RSSGoogle Shoots for the Moon With New Contest
By Ed Oswald | Published September 13, 2007, 2:28 PM
Google said Thursday that it would award a $20 million prize to the first group able to safely land a robotic rover on the moon and transfer back a gigabyte of video and data successfully to Earth.
The Mountain View, Calif. search company partnered with the people behind the X Prize, which is the group that offered $10 million to build the first private, manned spacecraft to make it successfully into space.
Unlike that contest, putting a probe on the moon may not be as easy, or even cheap. It could very well be that the cost of even getting the probe on the lunar service could match or even exceed the prize. However, the possibility of licensing the technology out to others could prove enticing for some.
Either way, Google is pressing forward, calling the prize an opportunity to advance the science of space exploration. "[It] could lead to important developments in robotic space exploration, a whole host of new space-age materials, precision landing control technology, and who knows what else," senior vice president of engineering Alan Eustace said.
A total of $30 million could be handed out by the end of the contest. If a winner is selected by 2012, they will receive $20 million, and a up to a $5 million bonus if they exceed the minimum requirements. The second place team will receive $5 million, but still need to land their probe on the moon to collect.
Landing on the moon is not enough, either. In addition, the probe needs to move at least 1,312 feet across the lunar surface, and return video and data back to Earth.
If no winner can be selected by 2012, the top prize drops to $15 million until 2014 when the contest ends.
"The Google Lunar X PRIZE calls on entrepreneurs, engineers and visionaries from around the world to return us to the lunar surface and explore this environment for the benefit of all humanity," X Prize CEO Dr. Peter Diamonds said in a statement.
More on the contest can be found on the its Web site.
I believe the X-Prize Moon competition is a great way to stimulate space projects development and it gives company a goal and in this case its a monetary goal. Spaceshipone winning the X-Prize with the first suborbital flight has sparked off the sub-orbital tourism industry and in the front at the moment is the compnay Virgin Galactic that plans to operate them in 2009.
I believe first group able to safely land a robotic rover on the moon is defintely achievable within 5 years. I belive this contest is great because it will also bring alot of excitement to the public.
Vic Stathopoulos
http://www.dialashop.com
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|Google people are so bored. First they sell PI number of shares, then burning man, now rockets to the moon? Nice to have billions of $s and the only company that's spending it properly is GOOGLE. yepp they rule, literally.
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|Wait ... Google is encouraging people to build rockets?
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|Moogle?
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|Could be a fun Uni project!
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|Wow. $20 mil to see that on YouTube?
Why don't these overly wealthy fools think up something useful, like solving some of our problems here on Google Earth?
We went to the Moon already and there's nothing there. I suspect this is this just to appease NASA types for letting them fly their environmentally unfriendly, gas guzzling jumbo joyrider in and out of Moffat field.
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|The problems on Earth, filled as it is with Furbys and other lower life forms, are not worth solving.
The only hope is for a few intelligent people to abandon this s***hole planet, start over elsewhere, and leave the stupid people behind to die in their own filth.
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|Exactly. Leave the morons behind please.
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|I'm sure you'll find plenty of your highly intelligent kind on the moon. Bon Voyage.
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|Yeah, morons down here, lunatics up there
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|Ha!
Furbys!
I see what you did there...
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|I doubt ayone expects anyone to pay for the cost to get it actually on the moon.
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|Why not make the contest realistic, and offer a billion? wouldn't Just the fuel alone to get to the moon would cost hundreds of millions of dollars?
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|The Russians could probably get it into orbit and on it's way for a hefty discount. But yea, the whole process from building the rover to antennas to control it, launch etc would add up. $20 million inst nearly enough. SpaceX (Elon Musk) is shooting for 6 million per launch to get payloads just into lower orbit.
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|I think half the agenda is innovating a way to get there on-the-cheap...There's been many alternatve ideas proposed to reach orbit, but nobody has really gotten their hands dirty with any of them.
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|Even if i had the money, I wouldnt want to risk spending that much just to possibly win a competition!
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|I understand "on the cheap" but we're talking an order of magnitude of 1000. I'd like to see a company do it for less than 10 billion. Give them a billion for their efforts.
30 million? Pocket change for space budgets!
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|But we might get some interesting ways of doing things out of the attempt, eh?
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|A prize like this is not intended to be profitable in itself, it's merely an incentive to take the plunge. Do you think SpaceShip One was built solely to win a $10M prize? Heck no, it was built to be the cornerstone of a new industry.
It's quite common for cash incentives to be offered to spur development. Often times it gives established companies that little added push to take a risk they may not take otherwise. The technical achievements made during the process apply to far more than just traveling to the moon. Many things that we take for granted today were originally developed for the Apollo program, but when's the last time you bought a NASA brand product? With private industry behind the wheel those innovations can be marketed as they're developed and $20M is merely the brass ring.
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