I believe we need a long-term national commitment to explore the universe. But there is impatience among a growing number of private Americans making plans to get there on their own. One such group is the Artemis Society International. Named for the twin sister of Apollo in Greek mythology, Artemis proposes a privately financed commercial effort to set up a permanent base on the moon, where a new breed of hardy pioneers can live and work doing everything from mining lunar resources to selling moon rocks as souvenirs back on Earth. The project's financial sources depend on every space-marketing gimmick, from selling plastic models of their spaceships to selling Hollywood on the idea of a making a blockbuster movie in which Artemis shares in the profits.
Members are confident it can be done.
It's not a question of whether it'll work, but rather how long it will take. Of course, the story changes only slightly if the notion of sending humans back to the moon is dropped. The probe demonstrated some sophisticated navigation techniques between Earth and the moon before it was intentionally crashed into the lunar surface in 1993, creating a spectacle so dramatic it could be seen by powerful telescopes on the home planet. Then in 1994, more than two decades after Apollo closed up shop, the United States returned to the moon with a military technology research probe known as Clementine. Testing new ideas for a missile defense program, Clementine circled the moon and discovered the possibility that water ice might be frozen within the rocks of craters that are in permanent shade at the moon's south pole.