Moonspike Looking To Raise Nearly $1 Million To Build A Rocket

"We're building a Moon Rocket", the Kickstarter page begins. And not a little rocket either. Moonspike says it plans to build "a full scale Moon rocket, that will fly into the heavens at around 12km/s and then launch a tiny spacecraft on a 400,000 km (approx. 250,000 miles) one-way journey to the Moon."

On its Kickstarter page, Moonspike says their goal is not only to get to the moon, but to see if "some ordinary rocket engineers, with purely private backing, can design and build a small, but genuine Moon rocket.

"If we can do that together, we can start a new era of open space access, driven by ordinary people joining forces to building extraordinary rockets & spacecraft."

The team has some experience in the rocket-building business. The Moonspike effort is being led by Kristian von Bengtson, a co-founder of Copenhagen Suborbitals. That company developed and successfully launched the HEAT-1X rocket in 2011, and it is still one of the largest amateur rockets ever built.

For the Moon mission, the team says it plans to build a two-stage, liquid-fuelled vehicle that is capable of lifting a small spacecraft into Low Earth Orbit (LEO). That spacecraft would then be boosted on to the Moon carrying the payload.

The Moon spacecraft, according to the description posted online, will be small. "The spacecraft is the third stage of the vehicle, and has a mass of 147kg when fuelled. This little vehicle will make the transit from Earth to Moon and end it's life impacting the Moon at around 2000m/s.

"The spacecraft is largely a container for the volumes of liquids and gases used to push it towards the moon, with communications and guidance electronics, and the tiny, symbolic 1 gram payload attached. When it arrives at the Moon there will be just 35kg of empty spacecraft left."

The one-gram payload will be the Moonspike ... a "tiny spike of titanium that is designed to survive a hard landing with the moon." The team said they kept the payload small because the purpose is building a rocket that can deliver a spacecraft to the moon.

Moonspikes Kickstarter goal is just over $909,000. So far, they have raised a little over $80,000, with 25 days remaining in the campaign.

(Image from Moonspike video posted to Kickstarter)

FMI: Kickstarter