Los Angeles, CA, December 6, 2000 – As we move into our new millennium, chances are you will see a fresh, winter, Quarter Moon, the first of a new millennium and the 21st century. To that celestial body, this passing of time means little; but to those of us on Earth, we see the Moon differently than our relatives of a century ago.

One hundred years ago, Humankind barely knew how to glide, let alone fly. In 1903, the Wright brothers taught us how to fly a heavier-than-air craft. In that same year, Tsiolkovsky mapped out the rocket. In the 1920's Goddard showed us the liquid fueled rocket and Fritz Lang and Herman Oberth showed theatergoers "A Girl in the Moon". The next quarter century allowed Von Braun and Korolev to develop the ballistic, long-range missile, and by 1950 George Pal gave us "Destination: Moon". America and the Soviet Union orbited satellites by 1957 and within two years the first lunar probes were launched. Ten years later, in 1969, men stood on the Moon. To most experts of the 1950's, this was considered to be a goal of a far future. As one historian recently wrote: "It was as if John Kennedy reached into the twenty first century, plucked out a decade, and placed it into the 1960s".But, since 1972, we have stagnated. Two weeks is all the time humanity has spent on the Moon. For thirty years, we have gone round and round Earth, but only our instrumented probes have returned to visit the Moon.

Some say that there is nothing of worth on the Moon. The same was said of the Americas five hundred years ago, but the Lewis and Clarke's among us see the hope and promise of this new Moon in a new millennium. We live on a world of six billion souls, each wanting their own piece (and peace) of our limited eco-sphere. We must expand. But more importantly, we must learn how to survive in this new frontier of space. As our forefathers were over a century ago on the western frontier, we are ready to explore. We need the forts, the safehavens, and we need the businesses to follow.

The businesses are ready, too! We witnessed this in October 2000 at the Foundation's 9th annual conference. Denise Norris of Applied Space Resources spoke about her plans for microrovers and lunar explorations. Jim Dunstan of Luna Corp spoke about plans for larger, unmanned, commercially sponsored roving vehicles, looking for frozen water at the lunar south pole. Jim Benson of SpaceDev and Gregory Nemitz of Trans-orbital described missions to explore the Moon, while Madhu Thangavelu and David Shrunk spoke of the eventual settlement of this new world.

It is now 2001 and we have much to do on our Lunar Odyssey. The Foundation's 3rd Annual Lunar Development Conference will be held on July 19-20, 2001 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. This year's conference will focus on the Lunar City and its design and development. We anticipate many surprises. Japan, China, India, and Europe have all announced plans to continue explorations of the Moon.

We must look into ourselves to discover what we want from exploring the Moon. Wether it be science, enterprise, habitation or astronomy, we will find that the Moon is placed precisely where we need it to be to begin the quests in space we must make. We must begin our Lunar Odyssey in 2001.

– by Dr. James M. Busby for the Space Frontier Foundation