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Shackleton Energy Company was formed in 2007 in Del Valle, Texas with the goal to prepare the equipment and technologies necessary for mining the Moon. There have been no public updates as to their progress since. Shackleton Energy was a subsidiary of Piedra-Sombra Corporation until March 2011, when it was incorporated as an independent C-corporation in the State of Texas.〔(Window on State Government ). Certification of Account Status. Retrieved: 7 March 2012.〕 ==Plans== Shackleton intends to undertake lunar prospecting. According to their own website, they originally stated that they would place a team on the moon within 8 years. They have met none of their milestones, offered no updates and have not secured funding. If significant reserves of ice are located, they plan to establish a network of "refueling service stations" in low Earth orbit (LEO) and on the Moon to process and provide fuel and consumables for commercial and government customers.〔(Mining the Moon: How the extraction of lunar hydrogen or ice could fuel humanity's expansion into space ), ''IEEE Spectrum'', June 2009, accessed 2011-01-05.〕 According to their website they plan to have humans stationed on the Moon in March 2021.〔http://www.shackletonenergy.com/program〕 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 and in propellant depots in LEO. 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."〔 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."〔 Shackleton also has stated that they plan to develop an "industrial astronaut corps" that would select for individuals who have many of the characteristics of previous explorers—such as Ernest Shackleton, Edmund Hillary and Lewis and Clark.〔(Shackleton Energy's cislunar economic development plans ) David Livingston interview with James Keravala, ''The Space Show'', 14 December 2012, at 1:22:35–1:23:50, accessed 2013-01-03.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Shackleton Energy Company」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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