Google's $30,000,000 Lunar X PRIZE

chroma writes "It's been a long time since anyone has explored the surface of the moon. But now Google has teamed up with the X PRIZE Foundation to offer a $30,000,000 bounty to the first privately funded organization to land a robotic rover on the moon. Google, of course, has offered the free Google Moon mapping service for a few years now. Looks like the other search engines have some catching up to do in the space exploration department."

Comments

Self serving

[eln]

Of course Google wants people to land on the moon, they're desperate to find employees for their lunar campus.

Re:Self serving

[morgan_greywolf]

Yeah...all the candidates keep mentioning all these difficult-to-meet and ridiculous requirements that must be met to employed there...like air, water, food, protection from the Sun's radiation... The interview usually ends right there.

Re:Self serving

[eln]

Too bad that page is a parody. Bullshit. If that page is a parody, how is it that Google has an almost endless supply of green cheese in their cafeteria? Huh? Explain that one, smart guy!

Re:Self serving

[Skevin]

From the google Lunar campus link:
> The Google Copernicus Hosting Environment and Experiment in
> Search Engineering (G.C.H.E.E.S.E.) is a fully integrated
> research, development and technology facility at which Google
> will be conducting experiments in entropized information filtering,
> high-density high-delivery hosting (HiDeHiDeHo)

Those acronyms have nothing on the Google Open Access Taut Sphincter Explorer, opening on a .cx TLD near you!

Solomon

Shoot the Moon

[Doc Ruby]

How do I prove I landed a robot on the Moon? Can I just email a link to a YouTube video (that I shot at Capricorn One Studios)?

Re:Shoot the Moon

[athdemo]

Let it sit up there 'til Google Moon updates? It might take a while, but, hey...Robot's not doin' a whole lot up there.

Re:Shoot the Moon

[Tackhead]

> How do I prove I landed a robot on the Moon? Can I just email a link to a YouTube video (that I shot at Capricorn One Studios)?

Use a solar-powered antenna to broadcast this on a HAM band. Once a month.

Then kick back and enjoy the FCC going into paroxysms of incoherent rage trying to shut down a pirate radio broadcaster who happens to have a transmitter on The Fucking Moon. (Sure, the FCC can pull your licnese, but it'll still have to divert half its budget into a followup lunar mission to shut the transmitter off!)

Re:Shoot the Moon

[kaizokuace]

oohh ok now I have incentive to win the x-prize.
Winning the X-prize : $30,000,000.00
The amount of money the FCC wastes to shut down your lunar pirate radio : Priceless.

Prediction...

[StressGuy]

At least one ship and/or robot explorer will be named "Alice"

fuck that, lunar x-games!

[jollyreaper]

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Could you imagine the kind of air-er, vacuum you'd get off a lunar halfpipe?

robots.txt?

[adnonsense]

Will this robotic rover obey the moon's robots.txt? (It's available by querying the Tycho crater).

FYI the robots.txt for Jupiter's Galilean moons looks like this:

User-Agent: *
Allow: /io/
Allow: /ganymede/
Allow: /callisto/
Disallow: /europa/

Re:robots.txt?

[Ashe Tyrael]

"All these search results are yours, except Europa. Attempt no linking there."

We need to up the stakes

[east coast]

30 million for such a feat? Bah! There will be no serious contestants. We need to pass around the hat and get that up to a reputable figure that will bring out the serious engineers and rocket scientists.

I'll do my part. The pot is now up to $30,000,005.00.

That's cash money!

Re:We need to up the stakes

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll put in my two cents...

$30,000,005.65

Privately funded?

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

> privately funded organization

You mean like Congress?

Re:Just one question.

[gzerphey]

Gotta say I kind of resent being labeled a troll for stating fact.

Re:Man

[dradler]

You would have to bring a man back home, ... Says who? I nominate George Bush, with a second flight (to prove it wasn't just a fluke success) carrying Dick Cheney.

Already working on it!

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

Basicly the mission requires two things: a launcher and a robot.
I've got a subscription to the Iqbot magazine so in about a year I've got the robot covered.
Now for the launcher I'm going to need some help: send me all the rubber bands and pillows you can find. I'll need about 505 million and 4 rubber bands to get the robot into a decaying orbit around the moon. 5000 pillows should be sufficent to give the robot a soft landing.
Ofcourse the launch window has to be exactly right. This has to be Cowboyneals bedroom window, we might need to remove a few walls, roof and floor to accomodated for the rubber band robot launcher. And since we have to launch at exactly 11:23pm, some neighbours may complain about a bit of noise. This should be limited to about the sound of being in the center between 4 jet-engines running at full power, but should last only about 4.3 seconds. The ear ringing might last a week or two.

Ofcourse our research isn't complete yet. We are still working on the radiation protection of the robot, finding the cheapest sunblock creme isn't that easy. But we expect to be ready to launch around newyear 2009.