Want to Go to the Moon? Now You Can!

Okay, well, you can't. Nobody has a rocket that could do the heavy lifting necessary to send a spacecraft to the moon, and no one has a spacecraft capable of making the journey. But, the U.S Federal Aviation Administration has given the company Moon Express permission to send commercial cargo to the moon.

In the short term, this really doesn't mean much. But in the long term, it means that future Moon-based commercial ventures will be governed by the same laws as companies conducting business in low Earth orbit. There will be no further bureaucracy or red tape, basically, as long as you can pass the FAA inspection, you can send payloads to the Moon and do business without further government interference.

Now, you might not be so thrilled to hear about how the U.S is opening up space to commercialism, depending on your views on such things. But let's be honest. The future of space is commercial. NASA can't do everything, and it shouldn't do everything. So long as NASA's budget remains small, it should be focused more on exploration, and not on colonization and commercialization. But still, increase NASA's budget. Space exploration is cool, and we should be doing more of it.