Looking for a Christmas gift that’s out of this world? Terrible puns aside, why would you settle for socks and chocolates when you could buy your loved ones… immortality on the moon.
Here’s an in-depth CGI mock-up of what that might look like.
David Iron, a British engineer and city financier, is offering members of the public a chance to buy space on memory discs which will be buried in a bore hole drilled into the lunar surface.
“People can put any information they like in the memory disc; it will be like a personal time capsule, a private archive. It could be a small message saying ‘hi, I’m Joe’ or a whole family history,” Iron explained.
Under the scheme there will be hundreds of discs, each one about two inches in diameter. People helping to fund the mission will be promised a small part of a disc on which to load information
Iron is an ambitious man. He wants to privately launch a mission to the moon, due to blast off 10 years from now. He calls it Lunar Mission One.
In addition to your memories being drilled into the moon, the stuff that’s being removed to make space is going to be analysed. The rock drilled out of the lunar crust could be analysed right there using a package of scientific instruments, or left behind for human moon explorers in years to come.
The moon material is 4 billion years old and will be taken from a depth of up to 300 feet.
Iron insists that in the future space exploration is going to have to be done by private ventures such as his.
“Governments are finding it increasingly difficult to fund space exploration that is solely for the advancement of human knowledge and understanding as opposed to commercial return,” he said.
“The world class team of advisers and supporters we have assembled will address this issue and crucially anyone from around the world can get involved for as little as a few pounds.”
He’s looking to send the discs to the moon using a commercial rocket, such as the Falcon 9 from private space transport pioneers SpaceX.
And Iron is making contacts with all the right people. Among his advisers are the some of the guys that helped put the Philae lander on a comet last week.