Virtual Moon is on a mission to change people’s perspective of Space in a way that creates a clear understanding of what Space is and our place in it and creates a more personal, direct and visceral connection with Space and the Moon. We are committed to creating a simulation that is accurate and realistic to the last detail, limited only by the performance of existing VR technology and available data sets for the Moon, while simultaneously pushing the envelope to deliver on our promise. Both the technology and access to better data sets are expected to drastically improve in the near future. Virtual Moon will continuously update the simulation as the technology evolves and better / higher resolution data becomes available. We are committed to be the world’s best simulation of the entire Moon and to remain so indefinitely.

For some interesting context, in 2006 (more than 20 years ago!), our founder Manny Pimenta was also the creator of Lunar Explorer, the world’s first fully immersive, fully interactive, Virtual Reality simulation of the entire Moon and owns all intellectual rights to it. Virtual Moon has thus inherited the rights to Lunar Explorer and, by virtue of this inheritance, we could instantly claim to be the world’s best VR simulation of the Moon since there have been no others created in the interim.

The short answer is no, you don’t have to own a VR headset to access Virtual Moon. All content will be accessible via any device from smart phone to tablet, to laptop, and VR/AR/XR headsets. However, Virtual Moon is designed to deliver the most realistic, immersive experience of being on the Moon short of actually going there. The immersion and hands-on interactivity that Virtual Moon will offer, the profound impact of feeling like you are on the Moon, can really only be experienced in immersive VR. We envision that most users will use multiple devices at different times to access different aspects of Virtual Moon. They will likely use VR to explore the Moon, to enjoy the many fantastic views at the most interesting locations on the Moon and interact with hands-on experiences. And they will likely use 2D screens to do transactions, stay in touch with friends in the VM community, get news and updates from Virtual Moon, etc.

Also consider that VR headsets are quite affordable already (with the Quest 3S unit selling at $300 in the US) and likely to become more affordable, even while offering performance improvements, as the technology evolves. So we feel confident that immersive VR accessibility will significantly expand rather quickly. If you do not yet own VR headset, please take a look at some of our videos and watch how people react to the Apollo 11 Landing Experience. Many of them will tell you that alone is worth the cost of buying a headset. (and NO, we do not make a commission on VR headsets… Would be nice if we did though )

In keeping with our primary mission, Virtual Moon is also supplying VR headsets to our volunteers around the world who are bringing the experience of being on the Moon to remote underserved and underprivileged areas of the world.

Since you are asking the question, we presume you are already familiar with what a Virtual Moon Ambassador is. For the benefit of those who will read these FAQs later and may not have the context, I will briefly describe the program: Basically, anyone can become a Virtual Moon Ambassador. We already have a large number of VM Ambassadors but need quite a few more. We expect we will reach our target number of total Ambassadors rather quickly and at that point we will most likely eliminate the program, make the requirements more challenging, or replace it with something different. To become a Virtual Moon Ambassador right now, you simply need to commit to sharing the new of Virtual Moon with your circle of friends and invite them to join the Virtual Moon community. If 5 or more of your friends decide to join, you become a Virtual Moon Ambassador. That’s really all there is. However, you can lose your VMA membership by doing anything that intentionally or predictably tarnishes the image of Virtual Moon or significantly detracts from its mission. Nothing to worry about as long as you operate in good faith, never take advantage of people, and respect the Virtual Moon community as a whole and its individual members.

As a Virtual Moon Ambassador, once you have met your requirement of referring 5 new members, you will receive 100,000 square meters of Virtual Moon property and the option to receive an unlimited number of additional 100,000 square meter parcels at a greatly discounted 1% of the normal cost. For each $10 donation, you will be credited with 100,000 square meters of Virtual Moon property ( which would have cost $1,000 other wise). This is our way of showing our appreciation for your efforts in promoting Virtual Moon and your active participation in the mission of Virtual Moon. Your donations, as we explain in the website content, will be supporting the development of Virtual Moon and also our world outreach programs.

There are other privileges and incentives enjoyed by our Virtual Moon Ambassadors that are explained in more detail here.

This arrangement will hold until the Virtual Moon Ambassador program is closed to new members and the discounted parcel gifts are discontinued.

Just sign in and join the Virtual Moon community and let us know you would like to volunteer for the outreach program.

As an outreach volunteer you would go to schools in your area and speak with students about Space, the Moon, the importance of becoming a Space Faring Civilization and you would then let them experience being on the Moon by doing the Apollo 11 Landing Experience. If you have your own VR headset already, that would be great of course. If you don’t own one, you might consider purchasing one or two yourself to bring to your talks. But the best thing to do would be for you to find a local donor or sponsor ( like a business, a philanthropic group or club, or an individual donor) who would pay for two or three headsets that Virtual Moon would purchase and have shipped to you. You should have at least 2 headsets and ideally 3 depending on the size of the group you are speaking to and the time available.’ Virtual Moon will support you with content, materials, promotion, official recognition and also videos that are very compelling to entice donors and show them how effective our program is in promoting Space and STEM.

We have been doing outreach for a while now and we use the opportunity, when interacting with students and young people, to find out what they want us to create for them as part of the Virtual Moon experience and also what excites them most about our plans. The idea of owning property on Virtual Moon is received universally with enthusiastic approval. They also let us know that one of the most exciting things they can think of doing with their properties is to build something on them.

So we see this as a significant and important way of creating that direct personal connection between Space and the Moon and each individual person. Experiencing the Moon in an immersive and realistic Virtual Reality simulation is a powerful way to create that type of connection. Having the ability to own an actual portion of terrain on Virtual Moon that exactly corresponds to a real location on the real Moon takes that sense of connection to a whole new level. It is very inspirational and it really ignites their imagination.

Naturally, we see this also as an opportunity to generate funds that will be used for developing Virtual Moon and supporting operations. Part of the funds raised this way will also be used to support our worldwide outreach programs to bring this amazing experience to other students and young people around the world who would otherwise not have that opportunity.

Allowing the Virtual Moon community to own property is important in yet another way: it is another way each individual can feel that they are personally contributing to the creation of Virtual Moon and are actively participating in promoting Spae

Well, first because we are making that an actual design requirement. In other words, if it’s not constructable, we will have to keep changing the design until it is. Secondly, we are making a number of assumptions that we believe are reasonable and rational and those assumptions give us capabilities that will be critical in the future but don’t exist yet.

And thirdly, we have already done some first pass planning and studies that show that building Selene on the Moon likely has more than a zero probability of being technically feasible.

It’s important to understand that with Selene, we are only considering the technical / engineering feasibility. We know there are many layers of complexities in non technical areas that lower the probability of actually building Selene to just about zero. But our purpose with the Selene concept is to create a bold and inspiring vision of the future could look like when we become a Space Faring Civilization and to be able to use immersive VR to transport millions of people to that future in a way that they can no just watch it or read about it but actually EXPERIENCE what it will be like. We start with a baseline design for Selene that is admittedly simple and general. We are enlisting expertise from our Virtual Moon team members and other volunteers with specialized knowledge and skills to begin developing and refining the design, identifying technology and capability gaps, and finding pathways to achieving primary project objectives. We will iterate the design step by step, while adhering strictly to the core design guidelines and continuously assessing our progress is taking us closer to the goals.

We expect we may run into situations where a particularly ambitious goal for the vision of Selene may not be achievable and therefore render Selene unbuildable. In those cases, we will have to either forego or modify that goal unless we come up with a viable / feasible solution. To illustrate with a simple, trivial example, let’s say that we find the scale of Selene is just too ambitious. We cannot build a structure to house 5,000 people, but we can build one with the maximum capacity for 3,000 people. We would just scale back the number of people to keep the design realizable. Conversely we could find the opposite, that it would be only slightly more ambitious but still feasible to build Selene to support 10,000 people. Then we would again change the design to accommodate the larger vision. That’s because we want Selene to be as bold and ambitious as we can imagine, constrained only by engineering feasibility.