OpenLuna: Returning Humankind Back to the Moon, Open Source way!
The OpenLuna Foundation was founded to return mankind to the moon through private enterprise. With Obama administration deciding to scrap NASA's moon mission once and for all, the role of private enterprise in future space endeavorers of humankind has grown ever larger.
The OpenLuna Foundation seeks to return humankind back to the lunar surface, first through robotic missions which will be followed by manned exploration mission and finally this massive project with long gestation periods is supposed to culminate with the deployment of a permanent outpost in the moon. And all the information about OpenLuna project will be publicly available! That is so Open Source.
One of our specific goals of the OpenLuna project is to reach out to the community and educational systems to spread interest, enthusiasm, and involvement. A few more bulletpoints about the project.
- All aspects of the mission plan and hardware will be open source. This information will be publicly available.
- Mission hardware will be light and geared toward continuity from one mission to future missions. Saving costs and simplifying the mission and hardware.
- Access to all scientific data and acceptance of outside research proposals will be encouraged.
- Privately funded with no government advocacy for any country or dependency on government funds (though they can be sought just like any other company).
Even if everything goes wrong, its a good thing that even private enterprises are finding reasons to go Open Source. And lets hope OpenLuna is just a start and more and more enterprises will opt the idea of sharing and collaborating.