At 240,000 miles on average, the Moon lies only one fifth of the way to the top of the Gravity Well. This is equal to about 80 Columbus voyages. But you need far more energy to get from Earth to the Moon than from the Moon to Mars. (Peter Cadogan, The Moon—Our Sister Planet)
It really wasn’t that long ago when the two greatest superpowers were vying to put satellites into space. Now, 50 nations have their own satellites in low Earth orbit. If you’re a Thailand, say, you can call Space Systems/Loral, a Canadian-owned company based in Palo Alto, California, and tell them you want to put a satellite into geostationary orbit for television broadcasting or military communications. You can have the thing in orbit 25,000 miles above Earth within two years.
