Apparently, it's first come, first served for the riches of the moon, so former-Microsoft and currently very rich dude Naveen Jain is going to figure out to get up there and start digging:
NASA, which ended America's space shuttle program in June, says it wants to privatize spaceflight. Naveen Jain, co-founder and chairman of Moon Express, Inc., wants to go a step further: He wants to privatize the moon itself.Jain's company plans to piggyback on private shuttle flights, using them to carry his lunar landers and mining platforms to the moon.
"People ask, why do we want to go back to the moon? Isn't it just barren soil?" Jain told FoxNews.com. "But the moon has never been explored from an entrepreneurial perspective."
Our nearest neighbor in the sky holds a ransom in precious minerals, Jain explained: Twenty times more titanium and platinum than anywhere on earth, not to mention helium 3, a rare isotope of helium that many feel could be the future of energy on Earth and in space.
When the word "ransom" comes up, that doesn't exactly give me a good feeling about this project.
