The Trump administration, its Space Council, and that council’s head, Vice President Mike Pence, are looking for a way to get to the moon fast. And to get there to stay. They are impatient with current NASA plans. Those plans won’t get us to the moon until long after President Trump is out of office.

The Space Development Steering Committee proposes a six-part COTS program that will get us on the moon to stay at a fraction of traditional costs and far faster than traditional NASA plans.

What’s a COTS program? Traditional NASA procurement depends on cost-plus contracts, contracts that encourage aerospace companies to stretch the completion of a project to infinity and to constantly balloon the cost. Why? Because every time the government changes its mind about what it wants to do, the companies get a percentage of every additional dollar. And they get paid whether what they are building works as required or not. In reality the contractors have no incentive to produce anything quickly or cheaply. 

COTS programs are different. Companies bid to achieve goals at a fixed price, not an elastic, ballooning cost. The companies are expected to pay for part of the development cost. And finally, the companies are only paid when they achieve measurable real-world milestones.

The result? NASA can reduce the expensive oversight burden that is a key element of the cost and schedule overruns of traditional NASA programs. This lowers costs.

The Space Launch System including the rocket, the Orion crew capsule that rocket will carry, and the required ground launch facility modifications will cost the US tax payers at least $30 billion before the SLS’ first launch hopefully sometime early in the next decade. Meanwhile, NASA has invested about $3 billion in SpaceX rocket development since 2006. For this, SpaceX has developed multiple versions of the Falcon 9 launch vehicle, which more than doubled the performance of its Merlin engines from 76,000 pounds of thrust in 2010 to 190,000 pounds of thrust in 2015. What’s more, SpaceX is now able to recover and reuse the first stage, which cuts costs dramatically. For its $3 billion, NASA also got a cargo version of the Dragon capsule and will soon have a crewed Dragon capsule that can carry up to seven astronauts to the International Space Station.

SpaceX rockets have delivered fifteen three-ton cargo packages to the International Space Station while the $30 billion Space Launch System has never flown. And SpaceX’s Dragon crew capsule, the space taxi that will take Americans to the International Space Station on an American vehicle for the first time in eight years, has flown, docked with the International Space Station, and returned to earth.

The Space Development Steering Committee proposes the following six-part COTS program for the moon.

1. First, NASA should kill the Space Launch System, the SLS-dependent Orion Capsule, and the SLS-dependent Lunar Orbital Platform/Gateway. Why? To free up $30 billion for a real Moon program and for an actual follow on to Mars. At least one huge private sector rocket is already flying—SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy. And SpaceX’s hundred passenger Starship and Jeff Bezos’ New Glenn are on the way. It is time for NASA to forget rockets and to develop the infrastructure for the first lunar hamlet, for the first real estate development on the moon.

2. NASA should run a COTS competition for rovers to prospect the moon for water. Lunar probes indicate there is water in craters on the lunar poles. Water is the gold of what space expert Dennis Wingo calls the Moonrush. Water provides a beverage to drink, oxygen to breathe, and hydrogen and oxygen for rocket fuel. There are ten rovers and hoppers in development by some of the sixteen private teams that competed for the Google Lunar X-Prize, a competition that started in 2007 and shut down in 2018. A COTS program can give these teams the money they need to finish their landers and rovers…at a tiny fraction of Space Launch System costs. And those rovers can be sent scuttling across the lunar surface to look for water. In fact, one of those landers, Israel’s Beresheet, will land on the moon in the next few weeks.

3. A COTS competition for a lunar ferry, a vehicle that can land passengers and cargo on the moon, then can return to earth orbit to pick up more passengers and cargo. Elon Musk’s upcoming Starship would be a perfect lunar ferry. It will be able to carry up to 100 passengers at a time. Or, with refueling in Low Earth Orbit, it will be able to land 100-150 tons of cargo on the moon and return 50 tons to earth. Meanwhile, United Launch Alliance, a partnership between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, has proposed a much smaller vehicle that can land on the moon, deliver cargo and humans, and take off again—its Xeus lunar lander. And Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin proposes its Blue Moon, a reusable spacecraft that will deliver packages to the moon the way that Bezos’ Amazon delivers packages on earth. A vehicle whose upper stage can be used as a lunar pup tent.

4. A COTS competition for robotic lunar mining equipment to involve companies like Caterpillar and robotic mining startup Offworld. Mining equipment will extract the Moon’s water and will make the stone of the moon available as building material.

5. A COTS competition for gas stations in space, propellant depots where rockets that have used up their fuel getting from earth to orbit can refuel and go anywhere in the solar system…including the moon and Mars. Boeing started work on gas stations in space—fuel depots—sixteen years ago. And Elon Musk’s Starship is designed in three forms—a passenger version, a cargo version, and a gas station version, a propellant depot.

6. A COTS competition for habitats, moon bases, hotels and homes where humans can kick back and relax after a hard day’s work. Resorts that can accommodate tourists and give them something interesting to do with their moon-time. Resorts that can expand into a space Las Vegas. Bigelow Aerospace has already built inflatable habitats designed to provide housing on the moon. And SOM, the architectural firm that has built six of the world’s tallest buildings, is currently showing its concepts of lunar living room.

To date, life has been confined to one hostile ball of stone—the earth. It’s time to take life to a second celestial body.  Or, in the words of the Space Development Steering Committee’s founder, Howard Bloom, “bring space to life by bringing life to space.”