Moonrush
Improving Life on Earth with the Moon’s Resources
By Dennis Wingo (an Apogee Books publication)

   The premise of Dennis Wingo’s book, Moonrush, is made clear by its subtitle, and more so with pithy, back-cover statements like ‘We go to Mars to take our Civilization there. We go to the Moon to save our Civilization here.’—offering the would be reader the full scope of the book’s philosophical view point. Though focusing primarily on colonizing the Moon, and extracting its resources, the author also makes his case—speaking for a community of like-minded folks—for future missions to Mars, as well as other moons (and even asteroids) that populate our solar system. If there were any precluding doubt about our need to inhabit the Solar System and exploit its resources, Wingo begins his case with a reference to the World Wildlife Federation’s declaration that ‘it would take the equivalent of two more Earths to sustain our planetary population at the level of affluence that the western world enjoys’(emphasis mine).
   In clear, readable language, and with no small sense of urgency, Wingo presents a nearly exhaustive compendium of past, present, and future mission proposals, technologies, and designs--some still on the drawing board, some stalled, and some abandoned (e.g., there’s NERVA, a  streamlined nuclear thrust engine for low-earth to lunar orbit transport, designed and tested 30 years ago!)--all geared towards the habitation and exploitation of our Moon (and others). Charts, photos, diagrams, and graphs abound here. Moonrush might come as a bit of a surprise to many readers; an interested newcomer might not realize the extensive research and work already amassed towards this long-unfulfilled promise of ‘humans in space’. Through a conceptual and technical tour de force, Wingo lays bare the rich, diverse, and sophisticated interest and investment in private-sector space exploration and development. 
   Throughout, the primary rhetorical justification is that the Federal government (mostly identified as NASA) is not capable of facilitating the long-term habitation and exploitation of space. Though he acknowledges NASA’s important and continuing scientific contributions (as well as support technologies), the author makes a case that only the private sector can successfully accomplish the stated mission (i.e., ‘exploit the Moon, save the World’). A centralized bureaucracy like NASA, the author asserts, can not efficiently (cost-effectively) get us to the Moon, permanently, and establish a new lunar economy (such as a ‘hydrogen economy’). This is the proper function and domain of a competitive, privatized, ‘moon rush’.
   I do note that many of the plans/schemes put forth in the book for establishing a moon base, and also resource exploration missions, would make use of the International Space Station Alpha, as a space-based staging facility. The ISS is, of course, an internationally financed, governmental project, and so, these privatized lunar expeditions may still depend (at least initially) on past and on-going government space programs (as well as on tax breaks or subsidies to space industries).
   Certain underlying assumptions in this book go unchallenged. There is, expectedly, a clear bias in these pages toward the private sector, as well as towards the U.S. However, Wingo does manage, ultimately, to strike a reasoned balance in his weighing of economic, environmental, and public benefit issues, while consistently moving from his primarily U.S. economic considerations, to those impacting the entire developing world.

            Michael Ricciardi