Moonspike Seeks Kickstarter Backers For World’s First Crowd-Funded Moon Rocket
A new project on Kickstarter is aiming to build and launch the world’s very first crowd-funded rocket to the moon.
If it goes ahead, the mission will transport the ‘Moonspike’ to the moon, where it will embed itself in the lunar surface ‘for eternity’ and transmit live images back to Earth.
The tiny titanium spike, which contains a protected data store, has been designed to survive a hard landing with the moon.
A two-stage rocket will carry a smaller spacecraft into orbit in order to transport the Moonspike to its destination.
Pledges start at £3 for which backers get their name listed in the code that flies to the moon, while other rewards for higher pledges include mission patches, posters and a slice of the digital payload for sending your own data to the moon.
The team behind the project is also offering the chance to watch the rocket launch and VIP tours around the factory where the rocket will be built.
A statement from the team on the Kickstarter page reads:
“By rethinking the parameters of space travel, we’re trying to make access to space cheap and accessible for the average person.
“You also have the opportunity to be part of a project that could change the way people think about space access, making it more likely that our children and grand-children have a chance to visit other planets.
“And while it is unlikely any of us will travel to the Moon or Mars in our lifetimes, we can send a little piece of our lives into the wider universe, and be sure that it will exist, somewhere out there in the vacuum of space, for infinity. That’s the primary challenge of Moonspike".
