[3] In November 2011, Shackleton announced an intent to undertake lunar prospecting,[4][non-primary source needed] but failed to secure funding and met no public milestones.
[7] The company planned in 2011 to develop an "industrial astronaut corps" that would select individuals who have many of the characteristics of previous explorers—such as Ernest Shackleton, Edmund Hillary and Lewis and Clark,[8] and stated that they could have humans stationed on the Moon by March 2021.
[9] In the belief that significant reserves of ice would be located, the company had hoped to establish a network of "refueling service stations" in low Earth orbit (LEO) and on the Moon to process and provide fuel and consumables for commercial and government customers.
[10] Shackleton planned to use that on-orbit logistics infrastructure to build a fuel-processing operation on the lunar surface and in propellant depots in LEO.
Although the requisite legal regime to enable the ice mining technology does not exist,[12] major world space agencies, including NASA, had put in place a "voluntary, non-binding coordination forum (the Coordination Mechanism) where nations could share plans for space exploration and collaborate to strengthen both individual projects and the collective effort.