Friday, December 31, 2010

MOON EXPRESS - Happy New Year!

I’d like to extend my best New Year wishes to friends and colleagues at NASA, the X PRIZE Foundation, Google and all those supporting and creating the emerging commercial lunar industry.  

It’s been an amazing year of progress in commercial space. While underscoring the value of public-private partnerships in the opening of the space frontier, the “slam-dunk” success of the SpaceX F9/Dragon flight proved that entrepreneurial efforts can be successfully leveraged with government incentives to do great things. In the same spirit, NASA made a first step toward extending this model beyond Earth orbit with the introduction of the “Innovative Lunar Demonstration Data (ILDD)” program, selecting six U.S. companies for contracts worth up to $10M from the purchase of data arising from their commercial lunar activities. 
 
Moon Express is excited to be one of those selected by NASA for the ILDD program and one of the three companies chosen for the initial $500K Task Orders. This first small step along the commercial path to the Moon will prove how the private sector can respond quickly to incentivized market opportunity. We were also proud to be announced as a new contender in the $30M Google Lunar X PRIZE competition. Together, the NASA and GLXP incentives have raised the stakes to critical mass.  

I am proud to serve as MoonEx CEO. It has been an absolute pleasure working with our founders, investors, executive team and staff in standing up a company with the experienced people, partners and financial resources to blaze a trail to the Moon. I continue to be awed and inspired by what people can do when struck with passion and vision. With the right mix of people, technology and capital, anything is possible. I have the good fortune to be surrounded by incredible people who have come together to make it happen; in many cases making substantial changes in their careers and personal lives to do so. But that’s what it takes to create the future. The many dreams shared by my friends and colleagues on the NewSpace frontier have never felt so close at hand.  

It’s an exciting time for commercial space. We are at an epochal turning point in human history. Moon Express was aptly named in honor of the bold entrepreneurship and public-private railway partnerships that opened up the American west to growth and prosperity. As we continue to learn more about the Moon and its resources, our curiosity and capital will migrate from exploration to development and ultimately settlement, helping secure our survival as a multi-planet species.  

Happy 2011 everyone. Let’s make it epic and continue to turn our dreams into reality!  

~ Bob

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