The business case for the moon 

Time Markers

00:00 – Episode introduction
00:48 – Panel introduction
01:40 – Topic introduction
02:07 – The significance of lunar missions
05:55 – What is the business case?
08:29 – How does the science community take advantage of the commercial capabilities?
12:04 – What should NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services 2.0 program change?
15:26 – What are the next steps for commercial lunar infrastructure?
17:29 – Let’s discuss safety issues
20:04 – In 5 years, what does the commercial lunar economy look like?

Transcript – Panel Conversation

Mike Gruss – Now we have a panel discussion of experts and familiar faces who are going to talk about the importance of today’s missions, but they’re also going to get into how we should think about lunar exploration for the short and medium term. So let’s start here.

The subject of today’s conversation is the significance of commercial lunar missions and future opportunities. Please come to the stage as I read your introduction on panel. First, we have Mike Gold, president of civil and international space business at Redwire. Previously, he’s worked as an associate administrator at NASA. Mike, come on up and sit here. We also have Dr. Scott Pace. Dr. Pace is the director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs in the first Trump administration, he served as Deputy Assistant to the President, Executive Secretary on the National Space Council. And we have Dr. Phil Metzger remember of the ispace-US Lunar Science Advisory Board, as well as the director of the The Stephen W. Hawking Center for Microgravity Research and Education at the University of Central Florida. And finally, the moderator for our session today is Jeff Foust, senior staff writer at SpaceNews, a long time reporter covering NASA and the author of the morning newsletter. First up, Jeff, it’s all yours.

Jeff Foust – Thanks for joining us. I think this is the first time I’ve ever been on a panel that has been an opening act for a lunar landing. And one of the things about that is that unlike, say, a launch where you might have a hold or a scrub. You know, resilience is on its way to the lunar surface right now, so we’ve got a pretty hard stop. So we’re going to keep this panel moving pretty quickly here, talking about the these issues. You know, in particular, the subject of this is the significance of commercial lunar missions. And so I want to go down the panel and ask each of you, from your individual perspectives, what is the significance of missions like resilience and the other commercial missions that have gone to the moon that will be going to the moon into the years to come. From your perspective, I’ll start with you Phil.

Phil Metzger – Yeah, so I really do believe that space is the future for humanity. I think there’s going to be more economic activity off the planet by the end of the century, maybe well before the end than there is in total on the planet, largely driven by AI. And as AI starts to build out in space, there’s going to be a need for resources to support that. I think it’s going to be explosive growth. And I think we’re on the cusp of it.

Jeff Foust – Scott, from your perspective.

Scott Pace – Well, I think one of the things important, I used to have a math professor who said, If you can’t do the easy problem, you can’t do the hard problem. So we have some hard problems we can see in space in front of us, and we haven’t really flown past low earth orbit, you know, for since your late, early 70s, and so what’s the importance of these missions right now is basically rebuilding capacities and capabilities that we once had, which we lost, and which we’re trying to rebuild again in a new world, new political world, new technical world, so that we are capable of being a space faring country again, and a space faring world when the Apollo astronauts landed on the moon and they did their world tour afterwards, one of the things that was striking to them was how everybody congratulated them, not as this is something the United States did, but this is something we as humanity did. And so I think when you look at this, I space landing, the international teams involved, the rebuilding of capabilities and new capability for traveling beyond the Earth. This is something we as humanity are doing. And so I think it’s a very, very important milestone, not just for the United States and Japan, but I think for really, for the entire world, to build the foundation for what’s what’s going to come next.

Jeff Foust – Mike.

Mike Gold – Exploration is great, commercialization is even better, that if we don’t follow the government with the private sector, we’ve failed, and that’s why I’m so excited about what this mission is going to accomplish. We’ve talked a lot about the lunar regolith purchase.

I don’t know if he’s here, but let’s give credit where credit is due. Though it’s actually Gabriel Swinney’s idea, who was at Department of State at the time. I stole it, gave it to Jim Bridenstine that loved it, and we ran with the idea. And that the Artemis Accords, it took so much effort from so many different people, Karen Feldstein, Meredith McKay, the whole IIR team, and the great Scott Pace, who not only supported us the Artemis Accords, but let’s not forget about the executive order on space resources, and Janet Karika, who is chief of staff, her daughter is here now, Kathleen Karica, feel really old now that I’m talking about Daughters of Friends at NASA, and when we initiated that, we thought it was going to be a policy exercise. I’m a recovering attorney, right?

I wanted to see policy and precedent established. We didn’t dream that would actually come to fruition, and that’s what so you did. Your confidence is excellent. We appreciate it. So really, the legal, the policy that we’re establishing with this, the precedent. Of the purchase is so important. And then I also want to point out, again, the global nature of what we’re doing here. Not only was Luxembourg, Japan, America signatories, the Arden’s Accords, but they were among the three founding signatories. And shout out to Sweden. Where’s our Swedish that they’ve got the house that’s happening with this. Also an accords signatory. It’s so important that we go together. We go in a transparent fashion, we go in a safe fashion, we go in an open fashion. That’s how we build not just better technology, but a better future for all of us.

Jeff Foust – You know, we’ve talked about this being commercial, and what is the business case for commercial intermissions, especially when we still see the government as a major customer.

Scott Pace – Well, again, pardon for kind of an academic answer, but that’s what I play these days. There’s a question about whether or not humans have a future in space, and that question about whether it’s there or not depends on, is there something economically useful to do, and can we live off the land? Can we live beyond Earth Resources, or are we always dependent upon taxpayer nickel? Are we always dependent upon shipments from home, kind of like our college students? And I think that what this is doing is helping answer those very fundamental questions about, is there something commercially useful to do? Can we lower the cost of ownership through exploitation of local resources? What else do people want to do on the moon? And we’re trying to answer questions.

I mean, people have, maybe many in this room have kind of a faith based answer. Of course, humans have a future in space, and don’t really question beyond that, but the answer is, we don’t truly know. And so programs like this are part of steps to answer questions about, what can be done, where can humans go? What can they do? Live around the Earth, and they use local resources, which are answering fundamental questions about, does humanity have a future in space? What is the future of humanity? So the commercial question it may be on the moon that really what we do in the moon is we lower the cost of ownership by using local resources. It may turn out that mining asteroids is maybe something that maybe generates revenue back from Earth. I don’t think we’re going to be shipping water ice back to Earth, but I do think that lunar resources are utterly critical to have a having a sustainable presence on the moon for science and other other activities. So we’re this is exploration, they we don’t know, and we’re doing this to try to find out.

Jeff Foust – Mike, where do you see the the business case being?

Mike Gold – Yeah, so I think we would be remiss if we don’t talk about helium three. We’re seeing a number of different entities develop the helium three concept. That’s something that might have been science fiction, 510, years ago now becoming reality and also rare earth elements. I mean, let’s be clear, we are in an existential race with China relative to not just the moon, but the whole future in space. So not only is there commercial but there’s a whole national security paradigm to this that we cannot afford to lose with and economics are a real part of that. I believe that there are real resources on the moon, which is why establishing the precedent, establishing the policy that we will do today, is so critical.

Jeff Foust – So Phil, how does the science community take advantage of these commercial capabilities?

Phil Metzger – Yeah, so most of what we know about planet Earth actually comes from commercial geology, economic geology, everything we know about structural geology, mineralogy, hydrology, it was driven by economic interests, and that’s what we have lacked in space so far. But now that we’re starting to see commercial companies doing activity in space. I honestly believe this is going to bring in the golden era of planetary science. We’re going to have a flood of access to data like lunar ice, to understand the chemistry, the heterogeneity of the deposits, what were the processes that delivered water to the moon? And it’s going to drive forward our understanding of our solar system. And really, I think the greatest scientific question is, are we alone in the cosmos, and the moon, uniquely can help us to answer that question, because it contains a record of the history of the inner solar system, which we can’t get here on the Earth, where the weathering processes destroy the evidence. But the moon is our attic which contains our history, and it’s going to help us to understand how did earth become a life supporting planet with water and carbon, and how often does that happen elsewhere in the cosmos? So really, the most important science, in my opinion, is going to be done on the moon.

Mike Gold – And let me just echo that there’s so much we don’t know about the moon. 10 years ago, we thought the moon was bone dry. Now we’re talking about vast quantities of water ice through this mission, other clips exploration, I think we can’t even imagine the mysteries that we’re going to unlock and discover on the moon that we don’t even know about right now.

Scott Pace – I would just add, per the point about the helium three. If you’d asked me say, maybe, you know, 10-15, years ago, I would sort of, and I did, and you did, and I rolled my eyes, yes, and I said, Well, show me the helium reactor first. Yes. And what’s different is that there, in fact, is a market for helium three. It’s a very specialized market, the niche market. But you know, there are, there are doe price lists. And you know, once you have a price for something, and you have a market for something, you know, so it may be an exploratory niche area, but it’s not zero. And so that right there says that this is really an important experiment. So these regulatory pilot programs that you’re doing, buying and selling regularly, is really important, because there is, in fact, a non zero opportunity out there that we can go for, that we didn’t really, I think, appreciate or absorb 10 years ago.

Phil Metzger – And if I could add one more thought to that, there is, there have been published studies showing that there is definitely a business case for making rocket fuel on the moon that it will always out compete launching it from the earth after that industry gets established and has a few years to mature, it won’t be immediate, but that’s because launching off the moon, you have a payload mass fraction of about 50% whereas off the Earth, it’s about 2% so you have a factor of 25 advantage from the moon in physics. And so once the economics builds out, and we start doing things like mining water, then the additional benefit, the additional benefits that you get economically from mining helium, become even more economic. I think one of the things people do that’s a mistake is to analyze resources in isolation, whereas it’s going to be a whole ecosystem of economic activity.

Mike Gold – The moon is a stepping stone. And Karen had mentioned the Eclipse Mars mission. We’re not here talking about the moon today. We’re talking about moon to Mars, which is why this is so exciting, technologically and economically.

Jeff Foust – That’s a good point. You know, so much of what we’re seeing in commercial interactivity has been stimulated by the clips program, although resilience isn’t part of clips. I space us is involved with the Draper led mission. That’s a future clips mission. The current clips contracts are going to be coming up for renewal for perhaps what’s called CLPS 2.0 towards the end of this decade, as NASA considers how to continue clips, what would you like to see the agency do differently in terms of additional capabilities, additional market mechanisms, whatever the case may be, to further stimulate this commercial lunar economy.

Mike Gold – So I’d like to see this lunar regolith purchase become the rule, not the exception that we should be doing this with every clips mission moving forward. And by the way, the contracts that will be won today, hopefully via this mission, are with ispace Japan and ispace Europe. And we were very intentional to make those contracts International, to establish global policy and global certainty relative the company’s ability to extract, to utilize and enjoy the fruits of our labor. So I hope we make that a consistent and constant part of clips for both Moon and Mars moving forward.

Scott Pace – I think one of the things that we need to pay attention to, and some of this links back to China, is the issue of building out sustainable infrastructure that is going back to the moon on a one time basis or an occasional basis is really not, not terribly exciting. Several of you have heard me talk about our impact and influence in the Antarctic Treaty System is because we put 3000 people on the ice every summer, and we’re there, and it drives things like power and communications, logistics and so forth.

So having a sustainable, repeatable access to the moon and having a communications and navigation system supporting the room power and all the rest that competition for infrastructure is happening right now. We’re going into a World Radio Conference in two years, and people know how much I care about spectrum. That is going to be confirming the frequencies that we need for common nav the relay systems the Chinese are building now. They got one of the three systems up there. We’re still looking to launch our first ones. So even prior to, you know, human landing, return on the moon.

The infrastructure supporting future sustainable operations is going on right now. So the next step, I think, after you know, the regolith purchases in there, is going to be thinking about, how do we provide these utilities? And NASA is going more toward a commercial approach with the space common nav system that I think extends out to out to the moon. That’s something we need to talk about, both with our Japanese and European friends, as to how we’re gonna go about purchasing services, as opposed to being the owner operator of those kind of services. And I think one of the biggest challenges that the space agencies have is actually the system engineering part. And. That is the kind of energy and innovation you can get out of the private sector is absolutely wonderful. More cost effective, great. All the reasons we all know the challenge is, how do you make sure all these pieces fit together? And so the system engineering and interfaces and standards to have an open system that doesn’t lock people out, that doesn’t have proprietary standards that block competition. Those are some of the things that I think the agencies are going to spend more time thinking about, as opposed to doing, which, frankly, the private sector can do better and cheaper.

Jeff Foust – You’ve thought a lot about about this. Where do you see, sort of the next steps for commercial lunar infrastructure? What’s needed to help explore, continue the exploration of the moon?

Phil Metzger – Yeah, I’ll echo what Scott said about infrastructure. I think construction on the moon is going to be really important. I’ve done many years of research into how rocket exhaust blows soil. That’s a very large problem. It’s going to have geopolitical implications. If you land on the moon and you damage another nation’s assets, it could cause problems. And so we need to figure out how to manage that. One of the ways to manage it is to build landing pads on the moon and to place them strategically. And I think it would be fantastic if the clips program does more missions. They’re working on construction technology, space resource prospecting and extraction. And then how do you make a concrete like substance, then testing the quality of what gets made as a small coupon next to eclipse lander, leading up towards larger missions building entire landing pads. I think the day that we build a landing pad on the moon will be one that goes down in history, because it’ll be the first time that we’ve built a permanent structure on another world.

Mike Gold – And this is where we need funding and focus from NASA Space Technology Mission Directorate. At Redwire, we have a tipping point contract for a device called Mason, which will use microwaves to center the regolith to create that landing pad and to deal with plume debris. Imagine if we had a surface like that would create incredible infrastructure, as Scott says, and allow us to sustain and further commercialize lunar activities.

Scott Pace – And if there’s limits on the size of the landing pad you can make, then one of the other measures you can do is putting up berms, but I need a piece of lunar construction equipment where the seals aren’t shredded by lunar dust almost immediately, to be able to sort of move and shove earth or regolith around to produce those burns. So there’s, there’s a whole series of things that overlap with each other, to have this kind of sustainable access to the moon.

Jeff Foust – And quickly, you know, there any policy issues that come off response, responsive hearing about, you know, plumes and that brings up the issue of safety zones and and such. What are some of the key policy issues that need to be addressed to support commercial lunar exploration?

Scott Pace – Well, I think, I think one of the one of the big ones is simply going to be, how do we do communications in coordination with the other major country that’s going to be out there, which is China? We don’t have, I think, an easy way of having bilateral conversations with China. There are some efforts in the UN now creating sort of a multilateral forum for simply information exchange. I don’t think it’s us Chinese cooperation, but maybe it’s us Chinese coordination. And I think a lot of the things that they want to do are things that are consistent with what we want to do, use of resources, doing science, having permanent presence, building infrastructure. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a zero sum game.

On the other hand, there is a larger international conflict. China is positioning itself to be leader of the Global South. It’s active in the BRICS countries. There’s a lot of discussions among those countries about benefit sharing and what that means. And, you know, there have been earlier discussions about a more sort of socialized system for economics. And so those, some of those old arguments are going to come back, and I think the Chinese are going to be kind of torn. On one hand, they’re going to want to look for ways to kind of poke at us in these areas, and on the other hand, they and we both have interests in having a relatively free hand in developing those resources for our own benefit. So we have things in common, and we have areas of tension. They’re going to play out in the multilateral form.

Mike Gold – And we’ve talked about the Artemis Accords, and let’s go to the scoreboard. As Karen mentioned, we’re at 55 they’re at 13. We need to lean forward more to ensure that we’re first to the moon and that we launch not just our hardware and our astronauts, but our values of transparency, freedom, of entrepreneurialism, but the accords were a beginning of a discussion, not an ending. So we need to deepen what we began, for example, in terms of interoperability. What does that mean? Let’s make sure that we don’t have a VHS beta moment on the moon. By the way, as remiss, I need to thank my friend Andrew from OIR, who also helped out with the accords. It helped me personally in Dubai, and then mission authorization, we’re here, landing on the moon before we’ve gotten mission authorization figured out. So let’s make sure that the policy doesn’t fall behind the technology, which, candidly, we’re already in danger of having.

Jeff Foust – Wouldn’t be a panel without invoking Article Six.

Mike Gold – Had to Yeah.

Jeff Foust – We are about out of time here. So just very, very quickly, if we’re here in five years from now, what does the commercial lunar economy look like? Just just a snapshot here, in a few seconds.

Phil Metzger – Five years, it’s hard to predict the next five years. If you said 40 years, I think it’d be a lot easier, because things are going to tip within the next five to 10 years. But I think we’re going to see continued growth in space resources and lunar infrastructure, building landing pads will be an early activity prospecting. I think we’re going to see more of that growing. I think it’s going to be focused on the moon, because the moon is where international policy is being settled. And to participate, you’ve got to be a player.

Jeff Foust – All right. I’m getting the stop sign here, so we’re going to leave it at that. One of the things about being an opening act is, you know, have to, no one have to get off the stage for the headliner. So please give the panel a round of applause and looking forward to a hopefully successful landing here in a few minutes.