Lunar Mission One Hopes to Raise £600m Via Crowdsourcing, Offering Donors Chance to Send DNA to Moon
ByOne of your more ambitious Kickstarter crowdsourcing campaigns, Lunar Mission One hopes to raise £500 million when all is said and done to send a robotic spacecraft to the moon.
According to BBC News, the mission's timeline is 10 years from now and the goal is to determine the possibility of establishing a human base on the moon's south pole. Donors to the project will have the chance to put a piece of their DNA, text, photo or some other personal item in a time capsule that will be buried in the lunar surface.
David Iron, the Lunar Mission One project chief, said his team decided to take a crowdsourcing approach because of the huge sums of money governments are already putting into space exploration.
"Anyone in the world will be able to get involved for as little as just a few pounds," Iron said in a statement. "Lunar Mission One will make a huge contribution to our understanding of the origins of our planet and the moon, and will inspire a generation to learn more about space, science and engineering - in the same way that my generation was inspired by the Apollo moon landings."
The first phase of the Kickstarter campaign will end on Dec. 17 and aims to raise £600,000. For the four years after that, donations will be opened up to the general public with different costs tied to sending different mementos into the time capsule. A strand of hair will go for £50, while a compressed video would be about £200.
"The project's long-term legacy will be a new way of funding space exploration," Iron told BBC News. "Rather than just watching the mission, people can be directly involved, not just through funding but helping to make key decisions such as the selection of the landing site or what should be included in the public archive."