It's too ambitious for a bunch of amateurs.

We agree a moon shot would be very ambitious for amateurs (unless, of course, they had a budget like the Apollo program). However, those leading the technical work are not amateurs. Where we need additional expertise, we can either hire people who have it and are dedicated to the project, or contract with existing spacecraft builders to do it.

The greatest technical challenges in spacecraft devlopment lie in the areas of materials and processes, and in system integration. These functions require extensive expertise, or expensive learning. Since private enterprise can't afford the expensive learning process, the trial and error for every tiny detail of the process, we will have to hire the expertise.

However, now that we've acknowledged those things, we need to point out that only a handful is experts are required to make the program work. Most of the development work can be done by people new to space flight as long as we have the key veterans available as mentors. Indeed, this is the way spacecraft are developed today by NASA and their contractors. The International Space Station was developed with a handful of veteran spacecraft designers and thousands of engineers hired right out of college.

This process assures that the knowledge and expertise are passed on from generation to generation. The more of this work we do, the better this expertise will be preserved, and the more quickly we will perfect designs and processes which today are in the experimental stage. By creating an economic environment where people from many walks of life are involved in continuous space development, the Artemis Project will accelerate progress toward that future day when commercial space flight becomes viable, and you, too, can travel to the moon.