Editor’s note: This article was first published in December 2012, when Golden Spike Company announced its plans for trips to the Moon. The company is not known to have flown any mission, so the piece is best read as a period report.
Who said the future of travel agencies lay in low-cost trips? Former NASA employees have set up Golden Spike Company, a company that plans to sell trips to the Moon, drawing on these entrepreneurs’ expertise in the industry.
These trips will cost 1,160 million euros per expedition, and they will be carried out using existing rockets and spacecraft, some of which are still in development.
Alan Stern, NASA’s former associate administrator for science and now president of Golden Spike, has said that the first expedition will have to cost more, somewhere between 5,415 and 6,190 million euros, to cover the initial costs; after that the company will be able to charge around 1,160 million on average (so grab the bargain while it lasts).
The company’s potential customers are space agencies, corporations, research institutes and multimillionaires, and it is above all the last group who will end up wanting these trips.
It’s not exactly the holiday of anyone’s dreams: whoever travels there won’t come back with a tan, won’t see exotic beaches or monuments, won’t meet new civilisations or learn the secrets of the local culture. But they will be able to tell their grandchildren they’ve been to the Moon.
Watch: Golden Spike Company’s announcement video
I know, the world is going mad.
Featured image: NASA / Harrison H. Schmitt, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
