What became DARPA helped create the Internet standards that become the commercial internet and ecommerce and now DARPA is coordinating standards and efforts to commercialize the moon.
A robust lunar economy within the next decade is coming quickly into focus. It’s clear that many shareable, scalable commercial systems will be needed to support a future lunar ecosystem. Yet a key question remains: How will these systems interface?
Through the Lunar Guidelines for Infrastructure Consortium (LOGIC), DARPA will convene stakeholders across industry, academia, and government to identify critical lunar infrastructure interoperability and interface needs. Where appropriate, LOGIC will encourage the community to develop operational guidelines and pathways to close interoperability gaps.
The Johns Hopkins University (JHU) Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) will administer LOGIC, providing technical leadership and management of the consortium. LOGIC envisions a permanent, self-sustaining, and independent forum where international industry, government and academia can collaborate for the benefit of the entire lunar community.
DARPA recently initiated the 10-Year Lunar Architecture (LunA-10) Capability Study, which seeks to rapidly develop foundational technology concepts that move away from individual scientific efforts within isolated, self-sufficient systems, toward a series of shareable, scalable systems that interoperate — minimizing lunar footprint and creating monetizable services for future lunar users. LOGIC will foster international engagement and the required technical discussions for the creation of interoperating standards for such commercial technologies.
LOGIC works closely with NASA’s Lunar Surface Innovation Initiative (LSII) and Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium (LSIC) to accelerate the development of international, consensus-driven technical interoperability standards in areas such as power distribution, communications, relative positioning and navigation methods, lunar surface surveying, and cislunar air and space traffic control.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
Financing? Expedited development and infrastructure? Likely positive ROI in a generation? Attract the right monied investors? Free of politics, mind-meltingly-boring science programs, and uninspiring moon ‘shuffles’ across the ‘scape?
Two Words: Luna Vegas (TM)
While I admire the optimism, i would like to point out that i would find unrealistic the developement of a thriving and self sustaining community (economy-wise) on the south pole in 10 years.
My money is always on DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). It tends to be so successful there should a sister agency created, CARPA (Commercial Advanced Research Projects Agency) with the specific goal of producing technology that can advance the country’s economy and which would use the funds from licensing its developments to control and reduce federal taxes.