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

$30,000,000 is a lot

[paullb]

Who cares about a rover on the moon, there already on Mars. Can't google put this money to better use elsewhere?

Re:$30,000,000 is a lot

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, like a porn search engine. Screw making people think about private space exploration so we can leave the planet before a disater happens. We want pr0n!!!!!!1111111

Yes, maybe they can use it to end poverty.

[Anonymous Coward]

:-0

Re:Prize Not Quite Adequate

[everphilski]

Winner doesn't even get $30M. Runner-up gets $5M and there is reserve funds - the winner only gets $20M.

Remember - for the last XPRIZE, Paul Allen invested something like $20M into SpaceShipOne, with a XPRIZE of $10M. We don't know how much money Burt Rutan anted up.

The point of the money isn't to make money but to lessen the barrier to entry, and essentially create a (one-time) market. No one would do this without the prize, at least not in the timeframe, but with the purse there is a better reason to do so. Also, in doing so, technology is developed and relationships are formed which can be leveraged for future profit (see: SpaceShipTwo).