A private spacecraft from Israel will attempt a moon landing Thursday

Mission budget is around $100 million (including launch costs).

Which is modest for moon landing attempts, but still well outside of a one-shot fully privately funded initiative.

Perhaps still a possibility of being crowdsourced.

Google Lunar X prize was $20 million, which is more realistic for a private program.

Still, this is a _great_ leap forward. Now, students routinely design and launch satellites (around $50k for a CubeSat launch); I hope that someday the same will go for lunar probes.

It's neat that they'll be live streaming it.

> a nascent commercial space effort that seeks to develop a base of economic activity on the Moon

Can someone clue me in on what types of commercial activity will happen first?

2 hours to go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7GUHd554NY

Also: "The competition has already announced that if Beresheet's landing goes as planned, the team will win a $1 million Moonshot Award."

If it's a private spacecraft, how do you make this work financially? How do you find $100m ? It's not like there are commercial opportunities possible on the moon. Or the technology would be re-used by Israel for rockets?