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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."
Power was supplied by a solar panel on the inside of a round hinged lid which covered the instrument bay, which would charge the batteries when opened. A polonium-210 radioactive heat source was used to keep the rover warm during the long lunar nights.
During its 322 Earth days of operations, Lunokhod 1 traveled 10.5 km and returned more than 20,000 TV images and 206 high-resolution panoramas. In addition, it performed twenty-five soil analyses with its RIFMA x-ray fluorescence spectrometer and used its penetrometer at 500 different locations.
Lunokhod 2 operated for about 4 months, covered 37 km (23 miles) of terrain, including hilly upland areas and rilles, and sent back 86 panoramic images and over 80,000 TV pictures. Many mechanical tests of the surface, laser ranging measurements, and other experiments were completed during this time. With regards to a human lunar base, I think the prize could also have great benefits. I think it's pretty much a given that robots and rovers will play an integral support role of a manned lunar base, and getting robots to operate in a lunar environment is still something we have little experience with. The prize will likely lead to discovering plenty of new ideas and techniques which do and don't work on the lunar surface.
Also, rovers are a great way to captivate people's attention. Just look at how much the Mars rovers has increased people's attention at what's going on with Mars. For my generation, lunar exploration (human or robot) is something that exists only in history books. Seeing the Moon through the eyes of a rover (a rover put up by entrepreneurs, not a government) can change that, and increase support for human exploration of the Moon.
Also, I think this is a great way for the "space == science only" crowd to get interested in private space activity. Thus far, many of them have either been ambivalent about private space, or outright antagonistic about it ("just a way for rich people to waste money"). This prize helps cement the idea that yes, private spaceflight can have benefits for science.
Are they awarding the prize for the post-launch delivery, or does the organization have to design the ground-based launch vehicle too? Governments aren't too keen on private enterprises developing their own ICBM's, yunno.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
If Google can throw millions of dollars at something like this, then it is extremely disappointing that they are not funding the next stage of Dr. Bussard's work. For a small fraction of this prize, they could verify the Polywell IEC fusion concept. In addition to solving our energy and pollution problems, this is probably the single quickest way to enabling large scale space activity. Without a space elevator or at least nuclear rockets, any large scale space activity will be impossible anyway.
For those who missed it, Dr. Bussard gave a talk at Google, and the video is available here.
I'm not sure you could get that much higher, and it would take much, much longer. The frequency of a pendulum is proportional to the gravity. In 1/6th g it would take almost 3 times as long to complete one swing on the pipe. Say 30 seconds instead of 10 seconds. Also I believe your efforts to add energy (by varying your height) would be diminished proportionally as well. If you could keep it up, you might eventually achieve greater heights, but you also have to worry more about the landing, since, with a longer period, any imperfections in your arc would be amplified.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Popular Mechanics' space correspondent, who's been in the trenches with Burt Rutan, Steve Fossett and Buzz Aldrin, comes out HARD against the lunar X Prize, calling it a publicity stunt. And why not?
Probably the most economical way for a competitor to get to the moon will be to go as a secondary payload with another mission - sharing the same launcher. In most cases, this would be to Earth orbit (low) and a translunar injection stage will be needed to get to lunar orbit insertion (LOI). Still going to cost multiple $M.
Better yet --- catch a ride with somebody else who is going to the moon. Who? China, India, Europe -- all have announced lunar orbiting missions to be launched in the next several years. It is too late to team up with India on their first mission. China maybe? NASA is deciding whether to send a science mission to lunar orbit (two are already in the works for launch in Oct 2008: LRO http://lro.gsfc.nasa.gov/ and LCROSS http://lcross.arc.nasa.gov/ ). LCROSS is a secondary payload for LRO and has a budget of under $100M. It won't exactly land... let's call it a "sporty" landing.
The next NASA mission could use a Delta IV; if so, there will be plenty of room within the fairing on the next mission for a secondary payload (if the mission is approved). That could be a "free" delivery to lunar orbit.
Putting a spacecraft on the surface with not less than 5kg useful payload is possible, but a rover (especially one with the capabilities required by the prize) will likely be quite a bit heavier, and more costly.
I know of one team that thinks they can do such a mission - including the launcher - for under $100M. Maybe $75M on a good day. Most in NASA would say $120M would be cutting it very tight ... need more like $175M.
Where will the money come from? How about sponsorship from a few companies who would like to be associated with a lunar mission? Pick any 10 at $10M each and you are on your way.
There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about. -- John von Neumann