Texas astronomers revive idea for 'Ultimately Large Telescope' on the moon
I have a space commercialization question.<p>SpaceX is purportedly at some point going to be able to put 100 tons in LEO for around 100M. I'll roughly assume with a second launch full of fuel, a purchaser with the right gear could put close to 100 tons on the lunar surface for 200M or so, once they get the kinks out and the price down.<p>So why not just pre-purchase 20 of these for your favorite lunar project, such as the ULT? If they bring prices down you get a cool lunar base. If they don't, you don't pay. That much payload delivered to the moon for $4B would be an incredible bargain, and it also serves to further incentivize SpaceX.<p>I'm sure I have something about the economics wrong, but I don't know what. Seems to me like we should be <i>very</i> close to a lot of back-burner space projects getting off the drawing boards.<p>What don't I understand?