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!

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

[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.

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/

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!

Privately funded?

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

> privately funded organization

You mean like Congress?

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.