Noted the piece on the LM1 Facebook page confirming we're still heading for the Southern Pole region on our Moon & hopefully The Shackleton Crater.

tools.wmflabs.org/geohack/geohack.php?pa...e:Moon_type:landmark

Having read that ALL of our MONEY has already GONE I will admit to wondering if it was spent wisely?
Do I believe there have been mistakes? yes without a doubt, we have to consider after raising close to 1 Million Dollars and NOT having added anymore members over these 2 years if something didn't go wrong? despite reading about the TAX problems.

The merchandise was WAY to premature and must have cost a great deal to be designed & made (designer BLAM and others couldn't have come cheap)
This home web page i'm using right now that very surprisingly never took off and again must have cost them / us a decent amount of money.
That big BASH down in London which was also a ticket paid for meeting also it seems to have had money thrown at it...THAT venue was NOT cheap!

Much of these I believe was a mistake & i'd have rather they'd have taken a calculated risk with this early funding and try to get some advertising out there to bring in more members and get the news out there that HERE was a great gift idea for EVERYONE.

And then there are the wages and funding to get the talent involved...this I can understand, I don't begrudge paying good people some monies early on but as it was supposed to be a NO PROFIT organization (very appealing part for many members) you have to wonder if some perhaps were paid too soon before we even had enough funds in place? hence 0 left, just asking, mistakes are always going to be made, we're human it's natural but perhaps we just got smug a little early after raising this first early amount?

I would have liked to have rolled the dice and FOCUS on the data and dna part of this mission which might have helped fund it better? & quicker? it surely couldn't have been any worse as we have ZERO left! would it have been any worse than spending on creating a website, merchandise and having big back slapping meetings early on (fun though this all sounds) i'm not saying my way was the right way but spending all this amount on say an early targeted Christmas newspaper Ad campaign might have proved a better way of spending it but then I've always been much more of a gambler than most anyway but a yeah a targeted pre-Christmas AD CAMPAIGN in say the popular red top newspapers might have proved better?

If it were simply left to try and fund our mission using just Facebook, Twitter etc then frankly I saw very little chance of this mission ever happening and so it would seem does the LM1 Team now as it looks like they are now (RIGHTLY) actively seeking out funding from partners and possibly other companies and this (although it would have been nice to have been completely funded by the general public) HAS to be the right way to go.

I don't think THOSE companies that might take part in this FUN & EXCITING Mission know HOW BIG THIS COMPANY MIGHT YET STILL BECOME given a little luck, funding and the right choices, I never had any problem getting high profile 'BIG NAME' companies attached to this & giving them rights to advertise on this & hopefully possible future missions, obviously they would need to make money from this! SORRY FOLKS that's BIG BUSINESS for ya but I still would deeply like to see this mission (LUNAR MISSION ONE) lift off and become a huge success and the beginning of WHAT? something wonderful perhaps, something you can tell you children & grandchildren of one day...I STILL BELIEVE WE CAN DREAM 'BIG'

I'm not going to criticise LM1 and those in charge...they tried to get the public interested but with sadly very few takers (we need to deal with that problem right there) that's NOT to say we can't still try by appealing to them through the unique DATA box's & DNA samples, marketed well & cleverly I still feel this could be a superb GIFT (Birthday or Christmas) for years to come but we need that company funding now to get this off the ground and we need to explain to them just how BIG the benefits for them might be.

THE SPACE mission part appeals to we SPACE fans (the drilling, the discovery, the getting there) but to the general public? NOT REALLY, perhaps if someone could come up with an idea that could incorporate twitter, facebook and that kinda thing whilst we are on the MOON? that may just appeal to this type of generation but it will be the DNA Samples & DATA BOXES that will sell it to MANY people & not the SPACE THING sadly

I still BELIEVE (even if at times it feels like we face an uphill task to do so, especially with all those other Moon Missions that seem to have jumped ahead of us or so it seems) that LM1 or whatever it will be called by that person that won the right to name this craft (I wonder what they are thinking right now?) personally speaking I think it would be a nice thing if they simply kept the name as LunarMissionOne perhaps followed by the numbers made up of the original risk taking backers on the original fund raising site.

Will we get anything of note to show for our( on average I think £80 per person?) funding? who knows? but I AM AN OPTIMST & believe the people in the background are still trying to get this thing off the ground...ALL CROSS YA FINGERS NOW.