Contemplating a Commercial Lunar Economy with Alan Stern

As NASA’s boom in robotic missions to the Moon prepares the way for a U.S.-lead human return to the lunar surface, I was curious to hear what planetary scientist and former NASA science executive Alan Stern thought about the current wave of activity and how it might lead towards a sustainable lunar economy.  

Stern, Principal Investigator of NASA’s New Horizon’s mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt, former NASA Associate Administrator for science, and an Associate Vice President in Southwest Research Institute’s Space Sector, has a length list of accomplishments and positions that include a current position as an advisor to iSpace, which plans a June 6, 2025 landing of the RESILENCE lunar lander, and co-founder of the Golden Spike Company, a perhaps too early effort to build commercial human space transportation services to the Moon.  

Having seen both success with New Horizons and failure with Golden Spike, Stern’s portfolio of experience provides a viewpoint that is arguably as good and seasoned as anyone in the New Space area. He also admits he doesn’t have all the answers.  

“In 2025, people have ideas about what the lunar economy will be,” said Stern. “But we don't know what mid-century or late 21st century applications will develop. I take the point of view that we are in a very early stage, maybe analogous to the late 1970s or 1980s, very, very early, in the PC revolution, from mainframes to PCs.  It proliferated, but people did not then know what the most impactful and lucrative markets would turn out to be. At first, it was hobbyists, then people who wanted to do chat rooms or communicate by email, or use early tools like word processing and spreadsheets, business tools. The internet, the way we use computers decades later, is very different than what people were imagining in that early day. And I suspect the same will be true of the lunar economy as it evolves” 

Asked about the current success rate for commercial lunar robotic landings, Stern pointed to the rough NASA lunar mission development cycle of the 1960s, which was replete with frequent failures, and how today’s efforts are remarkably ahead of the curve in comparison, with the first five lunar Pioneer missions failing “miserably” and the first six Ranger surface impact missions each failing as well.  

“I think we’re going to see batting averages go up with the lunar transportation companies as they get experience,” said Stern. “It’s also natural to expect, just like in any industry, from air travel to rockets to PCs, there’s going to be winners and losers. Some companies are going to come on stage that we don’t know now and some we know now are going to go away. That’s a natural process in the business cycle.” 

“All that said, I’ve been very impressed that most of the commercial lunar missions have gotten all the way to the Moon, even if they did not land successfully. I’m quite the optimist on this. We’re going through a normal maturation process. It’s a tough business. I’ve been impressed with NASA sticking with [the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program]. There are so many ways to fail along the way. It’s natural to expect a steep learning curve here in the early days.” 

Given I attended the Golden Spike Company press announcement at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. back in 2012 or so, I had to ask what he thought why the commercial lunar transportation project hadn’t gone forward to commercial crewed lunar landings.  

“The Golden Spike team saw an opportunity in the demise of Project Constellation before Artemis came to be,” Stern recounted. “In 2010 or 2011, I went to Seattle, and we pitched it to Jeff Bezos and his then head of Blue Origin, Rob Myerson, not for investment, but for situational awareness. ‘This is a great idea. But you're just 15 years ahead of the right time,’ Bezos said back then."  

“We didn't want to hear that and ultimately the company failed in large measure for that very reason. We probably should have thought more about baby steps and intermediate products to develop revenue streams before going to human exploration. But that's hindsight. The business model was a good one, but the infrastructure wasn’t there, the lunar commercial mindset wasn’t yet there, just as the [investment] capital wasn’t there. But I think we saw a future that will probably bloom for other companies in the coming decade or perhaps two.” 

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