After spending five years in semi-stealth mode, a San Francisco venture called the Open Lunar Foundation is talking about its plan to create a settlement on the moon at a cost in the range of $5 billion.
“At $5B, it’s not only achievable within current NASA budgets, it offers the tantalizing possibility that a single passionate individual could fund the entire program as their legacy!” Silicon Valley venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson said today in a tweet.
Details about the campaign came to light in a Bloomberg News report, which said Jurvetson provided the nonprofit foundation’s initial funding. Open Lunar currently has a “war chest” of about $5 million, with aspirations of raising more funding for hardware as well as policy initiatives, Bloomberg’s Ashlee Vance reported.
The idea of having a nonprofit group lead the charge for a moon settlement, as opposed to a government program, may sound a bit airy-fairy — particularly since it’s not coming directly from the likes of SpaceX CEO Elon Musk or Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, founder of the Blue Origin space venture.
But this is not just any run-of-the-mill nonprofit group.
