X Beyond The Frontier

Commercialising the Moon: the Lunar X Prize and beyond

Next year marks the 40th anniversary of the last manned voyage to the Moon. The Apollo 17 astronauts, Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt (the latter, a geologist, the only scientist-astronaut of the Apollo programme) left the Moon on 17 December 1972, leaving behind them a plaque bearing the words: ’Here man completed his first explorations of the Moon.’

With the last mission of the space shuttle underway and NASA’s plans for future manned missions to space seemingly on hold, it might seem odd to talk about the Moon as a target for exploration. But for a number of organisations, the race to the moon is back on, with the prize of increased scientific knowledge and, some are convinced, of enormous financial gains.

The US, Russia, Japan, China and India all have active manned Moon-landing programmes with somewhat elastic timetables. Moreover, 29 teams are competing for a $30m (£19m) prize, funded by Google, to be the first privately funded organisation to land a robotic probe on the Moon.

Google is funding a Lunar X Prize, one of the competitions organised by the US-based X Prize Foundation, aimed at solving technology-based problems without public funding. The best known of these, the Space X Prize, was won in 2004, with Scaled Composites’ SpaceShipOne taking the $10m prize for the first suborbital flight of a non-government-funded craft.

The Space X Prize was the springboard for Virgin Galactic and SpaceShipOne’s successor, SpaceShipTwo, is currently undergoing flight trials ahead of a planned first commercial flight later this year. With Virgin Galactic claiming to have secured some 500 customers, each paying $200,000 for their flight, commercial space flight certainly seems to be a sound and potentially lucrative venture. The Lunar X Prize entrants have similar hopes.

’Some people argue that the first group of trillionaire entrepreneurs will be involved in the commercialisation of space,’ said Michael Potter, leader of the first team to register for the Lunar X Prize, Odyssey Moon. Based on the Isle of Man, although working mainly from San Francisco, the organisation has already secured a number of customers for lunar landing services from a surprising range of sectors, from hard science to performance art. With Potter quoting costs of up to $5m per pound of payload, it certainly seems like the Moon is a viable business proposition.

’Even now, people say that we shouldn’t commercialise space because of all the problems we have on Earth, but the reality is that in the last 20 to 30 years there’s been a tremendous growth in the commercial business of space; global positioning is a multibillion-dollar business and so are commercial communications satellites,’ he said. ’We’re trying to take it to the next level. We want to bring many of the same business models and disciplines that are used for commercial satellites the launch business, the insurance business, even the maintenance business to use the Moon as an extension of the geostationary orbit. All of these things can go to that next frontier, which is the commercialisation of the Earth-Moon system.

X: Beyond The Frontier - Buy and download on GamersGate

X: Beyond The Frontier is the first part in the X-Universe series of games developed by Egosoft. It tells the story of mankind's rise and fall in the universe, and the attempt by Kyle Brennan to help repopulate the stars using a new ship called the Experimental Shuttle, and how he became trapped in a closed group of sectors linked by a series of jumpgates, owing credits to an alien for helping to save him, and hunted by several people. Unknowingly, a group of secret service people are after him, a group who have tried to hide their races secret, that they are the descendants of a group of Humans who saved earth from the Terraformer fleet they created to help colonise the universe.

Now with the Truth coming out, X: Beyond the Frontier allows the player to play as Kyle Brennan on his hunt to find a way home, whilst helping a group of people find the truth about their ancestry, and continue to help save earth from the Terraformers who are now known as the Xenon.

X: Beyond The Frontier is the first instalment in the X-series of space combat and economy simulators. I played the game a bit some years ago and recently bought it again and have been playing and enjoying it immensely.

It is a complex game; not for point and shoot gamers. The game requires you to think and plan and work to make a place for yourself in the X universe – which is quite large (more than 50 sectors); and you get dropped into the X universe with very little; a slow weak ship and 100 credits. Trade and build a business and an income and upgrade your ship; then explore and eventually when you are strong enough engage with the main storyline. If you like a game where you steadily build up from almost nothing to being a business magnate and a potent military force then this game is for you.

Complex as this game is it is simpler than the subsequent X games and since it begins the X story that runs through all the X games it is the natural place to enter the X universe and begin. A good place to start and see do you like the kind of game it is.

X, Beyond the Frontier

X Computer Game Series, List of X Universe Races, X: Reunion, X: Terran Conflict, X: Beyond the Frontier, X: The Threat, X, Argon Federation

Beyond the frontier, African-American poetry for the 21st century

Software and CD-ROM reviews on file

X-Universe Volume One