Most people don't take it literally when they're told to shoot for the moon — but thinking small isn't Naveen Jain's way. The 52-year-old Internet entrepreneur is a co-founder of Moon Express Inc., one of several companies in the Google Lunar X Prize competition, in which privately funded teams will try to put robots on the moon by 2016.

Jain's plans don't end at reaching the moon's surface. MoonEx, as his company is also known, plans to make billions mining the moon for precious resources. It also hopes to let customers send messages and materials to the moon.


Jain spoke with The Times about the project.

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