Slashdot Mirror

It's not as simple as you think. Building the lunar lander is a major achievement. Indeed, google offered a $30,000,000 prize for the lunar lander part even after taking into account the existence of commercial launch systems. See: https://lunar.xprize.org/prize.... The Israeli team missed the deadline, but, if their lander succeeds, will have achieved the goal.

http://edison2.com/the-x-prize...
https://auto.xprize.org/prizes...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Few more links for the collection.

Gratifying to know AC thinks I own Progressive Insurance and Edison2.

https://auto.xprize.org/prizes...
http://edison2.com/the-x-prize...
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/0...
https://phys.org/news/2011-05-...

They're thrilled they get to keep the money after getting the essentially free PR for the last decade. No fucking progress has been made.

They didn't even get to keep the money. Like the previous X-Prize, it was an insurance policy. Google has been paying the premiums on that policy for 10 years now. Probably much less than $20 million, but still a substantial sum of money. The insurance company came out on the right side of that bet this time. They're the ones who get to keep the money.

But hey, we got this lovely participation prize for the children, so it was worth it! Right?

I don't find it dramatic at all, it says began in 2009. So only 8 years in and Space-X has ramped up their launches per year (should be around 19 this year IIRC) and Blue Origin is making significant progress. Just look a the Lunar X-Prize, where 5 teams will be trying to launch their craft to the moon by Q1 of 2018. Some of the competitors have some interesting commercial aspirations.

state unambiguously that he was directed to reach out to the Muslim world to make them feel good about their contributions to science and engineering.

So what?

NASA has always been about public relations. They are the single most popular government agency in the world. They have had their own television network since the early 80s. You seem to have a bug up your ass that one of the many, many areas of outreach was to the second largest group of people on the planet.

Lest you forget, the X Prize was founded by Anousheh Ansari a female muslim immigrant from Iran. Seems like encouraging more people like her is exactly what NASA ought to be doing.

Oh really?

What is the Google Lunar XPRIZE?

The $30M Google Lunar XPRIZE is an unprecedented competition to challenge and inspire engineers, entrepreneurs and innovators from around the world to develop low-cost methods of robotic space exploration. To win the Google Lunar XPRIZE, a privately funded team must be the first to:
* successfully place a spacecraft on the moon’s surface
* travel 500 meters
*transmit high-definition video and images back to Earth

Five teams, SpaceIL, Moon Express, Synergy Moon, TeamIndus, and HAKUTO have each secured a contract to launch their spacecraft. They are now authorized to move forward in the challenge, kicking off the next exciting phase of the competition.

Given that its been quite a while since someone landed anything on the moon. It would be a victory for space exploration if someone sent up a robot and dug a hole.

It would be, but the next robots on the moon won't be digging holes. Just rolling around. (Unless one of the teams gets really ambitious while trying to win the bonus $4 million available for discovering water.) The prize availability terminates at the end of next year, so the teams competing had better hurry up.

Though everyone loves Mars and those rovers are exciting, I was thinking how cool it would be to have a modern lunar rover with the HD cameras.

You are wanting to read this. In short, Google thinks so too, and is putting up $30 million in prizes if the competing teams can put a rover on the Moon and roll it 500 meters. The deadline is the end of 2017. One of the teams has signed a launch contract already, so they might make it. Audi has signed on to back the German team, so there may be a rover with an Audi logo on it rolling around on the Moon in a year or two.

What's the immediate response to "We've invented deflector shields!" on Slashdot? "Cool, about time, we saw those in the 70s"

I'm not even going to be sarcastic with you about this article. The name of the fucking prize has 'tricorder' in it: http://tricorder.xprize.org/

Do you really expect someone to post to Slashdot and not mention that word? Really?

The contest requirements are very specific on the device's testing capabilities, here they are:

The Core Set (Qualifying requires 5/13, Final Round requires all 13):
1. Anemia
2. Urinary tract infection, lower
3. Diabetes
4. Atrial fibrillation
5. Stroke
6. Sleep apnea, obstructive
7. Tuberculosis
8. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
9. Pneumonia
10. Otitis ("ear infection")
11. Leukocytosis
12. Hepatitis A
13. Absence of Core Conditions

The Elective Set (Qualifying requires 1, Final Round requires 3):
1. Pertussis (Whooping Cough)
2. Hypertension
3. Mononucleosis
4. Allergens (airborne)
5. Hypothyroidism/hyperthyroidism
6. Food-borne illness
7. Shingles
8. Melanoma
9. Strep throat
10. Cholesterol Screen
11. HIV Screen
12. Osteoporosis

The Vital Signs Set (Qualifying requires 3, Final Round requires all 5):
1. Blood pressure
2. Electrocardiography (heart rate/variability)
3. Body temperature
4. Respiratory rate
5. Oxygen Saturation

The X-Prize competition decides what a Tricorder is. Their guidelines are here: http://tricorder.xprize.org/si...

I'm actually having some trouble finding anything along the lines of "two genomes will be publicized, 110 will not" in the rules and guidelines (obtained from http://genomics.xprize.org/sites/genomics.xprize.org/files/docs/AGXP_Competition_Guidelines.pdf). In addition, I don't see why there would be any restriction on publication once the genomes have been de-anonymized, regardless of whether a competition was organized. While the technology behind the instrumentation may be proprietary, the resulting sequences most certainly will not be, given that they were not previously invented.

I was surprised (naive, I know) that the link in TFS was not to the X-Prize website, so I went looking for it.

It turns out that deep ocean exploration is only one of several contending future exploration X-Prizes.

Is this an attempt to stack the deck in Cameron's favor by forcing the competition choice through publicity as if it's a forgone conclusion, and meanwhile he has maybe a six month head start on the competition?

If that were true don't you think one of the over 100 teams who spent millions of their own money would have done that? Its easy to get 100mpg when you gloss over all of the details and rules, but the X-Prize setup many tests to ensure the car actually got 100mpg in many scenarios. Your alleged PM 100mpg car may not even be true.

"While it isn't terribly hard to build a vehicle that will propel itself 100 miles on only a gallon of gas, the X Prize rules call for a car that can carry four adults and sip gas while traversing all kinds of terrain and negotiating real-world traffic. And the car builder must demonstrate that the vehicle can be profitably offered for sale in volumes of 10,000 units in a form that meets federal crash safety and emissions requirements. If this weren't enough, the competition really is a race, because the money goes to the fastest car that can do all of these things."

http://www.xprize.org/news/automotive-x-prize-seeks-100-mpg-car

Still true today.

The government stranglehold on space travel is crippling research, it's only in recent years that a little sanity has prevailed, and commercial ventures are starting to make their mark on a bold new horizon for humanity.

Still true today.

The government stranglehold on space travel is crippling research, it's only in recent years that a little sanity has prevailed, and commercial ventures are starting to make their mark on a bold new horizon for humanity.

Its time for the private sector to start doing the manned flight inspiring

When is the last time the private sector did anything "inspiring"? The private sector is best known for greed, self-interest, and only doing what will get them a buck this quarter - long-term be damned. Not exactly "inspiring".

Where the hell have you been lately? http://www.xprize.org/

"I'm sceptical of anything which proposes to simply double the amount of energy extracted from that gasoline, because, well, physics is physics."

Agreed, but the real question is how are they testing? Downhill with a tailwind? Anyone can achieve 98mpg given the right conditions (downhill in neutral), and since they don't come out and say "we achieved 98mpg using the same technique as fueleconomy.gov" it sounds like BS.

Another reason this sounds like BS: billions of dollars are being invested to meet the 35mpg CAFE standard by 2020. When Congress was talking about requiring 32mpg by 2015 it was estimated it would cost $47 billion dollars to reach that goal: "For the auto industry, it will be costly; the Transportation Department last year estimated that requiring the industry to meet 31.6 mpg by 2015 would cost nearly $47 billion."

So a magic fuel injector that achieves 98 mpg would literally be worth billions of dollars, not to mention win the xprize and $10 million dollars. Any engineer that designed this could join any auto manufacture and write his own ticket. The idea that a startup in California just happened across this technology outdoing the greatest minds in GM, Toyota, Honda, and the academic community just sounds like snake oil, just like the car that runs on water, 130mpg car, 110mpg 0-60 in 3 seconds Mustang. If any of these technologies were real GM or Honda would be announcing it or at the very least they'd be xprize competitors.

Have we forgotten the Perpetual Motion DeLorean scammers already?

The article linked is spammy and terrible. For the actual information, see the newsitem on the xprize site or the linked details. Basically, there is no prize yet but they had a workshop to begin working out A. Rules for a prize and B. What is achievable. The actual prize would be announced in about 8-14 months.

You can watch the Unresonable Rocket guys compete live right now.... http://space.xprize.org/lunar-lander-challenge

While I really appreciate the parent's bringing up the matter of Wednesday's X-Prize competition, I was somewhat less impressed by all the links in the parent post going to the winner's own accounts of the event, particularly when the contest is somewhat mired in controversy.

You have to give a few points for including the one link to the New Scientist news report. But:
"... in level two of the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge Wednesday. Flying a brand new vehicle ..." ... seems like a pretty good place to include a link to the x-prize dot org site, no?

http://space.xprize.org/lunar-lander-challenge/

'If you think that fast and cheap DNA reading applies only (or even mostly) to monitoring of individuals, you do not have a real grasp of the scope and applicability of DNA sequencing.'

Indeed. For a great summary of what some of the people who really do grasp it think, check out the answers to Nature Genetics' question of the year in 2007 - 'What would you do if it became possible to sequence the equivalent of a full human genome for only $1,000?':

http://www.nature.com/ng/qoty/index.html

Right now, commercial genome sequencing is about $50,000 USD with the Solexa/Illumina system. Several teams are currently competing for a $10 million USD Genomics X-Prize, which will bring it down to the $10,000 USD level:

http://genomics.xprize.org/

You can't accuse them of being under-ambitious (e.g., from Reveo: "The ultimate mission of this proposed program is to commercialize an instrument in 5-10 years that will cost less than a $1000 and sequence the whole genome and simultaneously the epigenome (methylation code) nearly error free in a minute for pennies per genome.").

This was actually the concept followed by one of the X-prize companies. They were going to basically float a rocket up into the sky and then launch it from altitude.

http://space.xprize.org/files/downloads/ansari/da_vinci_project.pdf

Here's the justification for it: http://www.xprize.org/blogs/wpomerantz/ng-llc-rules-explained

The thing you should know about NASA though is that they don't actually do shit for rational reasons - they just decide to do stuff then they justify it. The fact is, there are very few people doing rocket engine development in the US. Its such a small community that you can have conferences run by students and all the big names in the field will show up. NASA benefits by encouraging commercial interests to do rocket development and a competition is the most cost effective way to do that.

And similarly who would believe that any idiot would offer 10 million dollars as reward to the first non-government organization completing a challenge to launch a reusable manned spacecraft into space twice within two weeks?

If I said "I'll give you 10 million dollars if you can launch a reuseable manned spacecraft into space twice within two weeks" and you claimed we had a valid contract, you'd be laughed out of court. What's the difference between me saying it and the XPrize foundation, and why is the former not a valid contract while the latter is? Possibly the 9 page written contract they posted expressing all of the terms and conditions of their challenge.

I found nothing there that proves your point. every endeavor has regulations. how does pointing at the regulation in this area demonstrate your point? I am aware of private companies that are already doing the things which you say they cannot do.

both of these are private companies: http://www.scaled.com/ http://www.virgingalactic.com/

and then a list of 24 additional companies here on the left sidebar of this page: http://space.xprize.org/ansari-x-prize

Since this technique should be a shoe-in for the Archon X Prize.

Spreading out into space will have an even greater effect [than Columbus's voyage to the New World]. It will completely change the future of the human race -- and maybe determine whether we have any future at all.

-- Stephen Hawking

No vacuum needed from a demonstration standpoint -- just hold it at Holloman as planned: counteracting Earth's 1G for the 180 seconds of the level II part of the competition generally demonstrates the Delta-v necessary to go from the Moon's surface to orbital rendezvous (or the reverse).

This "rules explained" page goes over this concept in a lot more detail, along with more interesting info on the competition.

'I don't know anything about California, but it could be that the government is trying to protect people from possible harms of bad and unnecessary testing.'

The interesting thing is that this technology is evolving so rapidly that the type of testing California is cracking down on is going to look quaintly prehistoric in just a few years. Roche is expected to launch a commercial high resolution version of its 'sequence capture' platform in the next few months which, combined with a 'next generation' sequencing system (like Roche's own 454 machine), should allow complete human 'exomes' (all the well-defined mature gene transcript sequences in a sample) to be completely sequenced for a few thousand dollars. But this, of course, is just the first step. One or more of the future sequencing technologies currently in development is likely to bring entire human genome sequences into this price range:

http://genomics.xprize.org/

with the eventual Holy Grail of a '$1000 genome' now seeming pretty much inevitable. But some of the teams competing for the genomics X-prize don't intend to stop there - e.g., Reveo claims to be aiming to produce a practical nanotechnology-based instrument 'in 5-10 years that will cost less than $1000 and sequence the whole genome and simultaneously the epigenome (methylation code) nearly error free in a minute for pennies per genome.'

So what happens if it's possible to buy an extreme throughput sequencer for the price of a laptop, and decode a genome as effortlessly as cracking CSS on a DVD? Is this particular genie really likely to stay in the bottle? And is it in any case defensible that knowledge of an individual's genome should ('for his own good') remain the province of an exclusive medical priesthood, rather than of the individual himself?

I am a space enthusiast, but I largely agree with the space critic above, who wants to shift space to the private sector. I think NASA's role should be reduced, with projects shifting to private companies and eventually NASA becoming the FAA of space

Projects that should be pursued right now are things like private companies putting men in true orbit (that will probably make money by opening up true space tourism) and perhaps sending unmanned probes to other planets to get concrete quantifiable knowledge by organizing prizes like the X-Prize (completed), and the Google Lunar X PRIZE (just starting).

Do these things well, get results, and the advocates will come. Old astronauts calling in, and hoping future presidents will give money doesn't do half as much. And then you wonder where have the advocates gone...

Here is a brief summary of the rules as taken from the draft on X-Prise website.
Fuel economy >100MPGe
4+ passengers
Must meet US EPA Tier II bin 5
Must meet US safety regulations
Must have features considered standard in today's automobiles at a cost that is not prohibitively expensive, and must provide a business case proving so.

This is really awesome. For too long, the "human genome" has been what we know of a few guys who ran the HGP. Since then, many more have been sequenced but not systematically, and not for the sole purpose of cataloging the countless variations present. This sort of database is the first giant leap towards effectively creating a solid understanding of human variation, allowing us to perfect everything from medical treatment to diet supplements (the GATTACA option in the poll is so relevant). Really, this is just setting the stage, paving the way for when we get to the Genomics X-Prize and beyond. It's about time there was another push of serious capital in this arena.

I should have said this in my parent post, but the X Prizes are a good example. Would teams compete so hard to design efficient cards if there were no prize money, and if big auto companies could simply take their designs without paying for them?

We just had a story on the Automotive X Prize recently. I'm excited to see what it will produce.

There is an excellent article on how the LLC rules were designed:
http://www.xprize.org/blogs/wpomerantz/ng-llc-rules-explained

The more difficult course, Level 2, requires the rocket to hover for twice as long before landing precisely on a simulated lunar surface, packed with craters and boulders to mimic actual lunar terrain. The hover times are calculated so that the Level 2 mission closely simulates the power needed to perform the real lunar mission.http://space.xprize.org/lunar-lander-challenge/

They don't have to go all the way from here to the moon, just hop from one place to another successfully.

You haven't heard of the Automotive X_Prize?

http://www.xprize.org/xprizes/automotive_x_prize.h tml

You know, when you're the richest person on earth, it's not that difficult to make what you say become fact. I mean, if Gates had really wanted spam eliminated, he could spend some of the $56 billion he has to put out hit contracts on the world's most wanted spammers. Or, more realistically, fund something like the X-prize, but for spam elimination instead.

You've answered your own question, subsidies. Stop them and the people working on the problem will need to produce more than abstract papers describing what they might or could or plan to do in the future with more funding.
Total BS.

Commercialize or die. Or perhaps an http://www.xprize.org/ X-Price needs to be offered to get non-tit suckling entrepreneurs working on the problem.

The 3-litre Lupo should be a different matter. Its based on the normal Lupo, though with a lot of the steel replaced with aluminium. It's kerb weight is 853 kg or 1,882 pounds, which for the competition, I'm sure could be improved. As far as aerodynamics, well it's a super mini, so massive gains could be taken there.

Now the 0 to 100 km/h is 14.5 seconds which would be probably the main problem, however remember this car was introduced in 2003, so some gains should have been made in the meantime.
All figures taken from the VWvortex review.

All in all I would be very happy to be in the position that VW are in, at the start of this competition.

They've published the Draft Competition Guidelines.

Lots of folks are knee-jerking with "what about electric vehicles?" Unfortunately, the Slashdot summary is misleading ... again. The X-Prize folks are citing a "100 Mile Per Gallon Equivalent," or MPGe. They account for electric vehicles. You can use natural gas as a fuel, or biodeisel, or E85. For the "mainstream" vehicle, it has to have a radio, air conditioning, etc. It's in the linked doc above.

There are performance specs too. The vehicle must go at least 80 mph for the 2-seater; 100 mph for the 4-seater. Braking 60-0 must be less than 170 ft. They don't require crash testing, but expect you to demonstrate that you've built something to contrmporaty standards for front and side impacts. The standard compliment of mirrors, reflectors, indicators and gauges are required as well.

The end of the document describes their objectives and how they came up with their requirements. It's a pretty easy document to read, and it gives you some insight into what they're trying to do (hint: it involves eventual production of the vehicle.)

Please read the GUIDELINES. It is not just about making a 100 MPG car. That is not difficult at all (I've done so with a team at MIT myself). VW 1 liter car fails it! Gah...

Therefore governmental policies must be put in place to drive of the price of consumption..... To reduce consumption in societies that vote for thier leaders will require decisions to be made by those leaders that will be uniformly despised.

And those leaders will be removed from office at the peoples' first opportunity.

I'm continually amazed at the ubiquity of the notion that any problem can be solved by passing a law. Fuel shortages? No problem - just impose a 55 MPH national speed limit and there'll be plenty for everyone. (You'll recall how well that worked out.) Global warming? Just slap a 700% "carbon tax" on fuels and everyone will be driving Priuses (Priii?) and showering with solar-heated water before the decade is out. Enact a treaty, and the rest of the world will eagerly follow suit.

Reality check (1): Any elected officials putting such measures into law would be turned out of office at the next election - if not sooner - and their successors, well-knowing why they were elected, will immediately repeal those measures.

Reality check (2): China, IIRC, has under construction over 50 new coal-fired power plants. Although a Kyoto signatory, their CO2 emissions are projected to surpass USA's by 2010, with no end in sight. No law passed by USA or any other country can temper China's behavior if the Chinese decline to cooperate. And it appears they have no intention of doing so.

Reality check (3): Arbitrary restrictions on peoples' behavior do not work. See the 55MPH thing, the War On Fill-In-The-Blank, any 4th of July in a state that outlaws fireworks, ad infinitum, ad nauseam.

The way to wean people off fossil fuel is to present them with a better and/or easier and/or cheaper alternative. The way to bring those about is with incentives, not with mandates or subsidies. Since 1980 the USA government has pumped something like $50 billion into energy R&D, with nothing significant to show for it. Suppose it were to establish an X prize to pay, oh, $25 billion to the first organization demonstrating an alternative energy process that (1) is renewable, (2) has less end-to-end environmental impact than coal or petroleum, (3) is at least as end-to-end efficient as coal or petroleum, (4) yields end-user cost and performance comparable to gasoline in a typical mid-size automobile, and (5) is practical on a commercial scale. Would you bet that we wouldn't be retooling the nation for such a process by, say, 2020?

I am detecting a pattern here though... Al Gore seems to find a good idea in progress, champion it, and (at least awkwardly) take some type of credit for it... in this case he is a bit behind the X-prize foundation and NASA with its COTS Program and Centennial Challenges. (I'll leave out his recent championing of Global Warming since he has a pretty well established environmental record)

Take the money and run. Don't be greedy. How many billions of dollars do you really need?

I wondered about this before but I think I have it. In section 1.5, there is a limit of $10,000 cost per genome on average. In section 1.21, they state that they will pay a fee at actual cost per genome determined by the judge (nb this presumably may actually be less that $10,000). Hence, a maximum of $1,000,000.
It also seems that if you refuse the 'bonus', you may be penalize by twice that amount from the initial prize.

rules here. Thanks nyri

100 human genomes within 10 days or less with an accuracy of no more than 1 error in 10,000 base pairs, with sequences accurately covering at least 98% of the genome, and at a demonstrated cost of no more than $10,000 per genome.

During each X PRIZE competition test, a TEAM must use its device to sequence within 10 days 100 human dip-
loid genomes of 6 Gbp (6 giga base pairs, i.e., six billion pairs of DNA base molecules) each.