Moon Express chairman believes his team’s “ready to go for the end of this year”

Nathan Mattise

The day before we talked with Moon Express co-founder and chairman Naveen Jain, he sat on the Collision Conference mainstage next to a HoloLens-clad Robert Scoble. The successful investor Jain and the enthusiastic tech-evangelist Scoble chatted about “Startups as a Superpower,” exploring what it means if a private business—and not another nation-state—becomes the fourth entity to reach the Moon. And while the challenge definitely carries an inherent amount of glory, Jain believes a startup will have the next Armstrong moment for one familiar reason.

“[Successful entrepreneurs] have to look at what problems we want to solve—tech is a means to an end, and profit is a motivator,” he said. “If I want to create a $10 billion business, I need to solve a problem that affects at least one billion people.”
Maybe it doesn’t seem like it to everyone just yet, but Jain definitely sees the Moon as a perfect entrepreneurial opportunity (which he defined as something he’s passionate about, that can impact lots of people, and that’s ripe for monetizing). Despite more companies entering the space-space than ever before, he brushes off any suggestions of a bubble when talking with Ars. Instead, the longtime businessman—who succeeded previously with Internet companies in both the dotcom bubble and post-dotcom eras—quickly draws a familiar parallel for the blossoming space industry.
“There are actually a lot of parallels between the Internet and space,” Jain tells Ars. “When the Internet started, there were three types of companies—companies that laid the fiber, companies that built the last mile solutions, then companies that built the applications on top of that. With space, companies that build rockets are the fiber, companies that build landers are the last mile, and companies building the applications will ultimately drive the most value.
“So the question really is, ‘what kinds of applications will capture people’s imagination?’” he continues. “If Steve Jobs had asked everyone, ‘what kind of application do you want on this phone?’, no one would have said, ‘I want an application where I throw the birds at the pigs.’ But that’s exactly what they wanted.”

As it stands today, Jain’s space company appears to be the private-industry leader in the race to reach the Moon. Moon Express famously stands as one of 16 participants in the Google Lunar XPRIZE competition. To win, a team must land a privately funded rover on the Moon, have that vehicle travel 500 meters, and then transmit high-definition video and images back to Earth. Teams from across the globe had until the end of 2016 to obtain verified launch contracts and must complete their missions by the end of 2017. The first team to accomplish all that wins $20 million (second place earns $5 million).
Jain notes Moon Express—not Virgin Galactic, SpaceX, or Blue Origin—remains the only company to secure all the necessary permissions from the US government to launch beyond low-Earth orbit toward the Moon. And in January, his co-founder (and current CEO) Bob Richards announced the company fully hit its funding goals as well. However, the team has yet to solidify the third component for its success. Moon Express secured an initial flight contract with Rocket Lab, another US space company with a subsidiary in New Zealand. Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket, however, has yet to even run a test launch.
Fear not, Jain says. If that vehicle doesn’t look to be panning out in time, he indicates Moon Express will look for workable alternatives without hesitation.
“We are completely ready to go for the end of this year,” Jain says. “And I believe Rocket Lab will be, too. I believe, by the end of the year, they will have done four or five tests by the time we go. But just to be clear, we are not married to any rocket. That means we could be using a Launcher One from Virgin Galactic, if it is ready. We could be using SpaceX. We could be using some other rocket.”

What happens if Jain and Moon Express successfully kickstart a future Moon rush with an XPRIZE-winning launch this year? Jain, for one, has no clue—just plenty of ideas. Maybe retrieving Helium-3, “a completely non-radioactive, clean energy source that could create an abundance of energy on Earth,” will prove to be the killer Moon application. Or, it could be something simpler, like Moon rocks (“The Moon has been a symbol of love for hundreds of generations,” Jain pitches. “‘Everyone gives someone a diamond, if you love someone enough, you give them the Moon.”) or Moon kids (“Would your child on Earth want to create pin art and put a footprint on the Moon for $99—is that the Pokemon Go of the Moon?”). We can never know for sure, Jain notes, until we get to such a point. So today, the biggest reason he wants to push Moon Express across the finish line remains the most basic one.
“[Landing on the Moon] would be symbolic of what entrepreneurs are capable of doing,” Jain says. “My hope in landing on the Moon is that it’s a four-minute mile event—once someone ran a mile under four minutes, there were a dozen other people who ran the mile next year. Will you go build the Pokemon Go of the Moon because we showed you it’s possible?”