Private Company to Offer Rides to Moon By 2020
A new private venture aims to sell manned trips to the moon by 2020, its founders announced. The company, called Golden Spike (after the final spike built into the First Transcontinental Railroad), plans to sell each moon mission for about $1.5 billion — a relative bargain, said the company’s president and CEO Alan Stern, a former director of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. For the same price as many unmanned robotic missions, Golden Spike will provide a round trip for two humans to the moon.