Mr. Musk, please take my money for your rockets. (Photo via flickr.com/jurvetson)

Yesterday, before venturing forth to the casting call for Bravo's Start-ups: Silicon Valley spinoff, we made a rather wonkier stop, at this month's meeting of the MIT Enterprise Forum. The topic of the panel? Space, the final frontier, and aerospace investing in particular.

As we arrived, a brief SpaceX video with a Top Gun-style soundtrack was wrapping up. Adam Harris, the company's VP for Government Affairs, let slip a little, "Yay!" as it came to a close. 

Much of the panel that followed focused on the knotty details of the business. For example: If you make rockets, you can't export them, because they're classified the same as ICBMs. Panelists included NASA Associate General Counsel for IP Courtney B. Graham and Aireon CEO Don Thoma, whose company sells satellite phone technology for use as an air traffic surveillance product.

But when somebody brought up crowdfunding in the Q&A, things got almost rowdy. (Almost!)

One man in the audience posed the question of whether, now that the SEC is finalizing rules for equity-based crowdfunding, that might work to fund the more starry-eyed of aerospace projects. He offered the example of the Kickstarted Pebble. The creators wanted $100,000; they got more than $10 million. "You don't get any stock or anything," he said, sounding a bit incredulous. And people love space way more than they love dorky watches.

"For some of these startups that sell a dream, like SpaceX, I do think that's a perfect funding resource," he said.

Then, nodding in the direction of Mr. Thoma, he added: "When you're talking about Iridium, and all we remember is that it was a great idea but a very expensive telephone, it doesn't have the same sex appeal."

Aireon is a subsidiary of Iridium, selling a wonky product without much obvious sex appeal. Unsurprisingly, Mr. Thomas disagreed with the man's assessment.

"I've spent my whole career in space or telecom associated with space," he said. "I always wondered if other industries have as many nuts as the space industry has."

Mr. Thomas is perpetually running into dreamers with ideas of, shall we say, varied quality. "I think there's dangers in crowdfunding, because they're going to fund these dreams that don't really have a real business," said Mr. Thoma. There are viable companies for whom it might be valuable, but there'll be a whole lot of dreck to sort through.

The crowdfunding proponent immediately leapt back into the fray, before Mr. Thoma could get any further. "I don't think we need guardians of people's decision to invest in something," insisted the Kickstarter fan, adding that "The Wright Brothers may have looked like a bunch of nuts to their neighbors."

The notion of a cable to the moon might be "a great idea for somebody to put money into. I don't know. And I don't think that you know," he said.

"Let's democratize investment," said the man, who we were beginning to suspect as an Indiegogo ringer, before concluding with a flourish: "Why do we want to protect people from making stupid investments when we don't even know which ones are stupid and which ones are terrific!"

To boldly go, indeed.

That does look a little cramped. (Photo: spacex.com)

Good news for anyone who dreams of retiring to a ranch on Mars: Elon Musk's aerospace startup, SpaceX, just landed a $440 million NASA contract to develop the Space Shuttle's successor and get some real, live American astronauts back into space. That would mean, for instance, no more hitching rides with the Russians.

According to a statement the company released earlier today:

"This is a decisive milestone in human spaceflight and sets an exciting course for the next phase of American space exploration," said SpaceX CEO and Chief Designer Elon Musk. "SpaceX, along with our partners at NASA, will continue to push the boundaries of space technology to develop the safest, most advanced crew vehicle ever flown."

SpaceX has 2015 circled on the calendar for its first manned spaceflight, which seems ambitious until you realize that hey, they've made it this far. (Thanks again, PayPal!) Plus, the Dragon capsule is already operational, ferrying cargo to the International Space Station, and both Dragon and the Falcon rocket were designed to carry human crew.

But Mr. Musk's personal equivalent of Stark Industries isn't the only contender to receive a sudden injection of cash. Boeing received $460 million, and Sierra Nevada got $212.5 million for Sierra Nevada. The goal is to have American astronauts back in space within five years. Reports NBC News:

The next phase of NASA's commercial spaceflight effort — known as Commercial Crew Integrated Capability, or CCiCap — calls for these three companies to take their design and testing program through a series of milestones by May 2014. Optional milestones could lead to crewed demonstration flights in later years.

Surely there's some way we can pre-order tickets, perhaps on an installment plan?

The only picture of Mr. Armstrong taken from the lunar surface. (Photo: Wikimedia)

So: Today's been pretty crap, huh? The news is depressing; the weather is miserable. However, in the spirit of last night's event at the Rose Center for Earth and Space, we'd like to take this moment to remind everyone that today is, in fact, the 43rd anniversary of humanity taking its first steps on the moon.

Naturally, there are many celebrations scattered about the Internet. At 11:51 p.m, tonight, Kottke will rebroadcast Walter Cronkite's coverage of the historic event. Here's a nice personal remembrance of the Apollo 11 program. Here's a listicle of moon-related iOS games, because why not. In the event you'd like to feel a uneasy combination of compassion and respect for Richard Nixon, here's the speech he planned to give if Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin hadn't made it back.

Here are some amazing images from the mission. Here is an excellent documentary that you should really watch, composed of NASA footage and interviews with most of the Apollo astronauts. (Turns out they called Mr. Aldrin "Doctor Rendezvous," because orbital rendezvous were the only thing he ever wanted to talk about.)

Mr. Armstrong. (Wikimedia)

And then, if I might, this Betabeat reporter would like to break with the third person to tell her own tiny, tangentially moon-related story. Neil Armstrong is, of course, famously reclusive. Unlike noted goofball Buzz Aldrin (God bless him), he doesn't give many interviews.

However, one summer in the late 1970s, he happened to be staying at a guest ranch where my mother was working as a lifeguard. One day, she struck up a conversation with a man--Ava Garbor's then-husband, as the story goes--"because he was one of the ones hanging around the pool." As they chatted, my mom mentioned that she'd recently gotten her pilot's license and had once been skydiving.

Later than evening, she was walking through the dining room when her new friend called her over. "Edye," he told her, "I want you to meet Neil Armstrong."

While my 21-year-old mother no doubt fished for something to say, her new friend turned to Mr. Armstrong and said, "Neil, this young lady flies airplanes, and she's actually been skydiving before."

Without missing a beat, the first man to ever walk on the moon looked at her and asked, "Why?"

Now, I've never been entirely sure whether he was simply teasing her, or whether Neil Armstrong--a former test pilot who figured they had a 50-50 chance of pulling off a successful landing on the first try, and felt confident enough to give it a go anyway--was genuinely befuddled by why someone would jump out of a perfectly good airplane, just for the thrill of it.

Either way, we like to believe that Mr. Armstrong would enjoy the unimpressed astronaut meme.