The homogeneous scientist who discovered water on the surface of the moon, works in the first private company that plans routes to the Moon and back! Paul Spudis had already been appointed to the group sent to the moon on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission in June 2009 and gives rich data for the suitable landing points, the resources of ice or the radiation data, which will be used to build a base on the moon as a transit station for the first manned mission to Mars. «The purpose is not to impress people but to make them understand the value of space exploration … The final destination is not Mars. Our destination is to go anywhere we want! «He says with enthusiasm.

That enthusiasm was frozen when Barack Obama decided to freeze the NASA projects. Paul Spudis did not sit there silent. He cared to warn those who were responsible that through this decision the risk for the U.S. losing the «space race» is more than real. Furthermore, he turned to private initiative. So, he took over as head of the scientific team of Odyssey Moon Limited, the first private company that intends to undertake the commercial exploitation of the Moon.

The company which is based in the Isle of Man is planning to build vessels that will carry people and materials to the moon and back at a low cost. They have already planned their first robotic mission in December 2012. The main assistant in this endeavor is the founder and CEO of Odyssey Moon Limited Dr. Bob Richards with studies in aerospace and industrial engineering, physics and astronomy, who was assistant of the famous Carl Sagan.

However, the Greek scientist has other – literary unrests, which nevertheless still concern the moon. So, he imprinted his dreams on a book for young people– which he wrote with his wife Anne under the title «Moon wake». It is a novel about the lives of four young students who arrive and search a fantastic base on the moon.

According to the editorial of the book it is the story of Mike, Laura and Jason, who come from Earth and turn to a mess the lif of Tony, who has been living for several years on the moon. Soon they realize that they must stay united in order to survive in a new world that is anything but boring and usually. As they live together, surviving several adventures, being trapped in a tube filled with lava, trapped in orbit, fall into a radiation storm and facing a many others. Four children discover together what exactly «home» does mean , they learn to better understand themselves and one another…

With a rich curriculum

In 1976, Paul Spudis got his BSc in Geology from the University of Arizona and immediately  he performed an internship at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The following year he went to Brown University to study planetary geology, with a focus on the Moon. A year later he earned his Masters Degree and moved back to Arizona where he started working for Ron Greeley who had just joined Arizona State University. In 1982 he earned a Ph.D. in geology.

The next step in his career, concerned his recruitment to the U.S.Geological Survey, where he spent many years studying the moon and promoting the idea of genuine exploration. He became the principal investigator at the NASA Office of Space Science, Solar System Exploration Division planetary geology program. His specialty is in the study of volcanism and impact processes on the planets.
He later joined Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston as a staff scientist. Eventually he joined the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, and became senior staff scientist. In 1994 he was the deputy leader of the “Clementine” mission science team. It was an ambitious and quite successful experiment research on the so called “Deep Space”, inspired jointly by the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, forerunner of today’s Strategic Defence Initiative Organization (SDIO) – and NASA.
On January 25, 1994, the satellite “Clementine” was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base. It was a metal prismatoid structure 1.88m high, equipped with the latest radars, telescopes and cameras HDTV… For six months Clementani orbit for three hundred spins around Moon and recorded one by one the craters and knobs, giving the opportunity to scientists to map fully the surface.

Four years have passed until the results of the research to be known. It was until May 1998, when the scientific team, headed by Paul Spudis had announced that the craters of the Moon’s North Pole had ice deposits which were enough to sustain a permanent basis! «In combination with the nearly constant solar lighting poles are ideal places for a possible permanent human presence» supports the Greek scientist.