Last week Moon Express, a contender for the Google Lunar X-Prize (GLXP), announced that the company had received interagency approval from the White House, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Department of State and other U.S. government agencies “for a maiden flight of its robotic spacecraft onto the Moon’s surface to make the first private landing on the Moon.” This heady announcement got a lot of press including this story I am linking to because it was in the New York Times, the USA’s so-called paper of record. If the Times writes “gets approval to put robotic lander on the Moon” it must be true. Only this story isn’t true. Yes, the FAA kinda-sorta gave Moon Express permission to land on the Moon. But by the same token, the FAA has no power to deny Moon Express — or anyone — the right to land on the Moon. It’s not in their jurisdiction.
If the FAA has no real power to grant or deny permission to land on the Moon, why did Moon Express ask them for approval? Only Moon Express can know its motives but my guess is they did it for the publicity. Lots of press was generated at very low cost and nearly all of the stories were positive. Moon Express backer Naveen Jain was quoted widely. These are the desired products of clever press relations. But they aren’t really news. And they don’t say much of anything about the true state of private space travel.
A better question to ask than why Moon Express decided to tell the world it had received approval from an agency that doesn’t have the job of giving such approvals would be “why did the FAA go along with it?”
To some extent they didn’t go along with it. Visit the press release section of the FAA web site and you’ll see the agency did not issue a release about the approval (nor, as far as I can tell, did the White House, Department of State, etc.). What they did issue was a “Fact Sheet” about the approval. Follow the link and read this document because it is quite amazing. Most of it isn’t about Moon Express at all but about the tenuous legal basis for granting approval — a basis that is undercut in the final paragraph where the agency pleads for new legislative authority (and money) to legally do what they just did.
Here’s what the FAA actually approved: “On July 20, 2016, the FAA made a favorable payload determination for the Moon Express MX-1E mission. The FAA has determined that the launch of the payload does not jeopardize public health and safety, safety of property, U.S. national security or foreign policy interests, or international obligations of the United States.”
Not really approving the mission, is it? This feels to me more like one of those non-action letters some companies get from the Internal Revenue Service to feel okay about that new one-person subsidiary in the Cayman Islands.
There is a lot of human nature at work here. The FAA, as a regulatory agency, sees itself regulating. The idea that their fiefdom could be expanded a bit must have been appealing, so it’s hard to blame them for playing along. But there’s a danger in this, too. The old Atomic Energy Commission was charged with simultaneously promoting and regulating nuclear power, with one result of that obvious internal conflict being Three Mile Island. Now we have the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy to do those very different jobs.
This is not to say that space travel isn’t already regulated. You need a launch license if you launch from the USA (this license is usually issued to the operator of the launcher, not the payload). If, as an American company, you launch from foreign soil then you need an export license from the USA.
So SpaceIL, the other GLXP team that has a hope of reaching the Moon, is counting on SpaceX — its launch provider — to get their launch license. Though SpaceIL is based in Israel, its American launch means it needs an American launch license. But interestingly they haven’t asked the FAA for a mission or landing license like Moon Express. I wonder why not?
But wait, there’s more! If you transmit to or from your spacecraft using radio frequencies and the transmitter is owned by a U.S. company, then you need a frequency license from the Federal Communications Commission. If you want to collect earth images as a U.S. company, then the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has to issue a remote sensing license. You also must file a plan with NASA saying how do you intend to mitigate space debris from your launch.
But you DO NOT need a license or permission to land on the moon!!! The U.S. government has no jurisdiction over the moon. Our government has no legal framework or basis for that.
Maybe it was just a slow week for space news.
So you’re finding it odd that a government agency would exercise power that it is not supposed to have? Been sleeping for some years, Mr. Cringely?
Sounds like a publicity stunt. The U.S. government can’t grant permission to land on the moon because it doesn’t have jurisdiction over the moon! Did the Chinese government ask the U.S. government for permission to land on Mars?
I don’t know what the company requested from the FAA, but that document only talks about approving the launch of the mission (which is the FAA’s remit). It renders no opinion on the landing itself, so that would seem to be MoonExpress’s embellishment of the facts.
According to https://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/spacelaw/treaties/introouterspacetreaty.html, countries are responsible for their citizen’s activities in outer space, though, and that could be construed to mean that people do indeed need to ask their government for permission to carry out activities on the moon.
This is apparently not the first time a private company has applied for this permission – http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2249064.stm mentions something like it way back in 2002.
The FAA has ALWAYS had the dual role of both promoting aviation and regulating it. To date, there has been no FAA equivalent of Three Mile Island.
Indeed, this dual role has often prohibited the FAA from becoming overtly prohibitive in it’s regulatory work. It’s a good thing, not a bad one.
It’s not too fat-fetched to think, at some point in the near future, the FAA, or some similar federal organization would have the job of regulating space travel. Just as aircraft need a airworthiness certification, spacecraft would need a spaceworthiness certification.
But the one thing that is missing from this article, the one piece of information that is most interesting in this story — is whether or not Moon Express actually has a robotic vehicle in any form that’s anywhere close to launch-ready.
I seriously doubt it.
This opens up a huge can of worms. On earth regulatory authority is because countries have claimed rights to the soil they are occupying. How does this translate to another planet? If you think there are problems with border disputes on Earth, imagine the complex issues with regard to other planets…
Yes indeed. Which bit of space belongs to the United States?
The part that is directly overhead. 🙂
While the FAA has no interplanetary jurisdiction, they still have jurisdiction in atmospheric flight. Last time I checked, any rocket travelling to the moon would have to pass through the atmosphere. Meaning it would also have to file a flight plan and trajectory. I think you’d want the FAA to know if a large ballistic object, travelling at 25,000 mph, was going to be anywhere near a plane.
Clever timing with July 20th.
Please update us on the status of the Cringely contender for the Lunar X-Prize.
They dropped out of that a long time ago.
Bob, we’ve tried our best to be transparent and explain the reasons for our ‘Mission Approval’ needs and strategy. No, it was not a publicity stunt. It was a real solution to a real problem. The core issue was a gap in U.S. regulatory framework to authorize and supervise space missions emanating from its jurisdiction, as required under the Outer Space Treaty (OST).
The problem we were facing, is that no one Federal agency could say yes, but any agency in the interagency review process of a launch license could say no. And the answer we got with soft inquiries with the State Department was clearly no. Meaning they would veto any launch license application from a private entity wanting to do a deep space mission (outside traditional environs of Earth orbit) until there was a regulatory framework in place that would assure U.S. compliance under the OST.
So after decades of commercial space advocates assuming a green light to all the visions of private sector space development, we were the first ones to actually ask the question. And the answer was definitively “no”.
The main problem was/is the lack of any U.S. law authorizing any single Federal Agency to provide the required OST compliance. There was no process or law saying we needed FAA approval, it was our strategy to use the FAA as a backbone to a larger submission addressing OST matters not normally required in any FAA AST launch license review. The FAA rendered an authorization to us on BEHALF of the USG with consensus of the State Department and other agencies being okay with our ‘Mission Approval’ proposal, on a one time basis.
There is a concise explanation of the issue by the Space Frontier Foundation here: https://spacefrontier.org/2016/08/moonexpressapproval/
And Andy Pasztor does a very good in depth explanation in his speculative WSJ article of June 5th: https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-set-to-approve-moon-mission-by-commercial-space-venture-1465166277
We hope that is helpful.
Moon Express.
In your face, Cringely! Haha!
That was my question when I read this a week ago on Engadget. Why does the US government get to say? Fortunately, someone kindly pointed to the Wikipedia article for OST and educated me and the other readers asking the same question.
_
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty
_
Article VI of the Outer Space Treaty deals with international responsibility, stating that “the activities of non-governmental entities in outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, shall require authorization and continuing supervision by the appropriate State Party to the Treaty” and that States Parties shall bear international responsibility for national space activities whether carried out by governmental or non-governmental entities.
Google “Naveen Jain” and “scam”. Read and ask yourself why you should believe press releases out of any Jain company.
From the Washington Post in 2009:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/19/AR2009031900154.html
“A year ago we wrote about Naveen Jain’s current startup, Intelius. Jain left previous the company he founded, InfoSpace, in disgrace in late 2002 after violating insider trading laws and other sketchy activities. After leaving InfoSpace Jain started Intelius, across the street from his old offices in Bellevue, Washington.
In that post we outlined how Intelius, at the time in the process of becoming a public company, was growing revenue via a scam:
…
Now, nearly a year later, Intelius is being deservedly buried in lawsuits and consumer complaints. A long Seattle Weekly expose on Jain and Intelius describes the various legal issues facing the company: 121 complaints to the Washington State Attorney General’s Office, 822 complaints to the Better Business Bureau, a lawsuit in King County Superior Court accusing Jain of inflating financial figures and a Federal Trade Commission investigation for possible violation of laws regulating how credit information is disseminated…
As an aside, all these negative stories are really piling up for Google searches on Naveen Jain. Jain has clearly been using basic SEO tacticts to try to drive those stories down. He maintains at a handful of sites, Naveenjain.com, naveenjain.org and naveenjain.us, naveenjain.info, all of which use his full name in almost every sentence and talk about his philanthropic efforts. All of the sites link to each other, creating a small link farm. Still, the bad news is out there.”
Or here is another good one:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20050307/1735208.shtml
“It turns out that Jain wasn’t just over-emphasizing the future prospects of the company, that (at the time) was nothing more than a random collection of content services (white pages, weather, horoscopes, etc.), he was outright lying about the existing business situation for the company.”
One of the comments on this article is particularly insightful:
“..a completely nothing company pretended to have 100s of millions in revenue and beat wall street expectations with completely bogus revenue, pushing stock up just long enough for insiders to dump their stock and become amazingly wealthy.”
Believe their hype at your own peril. MoonEx is a scam.
Now if we can just get a Kickstarter going to send Trump to the moon …
Even a “successful” kickstarter is no guarantee of success. Just ask him about his kid’s successful one. It’s now 9 months late on a 3 month schedule.
Do we really care if the kickstarter would be successful at getting him to the moon? A simple non-return burn to leave Earth orbit would be sufficient. I could put up with that kind of failure.
“Liberalism is a mental disorder caused by a psychological need to remove all moral judgment from the world to create a sort of communistic, morally stoic society where no thing is either right or wrong, thinking this will eliminate all of the world’s problems…”
Understanding How Modern Liberals Think- Evan Sayet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIboXTpF6t4
If the FAA has no real power to grant or deny permission to land on the Moon, why did Moon Express ask them for approval?
The public relations idea is a good one, but I doubt that’s the primary reason.
The FAA has no real power to grant or deny permission to land on the Moon, but the FAA does have the power to stop any machine from flying in the US airspace on the way to the moon. Interesting they didn’t ask NASA!
Besides, start-ups nowadays are full of progressive young’uns that believe the government is all powerful and must be consulted.
MoonExpress responded above.
See also Joe’s response to MoonExpress.
And this post (below): Dr Strangelove August 13, 2016 at 10:18 pm PDT.
PR is the primary reason, but not to the public, to potential investors. Jain isn’t going to fund this himself, so he’s got to convince other investors that they are real, and that there are no obstacles to them flying that aren’t technical. So there are all sorts of press releases from them about non-technical stuff like getting launch contracts, a launch license, a place at KSC etc. and almost nothing on their technical design.
Jain is always short on technical details, because he thinks he can BS the investors like he’s done in the past.
They claim that they have tried their best to be transparent. Ok, then let’s see a spacecraft design that fits in the Rocketlabs rocket, and let’s see the parameters of the propulsion system that can get from LEO to the lunar surface. We’ve seen nothing like that since the launch contract announcement last year. Instead, we keep seeing recycled pictures and videos of the MX-1, which was a 600 kg spacecraft being launched from GTO. The new spacecraft (MX-1e?) has to be smaller than that, and has to be of higher performance since it’s coming from LEO. We’re going to need ~6 km/sec from LEO to the surface, and it’s all going to have to fit in a 150 kg package.
Then, when you’re done showing us that, let’s see how this vehicle is going to bring anything BACK from the Moon, as Jain is claiming in several interviews. He’s claimed several times that he’s bring back platinum and Helium-3 for $10 mil a launch. NASA’s going to need $700 mil+ for MoonRise to do a sample return, and Jain says he can do it for $10 mil. Let’s see the details MoonEx!
Spot on. All hype to cover the fact that they don’t have a lander sized for Electron, or even an engineering team to design one.
Yup: We’re not sure where all the cynicism is coming from, but see our response to “Dr. Strangelove”. We currently have a team of 26 people, ramping up to 40-50 by year end, mostly engineers.
Perhaps your CEO shouldn’t waste his time trolling the comments sections of internet blogs and should get busy managing his company. Maybe then he’d get better reviews online:
https://www.glassdoor.ca/Reviews/Moon-Express-Reviews-E827947.htm
“Bob Richards, is dishonest to shareholders and employees alike and is a very poor communicator to the rest of the company. He has failed to provide a vision or roadmap to the engineering staff other than paying lip service to the GLXP goals without a real intent to meet them (the CEO does not consider the acquisition of a launch vehicle as a priority). The consensus among the engineering team was that he just wants to live the life of a CEO without furthering the companies stated goals. In January of 2015, Bob fired Andy for reasons that made no sense to the rest of the company. A month later, he fired the majority of the engineering team because they had the gall to disagree with his decision. A month after that, Bob closed the MoonEx offices at NASA Ames Research Park, did significant damage to the relationship between MoonEx and NASA, and moved what remained of the company to Florida. All of these decisions were made without consultation with the engineering team and without warning.
Employees at MoonEx are paid very poorly, especially the younger ones, and are expected to work 60 hour weeks even though they are not given clear direction on what they should be working on.”
Our founder/CEO Bob Richards has been open about the technical challenges we have undertaken. He addresses many of them in this SETI Talk earlier this year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-uRVJOoSlw
The FAA payload review involved technical diligence on our spacecraft and mission design prior to authorization. Our partnership with NASA also involves diligence on our technical design.
One of the reasons we aren’t more open about the reconfigured MX-1E design just yet is that we are in a competitive environment until the end of this year, when the Google Lunar XPRIZE will be culled down to those teams who have XPRIZE-verified launch contracts and mission solutions (currently Moon Express and SpaceIL). We’re eager to unveil the MX-1E but there is no rush for us to be public right now.
We plan to unveil the MX-1E in the fall, in conjunction with the ribbon cutting on our new Cape Canaveral Launch Complex 17 & 18 facilities.
Im in!!!!
Where is the cynicism coming from? I wonder …..
Maybe because there was no technical feasibility assessment by FAA. They merely determined that
“the launch of the payload does not jeopardize public health and safety, safety of property, U.S. national security or foreign policy interests, or international obligations of the United States.”
That is all! Pretty easy considering that this payload will never leave the ground.
You might want to ask some of the engineering team that was fired after posing certain questions and complaints to the founders of Moon Express.
Just remember folks, Caveat Emptor!
Perhaps your CEO shouldn’t waste his time trolling the comments sections of internet blogs and should get busy managing his company. Maybe then he’d get better reviews online:
https://www.glassdoor.ca/Reviews/Moon-Express-Reviews-E827947.htm
“Bob Richards, is dishonest to shareholders and employees alike and is a very poor communicator to the rest of the company. He has failed to provide a vision or roadmap to the engineering staff other than paying lip service to the GLXP goals without a real intent to meet them (the CEO does not consider the acquisition of a launch vehicle as a priority). The consensus among the engineering team was that he just wants to live the life of a CEO without furthering the companies stated goals. In January of 2015, Bob fired Andy for reasons that made no sense to the rest of the company. A month later, he fired the majority of the engineering team because they had the gall to disagree with his decision. A month after that, Bob closed the MoonEx offices at NASA Ames Research Park, did significant damage to the relationship between MoonEx and NASA, and moved what remained of the company to Florida. All of these decisions were made without consultation with the engineering team and without warning.
Employees at MoonEx are paid very poorly, especially the younger ones, and are expected to work 60 hour weeks even though they are not given clear direction on what they should be working on.”
Ouch, those Glassdoor reviews are brutal:
“A screaming train to the Moon which has fallen off its tracks.”
“Like a pirate ship. Well a pirate inner tube anyway.”
The company does not have a team of 26 (mostly) engineers! They had that but they were all fired or quit.
Hahahahaha…
The FAA performed “technical diligence” on their spacecraft? Why would the FAA maintain a staff of people competent to evaluate the competence of Moon Express to pull of a specific design, or the ability to assess the TRL level of their design? They wouldn’t, and they don’t. This isn’t a NASA proposal review board, this is the FAA, they don’t do spacecraft design reviews, that’s just a flat-out blatant misrepresentation of what they do. It’s a lie.
NASA also hasn’t done any diligence on Moon Express’s designs, nor is that part of their relationship. NASA has rented them space, that’s all, and I know they would be horrified to learn that these lease agreements are being misconstrued and misrepresented as endorsements of a commercial design, something which is way outside of the mission statement of NASA. These are both lies.
If you have a technological endorsement from a government agency, provide the link immediately. I assure you that NASA will not be happy with this claim, and that they will be notified immediately that you’ve made it.
The question, of course, is not where the cynicism is coming from, but rather where the optimism or “forward-looking statements” have been coming from at MoonEx?
I wonder how many “golden handshakes” that took?
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