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Quite literally, all over the world. Artemis Society International has members in every industrialized nation, on every continent, on the planet. The Artemis Data Book, still far from being complete, has grown to about 2,000 web documents covering every aspect of lunar development.
In terms of spacecraft development, we're just a bit past the viewgraph engineering stage, moving into conceptual design and selecting sources for the major portions of the spacecraft hardware. Most of this is being done by volunteers, members of the Artemis Society around the world; but a significant portion of the work is being accomplished in anticipation of the commercial businesses being developed in parallel.
In parallel with the development of the Reference Mission, a team of Artemis Society members are into the preliminary design stage of a precursor "microlander" mission that will land a camera on the moon. This is the first of many such missions we expect to conduct before our first manned lunar landing.
Several items in the "Moonbase Artemis" and "Artemis Project" product lines are available now, and many others are being developed by a world-wide team of commercial enterprises. Keep an eye on the online catalogs for details. The Artemis Project has spawned several new companies, in diverse areas from electronic communication to vacation resorts.
Our feasibility study is looking at technical, political, and financial issues in more detail to see if we can discover a fatal flaw in the plan.
We've discussed the technical arena elsewhere these papers. To summarize: technically, we have run out of show-stoppers.
Financial issues have moved past the initial feasibility study. Now the major issues are the program implementation plan (who does what and when), and the best methods for capitalizing the space flight and attendant business ventures. Another key financial issue is the availability of existing technology; it's there, but the major question is how much it will cost. We're still working on the detailed business plans that will move the project from its concept to implementation phases.
Politically, the situation is mixed. From the government side, this is definitely the right thing to do and the right time to do it. On July 2, 1996, NASA Administrator Dan Goldin commented, "I would like to see the commercial industry to start acting like commercial industry, and not come back to Uncle Sugar every time they need help." But from the private industry side, we've encountered a fear from aerospace contractors that the U.S. government, their primary customer, will not want them to participate in the program. Our major political challenge is to resolve the incongruity of these two opinions.
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