include private payloads. The private market for commercial planetary exploration is certainly heating up.
Furthermore, this list leaves out NASA’s manned lunar program, which is also shifting more and more to this commercial model.
The list above also reinforces what I have noted previously: SpaceX is garnering more than 90% of the launch market for these privately built lunar landers. It is doing so because its rockets are the cheapest available at this time, and are also most likely to launch on time with few problems.
Other rocket companies, such as Blue Origin, ULA, and Northrop Grumman, have an opportunity here, if they simply will start to compete. Their failure to do so, however, has left almost the entire market to SpaceX.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
“SpaceX is garnering more than 90% of the launch market for these privately built lunar landers.”
And the only one it didn’t get, the Astrobotics lander, was basically, as I understand it, virtually a giveaway, since ULA wanted some kind of payload on its first test launch of Vulcan.
Still, it would be nice to see Relativity and Rocket Lab getting a little of this business by the mid-2020’s when they get their medium class launchers online. Lord knows, I have no confidence that ULA or Blue Origin will be able to compete for them.
Robert wrote: “SpaceX is garnering more than 90% of the launch market for these privately built lunar landers. It is doing so because its rockets are the cheapest available at this time, and are also most likely to launch on time with few problems.”
One of Space Exploration Technologies Corp’s (SpaceX) goals is reducing the cost of access to space so that commercial space exploration would be possible. It is succeeding.
In the 1990s, Dr. Alan Binder tried to build the Lunar Prospector satellite on commercial funding, but because it was competing with governments, Dr. Binder had difficulty finding the last $10 million to complete the $25 million project as a commercial enterprise. Eventually, he had to get NASA funding, which meant NASA control, and NASA bureaucracy and costs. NASA now gets all the credit for the mission, bragging that they did it for $62 million. To me, that means that they spent that much to do $10 million worth of work.
The bureaucracy imposed upon the scientists and engineers at NASA is costly.