Shackleton Energy Company was formed in 2007 in Del Valle, Texas with the explicit goal to prepare the equipment and technologies necessary for mining the Moon. Shackleton is a subsidiary of Stone Aerospace.[1]
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Shackleton intends to undertake lunar prospecting. If significant reserves of ice are located, they plan to establish a network of "refueling service stations" in low Earth orbit and on the moon to process and provide fuel and consumables for commercial and military customers.[2]
If the prospecting is successful—ice deposits are located, the appropriate legal regime is in place to support commercial development, and the ice can be extracted—Shackleton proposes to establish a fuel-processing operation on the lunar surface. Equipment would melt the ice and purify the water, "electrolyze the water into gaseous hydrogen and oxygen, and then condense the gases into liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen and also process them into hydrogen peroxide, all of which could be used as rocket fuels. Should other volatiles like ammonia or methane be discovered, they, too, would be processed into fuel, fertilizer, and other useful products."[2]
The economics that would make the enterprise potentially profitable are based on the relatively low costs of getting the fuels and other consumables from the moon into low Earth orbit. "Because of the peculiarities of celestial mechanics, such a haul requires just 1/14th to 1/20th of the fuel it takes to bring material up from Earth."[2]
Although the requisite legal regime to enable the ice mining technology is not fully in place,[3] major world space agencies, including NASA, have put in place a coordination framework for encouraging the type of commercial activity proposed by Shackleton.
"Entrepreneurs are thinking about further commercial expansion into space. As space exploration extends to the Moon and Mars, there will be potential opportunities for companies to provide ... space-based resource extraction and processing capabilities. For example, Moon rocks are rich in oxygen that might be exploited to provide life support systems for lunar operations. Liquid oxygen can also be used as a rocket propellant – and it might be more economical to manufacture it in space than to lift it off the Earth. Mining the Moon might also yield titanium – a strong but light metal favoured for high-end aerospace applications. Finally, the Moon’s known abundance of Helium-3 could prove valuable if fusion reactors ever become feasible in the future.[4]
"For business to be confident about investing, it needs the certainty of a long-term commitment to space exploration, the opportunity to introduce its ideas into government thinking, and the rule of law. This means common understanding on such difficult issues as property rights and technology transfer. The Coordination Mechanism foreseen as part of the Global Exploration Strategy will provide a forum to discuss these important issues."[4]
Shackleton began a US$1.2 million seed stage funding round in November 2011, working with crowd funding partner RocketHub.[5] [6]