LA JOLLA, California --- TransOrbital will boldly go where no other private company has gone before. It's the first company to win approval for a privately funded moon mission, and as "Tech Live" reports tonight, the development promises to launch a new, commercial race to space.

TransOrbital's CTO, Paul Blase, looks over a half-scale mock-up at the company's research facility in Virginia, pointing to what will be the heart of the mission. "The primary payload is two cameras," he explains. They will take extremely high-definition video and stills of the lunar surface. The company plans to sell the footage to film, television, and videogame producers.

The tiny spacecraft, called "The Trailblazer," will take footage of just about every nook and cranny of the moon's surface at exceptionally high resolution. In fact, Blase says the resolution will be less than a meter, which means the footage will likely include images of debris left over from moon missions past. All this from an orbiter praised for its simplicity.

"We're avoiding moving mechanisms as much as possible," Blase said.

The company is generating interest among just about anyone curious about space. That's partly because TransOrbital has come up with an unusual way to defray the costs of the $15 million mission. The company is offering available space aboard the craft to customers who want to send mementos directly to the moon's surface (after the orbiter is finished with its mission, it will then crash into the moon's surface at 2,000 mph). For $2,500 per gram in shipping charges, the company says it will take business cards, locks of hair, and even cremated human remains to the moon.

TransOrbital has also come up with a way to cut the costs of launching its orbiters. The company will use a converted former Soviet nuclear missile. The START treaty allows for conversion of 150 missiles into launch vehicles for commercial payloads, Blase said.

Part of that first commercial payload will include tiny data collection satellites called CubeSats, designed by Stanford aerospace professor Bob Twiggs and some of his students at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo.

Junior Jake Schaffner says the inexpensive Trailblazer launch will "open all kinds of new doors." The mission will let Schaffner and his colleagues deploy their satellites as the Trailblazer makes its way to the moon. If the mission is successful, it could represent a brand new and very inexpensive way to launch commercial satellites in the future.

"When you get into space, normally in the past it's been prohibitively expensive," noted junior Chris Day. "If commercial ventures can work in space, and work profitably, it opens up a whole new avenue."

NASA believes the space business could reach $100 billion over the next decade, and the dozens of companies already climbing onboard will now be keeping a close eye on TransOrbital. "We just don't know where this will go," Professor Twiggs said. "Opportunities will come about that you can't even think of right now."