THE PLAN FOR SUSTAINABLE
SPACE DEVELOPMENT

- establishing an initial infrastructure on the Moon -



ADDITIONAL SOURCE OF REVENUE

Besides the main source of revenue, there are some other, recognizable potential sources of income. These may be harder to quantify but may turn out to be larger than one might normally expect. The page on public inspiration describes a multi-year TV series allowing the public to follow developments as humanity starts taking its first permanent steps off Earth. Media rights could generate a significant amount of revenue. Companies could also charge for product placement to increase revenue. Similarly, people could be charged for the virtual reality experiences of practically being present at these historic events.

But additional revenue from media wouldn't be the only additional source of income. Tourism would probably be a moderate source of revenue. Another noticeable source of revenue could be merchandising (e.g. A toy dog in its space suit, astronaut action figures, lunar habitat doll house, shirts, video games, etc.)

Believe it or not, jewelry made from lunar rocks might actually generate a significant amount of revenue. Consider ten 1 x 1 x 1 meter cubes of rock sent back to Earth as a single payload. Cut to 0.5 x 1 x 1 cm pieces, this payload would yield 50 million pieces of the Moon. This means that only one out of 150 people on the Earth could own a piece of the Moon (or if you prefer, one out of 300 women). Even after shipping 10 cubic meters of rock to Earth, pieces of the Moon would still be rare within one's own, personal, social network. Pieces of the Moon would still be rarer than diamonds. If one charged $300 for each piece of the Moon, the development costs of the program would be covered.

Other sources of revenue could include sales of propellant and propulsion service throughout cislunar space (e.g. transport to Mars, boosting satellites to GEO, orbital servicing, orbital debris removal, etc). Some also make the case for mining platinum group metals on the Moon and launching materials (e.g. metals) off the Moon for use in cislunar space (e.g. for space solar power) among other ideas.

There are a number of identifiable sources of revenue while developing the Moon with the sale of transportation to the Moon being at the heart of it all.


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