In any crowdfunding campaign, there is always a gift that the investor expects to receive when donating to the cause. Instead of a gift, however, we will be offering cash, with a high Return On Investment (ROI).
We estimate that it will take four years to complete the spaceport. Therefore we will offer an ROI of 100% for every year that we keep their money. Therefore, the crowdfunding investor will make a 400% ROI; one dollar invested yields five dollars in return.
It will be marketed as a way for ordinary people (read: non–billionaires) to become space entrepreneurs. Any amount will do. If a person wants to invest $100, then in four years they will receive $500. They will be making a profit from space!
We estimate that the entire tourism space program, which will include a robust space shuttle flight schedule, a sprawling spaceport, a space station, and a lunar base, will cost $200 billion. The program will be constructed in two phases, with each phase costing half of the total.
Phase I operations can be broken down into six categories:
- Reentry Vehicle
- Orbital Vehicle Core
- Intelligence Module
- Cislunar Vehicle
- Crew Module
- Other
Each category includes all of the associated support facilities, including manufacturing plants, refurbishing complex, etc. The cost of the six categories is summarized in Table 1.
Crowdfunding $100 billion will be a tremendous challenge. We propose to crowdfund half of that, or $50 billion, even though that is still a Sisyphus hurdle. All monies collected will be deposited into an interest–bearing account. We permanently keep the money if and only if we reach the $50 billion target.
If we do NOT secure the full amount, we refund everyone's money with interest.
If we do receive the $50 billion investment, a 5:1 payback means that we would have to raise $250 billion just to pay back all of the investors.
The other $50B will come in the form of a loan from a bank that is friendly to space startups. We will borrow $75B using the $50B raised as collateral, with a payment of $6.25 billion every year for 25 years. The first four years will cost $25 billion, so we will deposit that amount into an interest–bearing account. We now have $100 billion for our startup.
Total Startup = Crowdfunding + Bank Loan – 4 years of Loan Payments
Total Startup = $50B + $75B – $25B
Total Startup = $100B USD
We want to retire the bank loan in four years, so we would have to raise an additional $70 billion.
We will also need the other half of the $200 billion price tag, so add another $100 billion to the pile for Phase II.
Phase II operations can be broken down into three categories:
- Earth Orbit Station
- Lunar LOX Facility
- Lunar Surface Station
The cost of the three categories is summarized in Table 2.
Table 3 sums everything up.
We would need to raise $420 billion after we receive the initial $50 billion.
An audacious amount of money to be raised calls for an audacious plan to raise it.
Our audacious plan is this: we return approximately 18,000 kilograms of soil from the lunar surface and sell the material for the equivalent price of a very nice diamond.
Hence the term "Lunar Diamonds." A better name is probably "Pay Dirt."
We would need to sell the lunar diamonds for an average of $4,600 per carat to generate $420 billion.
So, to sum everything up, we raise $50 billion through a crowdfunding effort, borrow an additional $75 billion to start up the program, and then make enough money to pay everyone back by landing on the Moon and returning random lunar samples to sell at auction.
An audacious plan indeed.
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