VR for Historic Crew Arrival

Hopefully not too off topic but...

When an initial crew starts arriving on the lunar surface, their arrival could be very historically important if they are going to stay indefinitely in a permanent habitat. In other words, they could legitimately be considered to be the first of humanity permanently moving off Earth.

As such, a VR experience could be in high demand in which viewers are essentially standing on the lunar surface watching the historic landings of:
- The first people to start moving off Earth indefinitely,
- The first woman on the Moon,
- The first couples on the Moon, and
- The first dog on the Moon.
Whereas the 2D video would be availabe to everyone on Earth, pay-per-view VR experience could be a means whereby funds could be raise to reimburse the development expenses to date. Try doing some back-of-the-envelope calculations about how much revenue that might bring in. 1% of the Earth's population paying $50 to be virtually present at one of the four initial crew missions comes to $3.75 B. Not shabby!

Responses

You must log in or sign up to reply

Yalda Mousavinia

Co-Founder, Space Cooperative

This is not too off topic at all! And this idea has also been around for a bit, right? Like this is MarsOne's business model in some sense.

While I have a lot of faith in what Space Decentral is doing, I am pretty sure that launch providers or government agencies will set the first records you describe and hence will be the entities that are able to truly capitalize on this revenue potential.

Because the question is: what is the benefit to them with collaborating, when their cost is minimal to just include the camera and keep as much of the capital to themselves?

SpaceX plans to allow us to experience the #dearmoon mission in VR according to a tweet, and I am not sure if that will have a price tag yet.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1042117285568073728

As far as government space agencies go: since they are publicly funded, it may also be deemed unethical to charge citizens for the livestream, but maybe it can be done on a jurisdictional basis and with a public-private partnership e.g. If an ESA nation sends astronauts to the moon, ESA member state citizens can watch the stream for free, and others need to pay. There is a profit share agreement between the company that helped facilitate the VR project and with ESA.

The Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor UFC fight last year brought in $700m worth of revenue. Indeed - surely people care more about setting new records on the Moon than knocking each other unconscious? But as Heinlein has coined The Moon is a Harsh Mistress -- peoole wll be on the edge of their seats wondering about the life and safety of these new trailblazers, where the fight isn't two humans against each other, but a life and death match between Humans (or I guess as you propose, dogs... but can they be consenting dogs? lol) vs. the Environment.

Mikkel R HAAHEIM

Concepts Development, Organisation, Operations Specialist

From what I see, the downside of this proposal is that the vast majority of the revenue flow would likely come in FOLLOWING the actual landings. There would some people who would like to experience live (probably quite a lot, actually), but it seems to me unlikely that they would want to commit until we have seriously demonstrated that a mission is pending... meaning that all of the hardware would need to already be in place, and ready for launch.

That said, a Lunar One reality media programme could be a good source of revenue. We would just have to avoid a number of the mistakes made by MarsOne. For instance, we should not rely on making contracts with established broadcast media. Instead, we use a subscription internet service, with some segments offered for free on YouTube. IFF we are eventually approached by network television, that would be fine, but we would have to insist on retaining full rights (we want THEM to negotiate with US for the rights/privilege to show our content). Initial revenue might come from Patreon and online donations, but eventually it would come from direct subscriptions to view ongoing activity. Similarly, we should be thinking in terms of (mostly online) multi-media. This would include (e)books, etc. Towards these ends, we should take care to archive all stages of our development.

My dog and I volunteer for the (accompanied) first dog on the moon mission.

Doug Plata

I’m glad that Mikkel responded because I otherwise would not have seen your redponse.

Let me be clear about something. I see that the live, 2D feed would be available for free to the public. So there would be the immediate return to the public for the government’s investment in the companies participating in the public-private programs (aka “Lunar COTS”). But the value-added feature of VR would be handled commercially in such a way that the distribution companies would get their cut (I’ve been told by a NASA guy it is typically 40% of revenues) amd that the participating transportation & that a portion of the VR profits would return to NASA up to a certain level to recoup its investment in the participating companies. This replenishing of investment would then allow NASA to go on to do other things including more partnerships.

VR for Historic Crew Arrival

Responses

Delete Comment

Delete Post