Humans first landed on the moon in 1969, but manned lunar exploration has been prohibitively expensive since the last landing in 1972. The Vision for Space Exploration planned more manned visits starting in 2020, but the cost is high and there is criticism, with robotic probes being a cheaper option. Cheaper space launch technology is needed for lunar exploration to become more feasible. The Google Lunar X Prize offers a $5 million prize for the first team to launch a rover to the moon and transmit high-definition video.
For centuries, man has dreamed of visiting the moon. This finally happened on July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin of the United States set foot on the Moon in the southern Sea of Tranquility, just north of the lunar equator. Since then, futurists and space enthusiasts have anticipated human colonization of the Moon, or at least further travel. This did not materialize, as the last manned Moon landing was in 1972. Things started to look up January 14, 2004, when US President George W. Bush announced the Vision for Space Exploration, which has planned another series of manned visits to the Moon starting in 2020.
While it appears that humans are returning to the moon, the future of lunar exploration still looks unpredictable. Lunar exploration is extremely expensive. This is for two reasons: high launch costs, due to rocket-based space launch technology, which is very inefficient, not to mention dangerous, and the lack of economies of scale. The Vision for Space Exploration itself is likely to cost more than $20 billion USD (US dollars), resulting in half a dozen moon landings, but there has already been intense criticism of the Vision, including from within NASA. Robotic probes are believed to have similar scientific returns at a much lower cost. Manned lunar exploration is considered prohibitively expensive, more appropriate in the 1960s than today, as the United States was concerned in the 1960s with showing its technological superiority to Soviet Russia.
For lunar exploration to really begin, humanity needs to develop a cheaper way to launch payloads into space. Current costs are around $10,000 USD – $25,000 USD per kilogram ($6,000 USD – $15,000 USD per pound) for low-Earth orbit and nearly double that for moonshots. This means that launching a 20.5-ton (45,000-pound) spacecraft like the Orion Crew Vehicle (with capacity for six people) costs more than $200 million dollars in launch costs alone. This clearly makes lunar exploration something that can currently only be attempted by the wealthiest nations or coalitions of nations.
The possibility of cheaper lunar exploration was bolstered by the September 13, 2007 announcement of the Google Lunar X Prize, a $5 million prize for the first team that can launch a rover to the Moon, must travel 500 meters or more and transmit high-definition video from the surface of the Moon. There are also bonus rewards for milestones such as making a rover that can survive the lunar night, traveling more than 5 kilometers (3.1 miles), capturing images of man-made objects on the moon, or detecting ice in lunar craters. Many commentators on lunar exploration see this kind of achievement as the immediate future of lunar exploration, until alternative methods of space launch are developed to reduce the cost of manned missions.
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