While most people are content driving their cars on boring old Earth roads, aerospace companies are locked in an epic battle to win NASA contracts for lunar transportation, essentially competing to become the Moon's first taxi service for astronauts who are tired of walking.
Three companies - Intuitive Machines, Lunar Outpost, and Venturi Astrolab - have been selected to develop Lunar Terrain Vehicle concepts, because apparently NASA has decided that astronauts need something more sophisticated than those golf carts they used in the 1970s.
Lunar Outpost is currently testing their rover prototypes on a ranch in southern Colorado, where company officials drive around pretending that cow pastures are equivalent to the airless, radiation-soaked wasteland of the lunar surface. "It's basically the same thing," explained one engineer while carefully avoiding a confused cow that was wondering why robots kept driving through its grazing area.
The companies are vying for NASA's Lunar Terrain Vehicle Services contract, which sounds official but essentially boils down to "who can build the coolest space car for astronauts to drive around the Moon while looking for interesting rocks."
Lunar Outpost has partnered with automotive giants like General Motors and Goodyear, apparently deciding that companies experienced in Earth-based transportation are perfectly qualified to design vehicles for an environment where air doesn't exist and everything is covered in razor-sharp dust that destroys machinery.
"We're revolutionizing lunar mobility," declared a company spokesperson while watching their prototype navigate around some very terrestrial prairie dogs. "Our rover features cutting-edge technology designed to handle the unique challenges of space exploration, like not having air and being 238,900 miles away from the nearest mechanic."
The vehicles must be capable of supporting astronauts for multiple-day missions, which means they need to function as both transportation and mobile hotels in an environment where AAA roadside assistance is definitely not available. Engineers are reportedly working on features like "don't explode in vacuum" and "resist being pulverized by microscopic space debris."
Testing on Earth involves driving the rovers through various terrains while engineers pretend that gravity is one-sixth of what it actually is and that there's no atmosphere to interfere with their sophisticated space machinery. "We just squint really hard and imagine we're on the Moon," explained one test driver while navigating around a particularly realistic-looking boulder.
NASA officials are expected to award the final contract sometime in the near future, at which point one lucky company will get to discover whether their Earth-tested rover can actually function in space or if they've just built a very expensive remote-controlled toy that will immediately break when exposed to actual lunar conditions.
The winning design will need to transport astronauts across the lunar surface while carrying scientific equipment, samples, and presumably a really good GPS system since getting lost on the Moon would be significantly more problematic than getting lost on a Colorado ranch.
Industry experts predict that whichever company wins will immediately begin advertising their services as "the Moon's premier transportation provider" and will probably start working on lunar parking meters and space traffic tickets for astronauts who drive too fast in crater zones.