LunaCorp

{{Short description|American moon rover company}}

LunaCorp was a company headed by David Gump, and established in 1989 and based in Arlington, Virginia.{{Cite web |title=Snapshots of LunaCorp History {{!}} Lunacorp.com |url=https://lunacorp.com/lunacorp.html |access-date=2025-02-11 |website=lunacorp.com}}{{cite magazine |last1=Wilson |first1=Jim |title=Postcards From the Moon |magazine=Popular Mechanics |date=June 2000}} It was designed around a privately funded mission, using Russian technology, to put a rover on the Moon. The goal of the company was to fund the mission by the entertainment value of having customers drive the rover.{{cite journal |last1=Baker |first1=Stephen |title=Is There Money on the Moon? |journal=Business Week |date=September 25, 1995 |issue=3443 |pages=142-144}} The program's advisor was Dr. Buzz Aldrin.{{cite book |editor-last1=Dasch |editor-first1=E. Julius |editor-last2=O'Meara |editor-first2=Stephen |title=A Dictionary of Space Exploration |date=June 21, 2018 |publisher=OUP Oxford |isbn=9780192526595}}

In 1995, the company intended to have two rovers on the moon by 1998. The rovers were never launched. It was expected that the commercial lunar rover would bring in revenue by selling science data and entertainment.{{cite journal |last1=Koehl |first1=Carla |last2=Rogers |first2=Adam |title=A Private Trip to the Moon |journal=Newsweek |date=December 5, 1994 |volume=124 |issue=23 |page=10}}{{cite book |last1=Dudek |first1=Gregory |last2=Jenkin |first2=Michael |title=Computational principles of mobile robotics |date=February 28, 2000 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=9780521568760 |pages=243–244}} He hoped to recoup one-third of the rovers' cost by selling the ability to control its rovers to theme parks and science museums.{{cite magazine |last1=Wilson |first1=Jim |last2=Gleaves |first2=Kathleen |last3=Gromer |first3=Cliff |last4=Rosenberg |first4=Barry |last5=Schrader |first5=Richard |title=Japanese Industry Aims For Moon's Resources |magazine=Popular Mechanics |date=July 1996}}{{cite magazine |author= |date=June 1994 |title=Drive Your Own Moon Rover |magazine=Popular Mechanics}}

After producing no tangible results the company was dissolved in 2003.

The details of the mission evolved with time. Because the Moon is hotter than boiling water at noon and colder than liquid nitrogen at night, in the final version of the design the robot would avoid those extremes by circumnavigating the Moon every 29.5 days (the length of a lunar day) to stay in sunlight, a strategy originally proposed by Geoffrey Landis. "Our robot, by driving completely around the Moon at a high latitude at only a few kilometers per hour, will enjoy lunar morning temperatures all the time by staying in sync with the sun", said the mission's controller.{{cite journal |title=LunaCorp Launches Plan for Multimedia Moon Robot |journal=Space News |date=June 15, 2000 |url=https://spacenews.com/lunacorp-launches-plan-for-multimedia-moon-robot/ |access-date=19 February 2025}}

==References==

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