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Yes. We spent two years asking ourselves that very question. After two years of research, thought, and feasibility studies, we could find no flaws in the plan. That was before we mentioned it in public, before we started Artemis Society International. Our initial estimates of the time we will need to put the business infrastructure together were naively optimistic, but we have learned. Today, that business is coming together, and we are making steady progress toward the debut of the space flight company that will let the contracts to build the spacecraft.
We face three major issues: technical, political, and financial. All these issues must be resolved before we can send our first crew to the moon. Of these three issues, the money question will take the longest time to resolve.
We researched the basic financial model in painstaking detail. We found that although it was very conservative, it nevertheless is very solid. The numbers work--the first mission will earn revenues equal to many times its cost; and those numbers don't include additional revenues such moonrock sales, because we still haven't figured out how to estimate potential income from such a new market.
The cost is well within the range of the money that large corporations spend on advertising related to major entertainment functions such as Super Bowl football games, theme parks, and popular television series. The annualized return on investment matches the numbers asked for today by the most conservative venture capitalists. So the capital should be there if we can put together a good business plan.
We're past the point of wondering whether it will work. If the numbers work, the program will work. That leaves the question of how to make it work, given all the constraints that bound our activities; and that's the problem we're studying now.
We're going back to the moon. We'll keep working the problem until we get there; and if we do it right, we'll have a heck of a lot of fun in the process.
And, perhaps most importantly, you can come, too!
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