Moon Express was started with a tweaked concept from President John F. Kennedy, Jr., said founder Naveen Jain.
"To rephrase JFK, we chose to go to the moon not because it's easy, but because it's good business," said Jain, the former CEO of dot-com InfoSpace, told CBS MoneyWatch. He said he was initially drawn to space exploration not because he had an interest in it, but because he's "a fan of everything that can become disruptive."
And Moon Express has plans to disrupt some major businesses on Earth. Last week, the company became the first private business to receive FAA approval to land on the moon. While the 2017 launch date is still a ways off -- and the company's lunar lander still needs to be built -- Jain has no shortage of business plans for the moon, which he notes has been estimated to hold "16 quadrillion dollars worth of resources."
One of the first projects will be lunar burials, with Moon Express working with space memorial company Celestis to provide the service. The idea is similar to families who want to commemorate their loved ones by sprinkling their ashes over a favorite body of water or golf course. Instead, customers will pay about $12,500 to send a capsule of their loved one's ashes to the lunar surface via Moon Express' lander.
"Much closer to heaven is to send the ashes to the moon," Jain said. "It's symbolic of something you see everyday when you look up."
In other words, Jain believes people will pay to be able to look up at the moon and feel some part of their loved one is commemorated in the night sky. It's clear there's a market for space burial, given that Celestis has been providing space memorials since the late 1990s.
Its Founder's Flight sent the ashes of "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry and psychologist (and space proponent) Timothy Leary into orbit. Yet so far, only one person's ashes have actually been buried on the moon: Eugene Shoemaker, a scientist who trained American astronauts, said Celestis co-founder Charles Chafer. His ashes were taken to the moon by NASA, via its Lunar Prospector mission.
The moon "is a compelling site for a memorial," Chafer said. "Two of our services are below the average cost of a funeral, but [the lunar burial] has to be a little more."
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