I'm all for advancement of technology, and maybe (hopefully) I'm missing something in this whole concept, but it strikes me that what you're talking about here is a potential global investment of many billions of dollars, including an R&D investment on Segway's part of, at the very least, many millions of dollars on little more than the pure speculation that other firms will;
1.- be interested enough to commit many millions of their own dollars in
sponsorship funds, or
2.- dedicate huge resources to develop a program to launch a lunar mission
3.- follow through with said lunar mission, deal with the huge logistics issues,
the politics (equally huge), the press, both positive and negative and actually
go ahead and send a mission up...to test what, exactly? That it can be done?
it would be little more than repeating something that has already been done, decades ago, and the folks that did it have not seen sufficient reasons since to repeat the exercise. I'm certianly not a rocket scientist and wouldn't want to speculate as to the reasons they haven't, but they are (rocket scientists, that is) and I'm pretty sure it has a lot to do with both money and bang for their buck.
What you're talking about is a staggering investment of time, energy, money and brainpower effectively re-inventing the wheel, and one that already made a good many revolutions at that. In a perfect world, what a cool idea. Unfortunately, our world is far from perfect, and I don't think I'll be donating much of my own money to the project, for much the same reasons that NASA hasn't. Maybe we'd be better served if we spent even a wee small bit of that money, energy, time and thought on first making some realistic gains in the way we treat the place we live (good old Mother Earth), than engaging in a competition to see whole can put together the biggest glide in space. Once we've dealt with some of the more immediate issues we have here on our home planet, what the heck, let's go after making a whole ton of XT tracks on the Moon, or Mars for that matter.
I think I'd kind of prefer to see Segway spend that money improving the terrestial versions that we're all so passionate about, improving the acceptance and use of Segways and other energy efficient, environmentally friendly tools. Maybe, if they did something like that first, there may come a day where the first Lunar Segfest becomes a reality.
just my 2 cents Canadian (1.6 cents American...the Canuck buck's getting stronger!)
Wayne
Segway of Alberta - Calgary
www.mysegway.ca