In short, The Gateway is a large-scale space station, designed to maintain a low-earth orbit (LEO), and serve, among other things, as a destination hotel for the space tourism industry. Dependent upon funding, NASA may, at some point in the future, build more facilities in space, but those facilities will most likely be for non-civilian use. Private industry is the only chance civilians will ever
have at leaving the earth’s atmosphere. To date, the space tourism industry has targeted only the wealthy as potential customers. This makes sense, given that they can afford the ticket prices, but they’re too small a group to be the sole funding source for a project as large as The Gateway Space Station. We believe that the middle class is too large a market to ignore. The question, of course, is how to make such a trip affordable to the middle class. The answer, in part, lies with infrastructure. In the last century, luxury sea cruises have transitioned from something that was exclusively available to the wealthy to something that most people in the middle class can afford to do. This is due, in large part, to the development of large ports around the world as well as the construction of the enormous ships, which are capable of accommodating thousands of customers at a time. It was the investment in infrastructure that made cruises so much more affordable. In order to bring people to a destination space station, or the moon, or anywhere else, we’re going to need more infrastructure. We already have the first part, with spaceports such as Kennedy, Tanegashima, Guiana, Baikonur, and others still being built. Those will get us off the ground and into orbit. The next part is building The Gateway: A large, artificial-gravity space station in low-earth-orbit, designed to serve as a hotel as well as a transfer point as part of a longer journey to the moon. A fleet of shuttles will transport customers from Earth to The Gateway, and a fleet of lunar landing vehicles will transport them from The Gateway to the moon and back. The Gateway will serve as a vital component of the ”Lunar Bridge” for not only tourists, but also pioneers, colonists, and crew members for various mining operations or scientific missions. It’s a lot to contemplate, but we believe that it’s not only possible, but inevitable. The Gateway Foundation’s mission is to fund the construction of a large-scale space station and a fleet of robust lunar landers. This, of course, leaves us with the task of not only building The Gateway, but funding it.
