Tranquility Zoo
WHITE PAPER Tranquility Zoo
A Managed Lunar Experiment-as-a-Service (EaaS) Business Model
Executive intent
The Zoo is a low-drama, high-margin “nooks and crannies” revenue line: we accept small third-party
payloads/experiments, integrate them into our habitat or nearby “garden” test area, provide
power/thermal/comm/cameras, perform installation + routine care, and deliver data + observability back to the
customer. We monetize via setup fees + monthly service + consumables + change orders, with transport mostly
passed through.
The strategic bet: we become the only reliable caretaker inside an operational lunar site. That lets us price for
risk reduction + scarcity + speed.
- 1) What exactly we sell
Core service (minimum viable)
Custody (secure storage + handling protocols)
Power + comms (basic instrumentation and telemetry)
Camera + signal (watch your “potato” grow)
Routine ops (water/clean/inspect/reset)
Incident response (limited troubleshooting + swap a part)
Data delivery + logs (time-stamped, audit-friendly)
Add-ons (where margin lives)
Precision thermal control
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Sterile/biocontainment procedures
High-power pulses / motor drives
Sample handling / microscopy
Robotics/EVA installation
“Scientist-in-the-loop” experiments and interpretation
IP-safe “clean-room” handling + confidentiality wrappers
- 2) Reality check on lunar delivery pricing (why we treat transport as
pass-through)
Commercial lunar delivery today is still expensive on a $/kg to surface basis. A widely cited commercial price is
~$1.2M/kg to the lunar surface (Astrobotic published pricing and payload user guides). Astrobotic+1 NASA’s
Inspector General has noted NASA’s own planning figure was ~$1M/kg and that task-order reality trends closer
to ~$1.2M/kg and potentially higher. NASA Office of the Inspector General
So: transport dominates unless payloads are tiny. Therefore, Zoo economics work best when:
the payload is small (sub-kg to ~10 kg), or
the payload is high value and wants care + data + credibility more than cheap transport.
(Starship could later collapse cost curves, but it’s not something we bank on in the near-term model.)
- 3) Pricing architecture (simple, defensible, and scalable)
We charge 4 things
Transport & lunar delivery: pass-through + handling margin
Integration & onboarding: one-time NRE
Zoo subscription: monthly recurring for care + ops + data
Change orders/incident work: time & materials at premium rate
The “scarcity logic”
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You’re selling:
the only staffed/operated lab space in a hostile environment
continuous attention (even if it’s small)
time-to-learning (faster than waiting for their own mission)
risk reduction (your engineers touch it)
That supports pricing that looks “rich” compared to Earth, but is “cheap” compared to a failed lunar attempt.
- 4) Cost model (what it costs you to run each project)
I’m splitting costs into hard marginal and soft marginal.
Hard marginal costs (real consumables)
Mass/volume penalty inside habitat (“rack space”)
Power draw (kWh; but on the Moon this is life)
Water/thermal consumables
Data bandwidth / comm relay usage
Packaging, connectors, mounting hardware, test media
Soft marginal costs (labor + overhead allocation)
Engineer time for integration
Ops checklists + daily/weekly tasks
Documentation + logs + data handling
QA/ESD/clean handling procedures
Customer interface + reporting
Key point: in your concept, engineers do this “inside regular duties,” but we still bill it at a fully burdened rate,
because it consumes scarce attention.
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- 5) A practical “per-project” unit economics template
Here’s the template I’d use for first-pass pricing:
A) One-time Integration & Onboarding Fee (NRE)
Covers: requirements, interfaces, mounting, safety, test, checklists, camera/instrumentation setup, procedures.
Rule of thumb (range):
Micro (0.1–1 kg): $75k – $250k
Small (1–10 kg): $250k – $1.0M
Medium (10–100 kg): $1.0M – $5.0M
Large (100+ kg): $5.0M+ (usually becomes its own program)
B) Monthly Zoo Subscription (MRR)
Covers: routine care + scheduled ops + logs + data delivery + basic troubleshooting.
Rule of thumb (range):
Micro: $10k – $40k / month
Small: $40k – $150k / month
Medium: $150k – $600k / month
Large: custom
C) Change Orders / Incident Work
Premium engineering: $350 – $650 / hour billed
EVA/robotic field ops: $50k – $250k per activity (depends on risk/time)
D) Transport pass-through
If using current commercial delivery reality: ~$1.2M/kg to surface (plus integration fees, minimums, manifest
constraints). Astrobotic+1
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Important: for “nooks and crannies,” we’ll often be flying sub-kg to a few kg—so the transport line item is painful
but tolerable, and the service value becomes the differentiator.
- 6) Example pricing packages (so you can sell it without drama)
Package 1: “Potato Garden”
For tiny bio/ag experiments, materials exposure coupons, sensors, etc.
Payload: 0.5 kg
Integration: $150k
Subscription: $20k/mo
Transport (pass-through): 0.5 × $1.2M/kg = $600k
First-year invoice: $150k + $240k + $600k = $990k (~$1.0M)
Your internal marginal cost guess (typical):
Engineer: 80 hours total/year @ $200/hr burdened = $16k
Consumables/power/comm allocation: $10k–$30k
Total marginal cost: $25k–$50k
Gross margin on service portion (NRE+MRR): typically 70–90%
Transport mostly pass-through (add 5–15% handling margin quietly if you want)
Package 2: “Instrumented Prototype”
For a small device that needs careful ops and data credibility.
Payload: 5 kg
Integration: $600k
Subscription: $90k/mo
Transport pass-through: $6.0M
First-year invoice: $600k + $1.08M + $6.0M = $7.68M
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Marginal costs grow (more power/thermal/ops), but service GM can still sit 60–80% if you keep scope
controlled.
Package 3: “Scientist-in-the-loop”
You run an active experiment cadence + interpretation.
Integration: $1.5M
Subscription: $250k/mo
Plus: $50k–$150k/mo for specialist analysis/reporting
Typically $4–$7M service revenue/year per project (before transport)
- 7) How much revenue can we “cram into nooks and crannies”?
This depends on space, power, and engineer attention. So I’ll give a conservative “habitat slice” assumption:
Assumed Zoo capacity slice (placeholder)
Rack/bench capacity: supports 25 concurrent micro/small projects
Engineer attention: ~2 FTE equivalent spread across ops shifts
Power budget slice: enough for sensors/cameras + small devices
Scenario A: Conservative (quiet, low disruption)
10 new projects/year, mostly micro
Avg service revenue per project (NRE+first-year MRR): $350k
Annual service revenue: $3.5M
Marginal cost (labor+consumables): ~$1.2M
Service gross profit: ~$2.3M/year
Transport is pass-through; it can be huge in invoices but not the profit story.
Scenario B: Base case (real traction)
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25 projects/year mix micro/small
Avg service revenue per project: $700k
Annual service revenue: $17.5M
Marginal cost: ~$5–$7M
Service gross profit: ~$10–$12M/year
Scenario C: Aggressive (you become the default caretaker)
40 projects/year; several “Scientist-in-loop”
Avg service revenue per project: $1.2M
Annual service revenue: $48M
Marginal cost: $15–$22M
Service gross profit: $26–$33M/year
These numbers are plausible because the work is scarce and high-trust, and because customers already
accept “moon economics.”
- 8) What we should charge “net of expenses” (your direct question)
If you want a single, simple rule you can repeat internally:
Target unit economics
Service gross margin target: 65–85% (NRE + MRR + change orders)
Transport margin: 0–15% (usually low margin to avoid drama)
Net contribution margin (after direct labor + consumables):
Micro projects: $200k–$600k contribution in year 1
Small projects: $0.8M–$3M contribution in year 1
Scientist-in-loop: $2M–$6M contribution/year
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If you want to keep it “not a big deal,” you price it as a standard service menu with a strict scope box, and you
only upsell change orders when they ask.
- 9) The “hidden” strategic value (why this is worth keeping in the white
paper)
The Zoo creates:
A pipeline of partners + scientists + future tenants
A reputation for operational competence (rarer than rockets)
A natural place to embed Tranquility standards, telemetry formats, and “how-to-run-on-the-moon” playbooks
Optionality: today it’s potatoes; later it’s serious paid validation for high-value lunar industrial workflows
- 10) Next step (no big deal; just makes the estimates tighter)
If you paste your best guess for the Zoo slice (even rough):
how many concurrent projects you’d tolerate (10? 25? 50?)
how many engineer-hours/week you’ll allow
power slice (kW) you’re willing to allocate
…I’ll turn the above into a one-page pricing sheet + a 2-page unit economics appendix with a clean table you
can reuse in proposals—still “quiet,” still deniable, still inside a white paper.
If you don’t want to refine anything yet, the base-case headline you can carry forward is:
“Zoo services can plausibly contribute ~$10–$12M/year gross profit at modest scale (25 projects/year), with
invoices much larger due to transport pass-through at ~$1.2M/kg.” Astrobotic+1
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