Some pioneering individuals who used to work for NASA have set up a company called Golden Spike. Their goal is to send the first tourists to the moon as part of their space tourism venture, their deadline is before 2020. The company said that this business was perfectly timed as the there have been developments in the private sector in areas like suborbital space lines and the private trips that have been made to the International Space Station.
“Golden Spike will exploit these advances, and others in the late stages of development, for commercial use, to offer human expeditions to the Moon at prices comparable to robotic flagship missions,” the company’s website says.
Of course any attempt to tap into the tourism market for space travel is going to have to dramitically lower costs to attract people able to afford these trips. The company is hoping to also target commerical interests and expeditions for space and science agencies and various corporations. The idea is that the entire trip will be automated and controlled automatically which will obviously save the effort needed to teach prospective clients how to fly a rocket!
The initial trips will be prestige and science related missions to the moon to trial and promote the service. The company are also expected to benefit from huge exposure from social bookmarking seo exposure to their website when the missions started. There are advanced techniques which should ensure that any trip will benefit from huge global exposure on the internet.
