The Beresheet spacecraft is on the lunar surface, but sadly not in one piece. Though it crashed rather than soft-landed there, it is still a remarkable achievement most notably because it used the Earth’s and moon’s gravity rather than expensive rocket fuel to do most of the work to get it there. Even better, it is proof that the gravity-powered lunar cycler transport concept, developed by Apollo 11 Moonwalker Buzz Aldrin, could make possible low-cost roundtrips to our nearest neighbor in space.
The Beresheet project originated in Israel. But while that country’s space agency and government company, Israel Aerospace Industries, were involved, the mission was designed and spacecraft constructed by the private nonprofit SpaceIL. SpaceIL had originally worked on the concept in pursuit of the private $20 million Google Lunar X-Prize. Unfortunately, no competitor met the 2018 launch deadline to win the prize, but the SpaceIL stuck with it.
Beresheet was privately financed by Israel-friendly parties. In addition, the mission cost only about $100 million, a fraction of the usual multibillion-dollar costs that the United States, Russia, and China spend to land spacecrafts on the moon. When you’re relying on enlightened individuals using their own money rather than governments with access to deep taxpayer pockets, your work needs to be thrifty and smart.
The most innovative aspect of the Beresheet mission was how it got to the moon.
The usual method to send a spacecraft there, including all the maneuvers in and out of orbits and for landing, is a direct three-day trip requiring a lot of heavy and costly rocket fuel.
The Beresheet mission tapped a source of essentially free energy: gravity. Beresheet was launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, which is certainly much less powerful than the giant Saturns that launched spacecrafts to the moon. The Falcon 9 put the craft into an elongated orbit around the Earth and it picked up energy from gravity on every orbit. Eventually the craft’s orbit reached out to the moon’s orbit on just the trajectory timed perfectly for the moon’s gravity to capture it. From there, it descended to the lunar surface. While fuel was expended to make spacecraft adjustments here and there, free gravity did most of the work.
The savings in fuel meant the mission cost much less than a straight-to-the-moon mission. The catch, of course, was that Beresheet took a month and a half rather than the normal three days most lunar missions need to get there.
Even with its failure to soft-land, Beresheet proved that using the Earth’s and moon’s gravity rather than tons of costly rocket fuel can cut costs dramatically. And this is proof-of-concept for what could be the space transportation system of the future.
The lunar cycler system was designed by Buzz Aldrin. With his Ph.D. dissertation from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was on “Manned Orbital Rendezvous,” he’s more just the lunar module pilot for the first landing on the moon in 1969!
Under his cycler design, a spacecraft would be launched from the Earth out toward the moon. With expenditures of fuel for initial course corrections, the craft would be on a trajectory so that the moon’s gravity would slow it and fling it back toward Earth where the Earth’s gravity, in turn, would slow it and fling it back toward the moon. It would continue in a never-ending cycle, waltzing between two worlds. Astronauts would only have to expend fuel to travel to the points in the region of the Earth and moon where the cycler slows and rendezvous with it to hitch rides or send cargo back and forth.
Aldrin suggests a system could make round-trips between the Earth and moon at least each month if not more frequently. This system would truly revolutionize space travel. Further, once the cycler is perfected for the Earth and moon, such a system might be set up for the Earth and Mars, opening that planet to human habitation.
The private path to space is being blazed by, among others, SpaceX, Blue Origins, Virgin Galactic, Bigelow Aerospace and, of course, the SpaceIL. TheBeresheetmission is proof-of-concept for a lunar cycler. Which entrepreneurs will take the next giant leap and attempt to set up such a transport system, making space a true human and free-market frontier?
Edward Hudgins is a space policy expert and editor of the book Space: The Free-Market Frontier. Buzz Aldrin’s chapter, with Ron Jones, in Hudgins’ book outlines the lunar cycler concept.