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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."
They just got themselves an airstrip that will cost them 1.3 million dollars a year just so they would not have to deal with airport traffic and your worried about a measly $30,000,000 for a contest that stands a good chance of not being won by the deadline?
They seem to hemorrhage money sometimes.
I don't have a microwave. I do, however, have a clock that occasionally cooks shit.
You can't even buy a launch for $30 million, never mind develop and manufacture a lander.
I beg to differ. You can buy a human-safe launch, stay on the ISS, and return to Earth for $30m. You can get a lift to LEO with an LM-2C for $20m.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
The gain is in the unknown things that could have other applications. Here is a small subset of technologies that have come from NASA develpment and research. These are worth Billions.
Laser Angioplasty
Memory foam
Cardiac Imaging System
Infrared Thermometer
De-icing senors for air craft
Thermal Video
Space Technology for Firefighting - Lightweight air cylinders patterned on technology originally developed for rocket motor casings
Advanced Pacemaker
Implantable Heart Aid
Vision Trainer
Vehicle Controller - Lunar Rover technology enables quadriplegics to me mobile
Temperature Pill
I mean the list goes ON AND ON the truth is NO ONE knows that the return on investment would be. I sure wish I could be the one investing Im sure I'd get my money back.
Because once they have the design for the rover, it's easy to mod to include a dye for moon dust, and then Google will send the modded one up to draw Google's logo on the moon. *please mod informative*
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
The "airplane" analogies are always pretty dumb as soon as you scratch the surface. Even on the face of them, it's an argument that "Technology A once was poor, and now it's great, so technology B, which is poor, must inherently end up great." They're logical fallacies.
In this case, to put it in perspective, 100,000$ in 1919 is 1.3 million in today's dollars. A realistic price for this mission by small teams is 50-100 million, with a high risk of failure. For that kind of money, you're not going to get a bunch of little teams like you got for the regular X-prize, which was a (proportionally) extremely simple task. You're not even going to get the idealists. The budget rules out the vast majority of them, and the few idealists who love space issues enough to put forth that kind of cash -- like, say, Musk -- are already going to be putting their money toward space in their preferred method (with their own companies) instead of competing for some prize. That kind of money for investment in this prize would have to come from Wall Street, which wants a return on it's investment.
Not going to happen.
Then the winter came, and the Grasshopper died. And the Octopus ate all his acorns. Also, he got a racecar.
The Apollo program has paid for itself at least a hundred times over, in direct economic benefits, by creating entire new industries, and spawning more new technology than you can imagine, much of which is used in every day life.
http://www.ethicalatheist.com/docs/benefits_of_space_program.html
http://www.thespaceplace.com/nasa/spinoffs.html
http://techtran.msfc.nasa.gov/at_home.html
http://www.fas.org/news/usa/2000/usa-001012.htm
http://www.look-to-the-skies.com/space_program_spinoffs.htm
http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/9811/02/space.medical/index.html
And on and on and on.
Not only will companies design rovers in time for the prize, they already have without it: http://www.diamandis.com/blastoff.html "After a lot of arguments and negotiations, mostly with Marsha Goodstein (the President of idealab! then Bill's girlfriend and now his wife), we reached an agreement. They agreed that BlastOff would put the money into those 3 entities after BlastOff had raised in excess of $20M. So I joined the BlastOff team which at that point consisted of a team of 18 world-class engineers working on a 3 robot mission to the moon. In addition, Jim Cameron had signed onto the effort and Steven Spielberg would soon invest $1M. With $12M of initial capital from idealab, we set out to raise an additional $40M to make this $50M+ million mission a reality... Bill wanted us to land on the moon before the end of 2001... That push would cause us to buy expensive U.S.-based launch vehicles and begin a rapid expenditure of capital that would eventually cause us to close down the shop." Also, don't forget that the prize is open to anybody in the world which means that if Russia or any other country can do it then they get the prize. Add to that the fact that for a company that wants to send a rover to the Moon but is having trouble finding corporate support, this guarantee of 20-25 million at the end makes it that much more feasible than were a company to attempt to do everything on its own.
http://www.pagef30.com
I think the odds of this being won in the next 20 years (and they only have 5 years to do this) are pretty small. This is similar to Branson's prize he's offering for removing CO2 from the atmosphere at some rather significant rate; the challenge to be surpassed in meeting the qualifications are high enough that there is little chance of having to make a payout.
If they do have to make a payout, the publicity is huge, and it's certainly possible that they have some commercial return in mind...perhaps rights to the rover design. I think the field of contenders will be small and weak, because the challenge is significant and the prize amount is unlikely to match the cost. At least for the original X-prize there was a hypothesized market for system developed as a result.
Of course, if I'm going to say this on Slashdot, I'd better be prepared to back it up:
The guidelines are that it must soft-land on the moon by the end of 2012, roam 500+ meters, and send back video and pictures. The basic prize is $20 million. If it can be done by 2014, the prize is $15 million. There is an additional $5 million if a second lander (by any competitor) to land by 2014. There is a bonus $5 million for extra duties like roaming 5000+ meters, photographing existing man-made objects on the moon, surviving the 14 day lunar night, or discovering water-ice.
The requirements and bonus objectives are roughly inline with the design parameters of the Mars Exploration Rovers. I'm sure a private group can build a device with that kind of capabilities for less than $30 million. However, I'm positive they can't get it to the moon for that little.
Landing a meaningful payload on the moon requires a fairly decent-sized launch vehicle. If we assume a mass similar to the old Surveyor Lunar landers, which were about 1/3 as heavy as the MER's (landing mass, not mobile mass) and not mobile, then we can start looking at launch vehicles capable of sending it on it's way.
The Surveyors were launched on Atlas-Centaur rockets, which have an LEO payload of about 5000 pounds. There isn't anything directly comparable currently on the market. There's few offerings that are too small. A Falcon 1 ($8 million, 1500 pounds) won't cut it. A Falcon 9, on the other hand would be significant overkill, with 21,000 pound LEO capacity and a $35 million price tag.
A Russian Dnepr would probably be the best bet. These converted ICBM's are what Bigelow hired to launch his two prototype inflatable modules with. It has an 8000 pound LEO capacity and costs $15-20 million.
So you're left with $5-10 million (because the last $5 million are only available to a second mission) to develop and build the rover (piece of cake), but also a reliable landing platform and an earth departure stage. The latter can probably be adapted from existing upper stage products, but the first two are being done from scratch.
I just can't imagine that much work being accomplished, even with heavy use of volunteer labor, for that price.
However, if somebody out there has got the money to front and wants a mechanical engineer to work for peanuts part time on such a nerdy project, the above doesn't mean I'm not interested.
The USSR sent robots to the moon in 1970 and 1973. Big, car-sized rovers. They worked well, too. Lunokhod 1 was operational for 322 days, and and Lunokhod 2 for about four months. $1 travelled about 10km, and #2 travelled a total of 37km, so those large vehicles got around quite a bit.
It would be possible to redo that mission today. Lunokhod 3, never launched, is in a museum. Improved versions of the Proton booster used in 1970 are available from International Launch Services. The lunar landing module would have to be newly constructed, but the design is proven.