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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."
Of course Google wants people to land on the moon, they're desperate to find employees for their lunar campus.
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)?
--
make install -not war
For the rare slashdotter that does not also read Wired religiously here is a related article on an easy way to send your favorite picture to the moon.
Lunar Legacy
I don't have a microwave. I do, however, have a clock that occasionally cooks shit.
How do they justify this to their share holders? Publicity?
Still this is great from the standpoint of progress. -50 evil points for google.
Now, do they launch with a bunch of people specifying parameters and running control equipment and whatnot?
Or do they just press the 'I'm feeling lucky' button?
Its CHICKEN FEED for this type of mission. You can't even buy a launch for $30 million, never mind develop and manufacture a lander. It'll be the most expensive $30 million you ever got.
Brett
The key words here are "privately funded organization". Its not about landing a robot on the moon, its about encouraging non-governmental space exploration
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Why not put a man on the moon? It will boost maned space technology in the public sector. Everyone has done robots, now everyone is rushing to put a man back on the moon and mars, so let google's money beat everyone.
I smoked pot once. But I DID NOT inhale. Will you hire me?
At least one ship and/or robot explorer will be named "Alice"
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Could you imagine the kind of air-er, vacuum you'd get off a lunar halfpipe?
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
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.
Traditionally, prizes have encouraged people to invest a wide range of resources. Lindbergh was one of few to spend less than the prize amount during the Orteig prize--others, like Admiral Byrd, spent nearly $100,000, or four times the $25,000 prize value. It has been reported that Mojave Aerospace Ventures spent significantly more than the $10 million purse to win the Ansari X PRIZE. Teams are willing to spend more than the prize value, as they get to keep their intellectual property and capitalize on it. In the case of the Google Lunar X PRIZE, we expect some teams to be willing to spend more than the value of the prize. Other teams may be able to complete the mission at or below the value of the Grand Prize purse. I don't think comparing the prize reward from a 1919 prize award of flying from Paris to NYC is accurate. I mean, people had already been flying. How many people put things into orbit, much less on the moon?
Just to put this into perspective, the pair of Mars rovers cost NASA $820 million. Granted you're only expected to send one and it's only to the moon, NASA does already have the infrastructure & experienced personel to do this. Even an 1/8 of that cost is 3 times the prize money.
Add the requirements of a 500 meter 'rove' and hi def 'Mooncast' and I think you're looking at too much risk for any person--possibly any company.
Frankly, I don't think $30 million is enough. I know it may sound ridiculous but I personally think $300 million would start to entice competition. What intellectual property would you have in the end? You would have patents on specifically design tools for getting a piece of machinery to the moon only capable of Mooncasts & 500 meters of roving. I'm not so sure any company would try to enter this competition as it is a major investment and a major risk with very little gain.
My work here is dung.
You can't buy an OldSpace duopoly launch for 30m. Luckily, we have companies like http://www.spacex.com/ which has agreed to provide a small discount over their usual low low prices on launch.
Actually, this may be a matter of cost, not technology - a cost that may be easily regained by the winnings. Someone may just need the incentive to do it. Putting a man on the moon is hard...putting a robot...eh, not so much. We launch something out of orbit every few years now, so the tech is there. Heck, the expense may be designing the robot, not the delivery system.
It costs billions to put those guys on Mars.
Heck, it costs NASA billions to put them on the moon.
The point is to have private industry be able to do it for millions, or less.
Its not "Its been done before", its to make it possible to do it again, and again, and again.
Do it without putting the whole country into a deficit.
Make that possible, and then maybe the impossible that costs trillions can use the same technology.
A hand-made car, only a few can afford.
Mass-produced cars, we all can afford.
Get the space technology to that level, and finally we'll be able to really explore outside our planet.
To this point, private industry has barely managed to get to the edges of space, much less into orbit. Getting all the way to the moon, landing, and sending data back would be a huge step forward for private industry, and it will cost far more than $30 million to get there.
Given the specifications, it should be possible to do something that more "jumps" than "roves", but certainly gets around on the moon, and transmits data back to earth, for maybe a few dozen grams. The rocket that takes it from LEO to the moon might have to weigh 10 to 20 times that, but still we're talking about something on the order of a pound or two.
And something that light should be able to piggyback on almost any launch.
Thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
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:
Doing it for something on the order of $30 million is an achievement, same as the Ansari X-Prize wasn't about doing something new, but doing it for cheap without government involvement.
Given the investments of participants from the last one, where Scaled Composites spent $20 Million for a $10 Million prize, I'd expect that if someone does this, it will be for less than $100 million. I would guess that to be able to get a capable robot to the moon would require a launch vehicle on the order of the Falcon 9, which is a priced from $35-$55 million per launch. I haven't done the numbers for the mass fraction (fuel to payload ratio) from LEO or GTO to the moon, so I can't say what the mass of the required robot would be, or even given that, what the launch weight (and therefore costs) would be.
But, still, given launch costs, unless they somehow manage to figure out something that SpaceX and Rocketplane-Kistler haven't, this prize is either just about right, or too little. Certainly not too much. I'm pretty optimistic about it right now, and hope we hear some things about it soon.
I think this will turn out to be a great thing for kickstarting civillian exploration of space. Nasa is too big and bloated to do it, even when congress doesn't strip funding to spend on the Ospray project. Civillians will be the ones to conquer space because they will reap the rewards -- mineral wealth, land rights, and civillian colonist user fees. Anything like that would be "public domain" if NASA goes first -- which doesn't make them eager. They get the same reward whether they succeed or not.
So what if a private company actually does make it to the moon? Is it possible for them to claim property there? How does private property work on the moon? It seems to me that according to the homestead principle one could claim parts of the moon if they change the land in some significant way. Who knows. Maybe we could see some resort casinos open up in 2050.
Creative Demolition
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.
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!
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
The point is that you would be achieving this goal through the private sector, a major leap indeed for civilization. The exploration of space may turn from a government driven endeavor to an economic one. If there is money to be made then the means are a consequence of or capitalist system. Google is acting as a catalyst in this situation, providing an artificial economic incentive to speed things up.
Business NEVER expand greatly by handling just a local area. The globe is now encompassed. Once we start moving to the solar systems, private eneterprise and spread wealth will jump.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I, for one, welcome our new robotic roverlords!
My blog
The idea isn't to do this for the sake of the prize, even the X prize cost more to get the first time than it actually rewarded. The idea is to use the contest to fuel research and a huge publicity factory for the companies involved in the competition. I for one, think it's a good idea. Much better than raising my taxes to fund it centrally.
Speak for yourself.
I always laugh when I see ppl try to make it out that this will be man vs robotic exploration. That has to be the silliest thing I have ever heard. Even in USA's early days, it was lack of man power than lead to a large amount of innovation (labor was very expensive). The moon and mars will almost certainly have robots doing the building and maintence of any planet base. In fact, if NASA was smart, they would offer a prize for coming up with a robot for the ISS (above and beyond the arm). A robot could repair bigelow's on their way. Food will need to be grown. It will come about via robots. Even the bulk of the exploration of luna and mars will take place via robots. Man will simply learn to exist there.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It's that their crawler can't reach sites that far and their lunar indexes risk becoming stagnant.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Prizes work great on the low-budget front, but not so great on the high budget front. On the low-budget front, you have a far wider pool of idealistic individuals who can individually or collectively afford it, plus a lot of businesses which see it as a way to buy publicity. When you get to the sort of budgets that lunar missions require, both of these sources of money essentially disappear. Instead, you're subject to the government and Wall Street. The government, by the nature of the prize, is automatically ruled out. Wall Street doesn't like to throw money on projects that promises a small chance of getting only a portion of your invested costs paid back.
In short, this isn't going anywhere, and Google knows it. Sure, it doesn't hurt to offer the prize. It's essentially free publicity for Google.
Then the winter came, and the Grasshopper died. And the Octopus ate all his acorns. Also, he got a racecar.
true enough, but the publicity alone might cost more than $30,000,000 if you tried to get the same hype. Maybe not though, it's possible the Associated Press would be all the publicity you'd need.
Speak for yourself.
well played bro.
"Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." --Eric Blair
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Most likely Google just wants to expand Google Moon the way it did with Google Maps when they added the Street View feature. Since Google couldn't find any company up to the task they came up with this lame excuse just to hide the fact that they've opened up a public bid for the outsourcing of Google Moon's "Crater View" feature.
You mean like Congress?
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
no
-judging another only defines yourself
I assume this to take away any controversy in Google buying hangar space and runway rights at NASA Ames in Mountain View, CA as describe in a earlier /. article. I'm not against private companies helping the government in research and that should be done in a blind trust as to not to create a conflict of interest. I don't think the government should "sell" resources to fund government operations and this sounds to me of the rich "buying" our government, this sound too much like what was in the movie "Robocop" in which police and military operations are run by private companies so corrupt companies could do "evil".
they would add to it (say double or triple). In doing so, they get their name alongside of Google's. More importantly, they would be known with major firsts. Hell, Each of these companies spend more than 60 million on ad campaigns that absolutely sux.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Helium-3 is not key in fusion reactions. It is usable in only two of the many possible second-generation reactions. We'll be lucky to have a commercial first-generation fusion power plant by 2050. And no, that's not an exaggeration; check out ITER's development timeline for when they think they'll have the first fusion power plant providing power to the public, assuming that everything goes just right and that it can somehow be economical.
Then the winter came, and the Grasshopper died. And the Octopus ate all his acorns. Also, he got a racecar.
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.
But I see Columbia, for instance hasn't signed... so if some drug lord funds the trip, and they launch from Columbia, maybe they can claim it.
I want to know if you can grab old Apollo landing memorabilia... if you could return it to Earth, it would fetch quite a price on eBay.
If you can't return it, is it black mail to collect money for NOT defacing it?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
And you can get to LEO for $7M to $8.5M on a Falcon 1.
Ummm... if you actually read the Wikipedia article you cited, you'd see that He3 fusion reactions have almost zero reaction byproducts. Perhaps you were confused by the subsequent section in the Wikipedia entry explaining that He3 is key for use in neutron detectors (i.e., devices that detect neutrons). He3 is not radioactive, and therefore does not emit neutrons (or any other particle).
Actually, what the (confused) person meant was, there are people out there scheming to mine Helium-3 from the moon and return it to earth for use in specially designed reactors. The appeal is that fusion of He3 releases virtually no by-products, so a company running a fusion reactor running solely on He3 wouldn't have to periodically replace parts due to the reactor itself becoming radioactive from low-level particle bombardment.
There was actually a rather informative documentary on the Science Channel recently about this. Of course, it's hideously expensive to mine the moon for anything and return it to earth in an economically practical manner; one of the choice quotes from the documentary describes how, even if someone stacked bricks of gold on the moon, it would cost too much money to send a ship there, pick them up, and return them to earth. Yet He3 is such a rare commodity on earth, but so plentiful in lunar regolith, that it would actually be cost effective (by some estimates) to mine the stuff there and return it to earth. It wouldn't take much of the stuff to run a fusion reactor designed to solely react He3, and supposedly this enterprise would pay for itself in terms of energy output versus the amount of energy expended to extract this stuff from the moon.
The Wikipedia article that the parent refers to (grandparent to this comment, parent to yours) actually makes mention of this. The main reason why no R&D has gone into designing He3 fusion reactors is that He3 is extremely rare on this planet, so we're focusing all our effort on hydrogen and deuterium fusion; in the case of H and D fusion reactions, you're right, He3 is one possible product that would enter into second-generation reactions. But there has been real discussion of bypassing using H and D altogether and reacting only He3, and it's being discussed by real commercial entities in the U.S. and Russia, not just theorists.
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.
As a percentage of our national budget, NASA's $16-17B per year is pretty trivial. Then factor in that they do a lot of research for the military, and another chunk is much more general research, often materials science, biology, and aircraft-related (remember, it's the National Aeronautics and Space Administration). The big eye catching projects like the shuttle are just a fraction of what NASA does with what is just a tiny fraction of the US's 3 trillion dollar annual budget.
Then the winter came, and the Grasshopper died. And the Octopus ate all his acorns. Also, he got a racecar.
Thank the Lord that you cleared this all up for me. I figured I was going to have to waste my weekend disproving all those "facts" to my family but now I can actually enjoy my entire vacation on one of the four edges of our glorious garden called Earth.
Praise Jesus!
PS. You forgot to say Praise Jesus after the end of your letter. I know its polite to assume that everyone thanks our Lord and savior for his eternal gift but it still would be great of you to make sure to end all your documents, notes, emails, correspondence, phone calls, and fast food orders with a hearty Praise Jesus! It just makes the world better.
"Don't feel bad for me child; I'm the monster that hides under your bed."
The moon will become pockmarked with all the failed entries slamming into its fragile face. I see a dark future for our world.
Today at 17:30 WST the dimunitive object noted orbiting us has completed its descent. First World Militia leader Perov Nekormick noted signs of intelligent life aboard, including the appearance of small eyestalks that look to be used by the object to navigate its environment. "Although it lacks true locomotion that our slimepads provide, the device does appear to be capable of some limited locomotion" Perov stated. "We may have some fun, err Run some scientific experiments on it before we topple it upside down into a crater."
Appearance of the object was backtracked to the brightly lit object first observed through the Hibble intragalactic telescope. Hibble stated that its track was reminiscent of the flares described by his great-great grandfather Hindle near the time of Pretty Bright Flashes on our ugly neighbor. These flares were also the ones that brought the Huge-Ugly-Meat-And-Nylon-Suits down in the Hosgevarten district in 10034.5. For those that don't remember the incidents, the HUMANS were responsible for severe environmental disturbances in the 10030 era. Our world preservationist organization KOWS (Keep Our World Safe) released a press release stating in part "We must not disturb any marks from the new landing, just like we did for the earlier HUMANS encroachment. Otherwise they might know we're here and disturb us too in their clumsy methods of scientific discovery. Remember that they did kidnapp many members of our quiet and peaceful Rock neighbors during their last visit." The local Rock spokesman has been asked for comment and it is believed we will have the answer some time around 10099.
Meanwhile KOWS is urging that citizens stay indoors, and not to earth the visitor before it has been neutralized by the FWM.
They ARE out to get you simply because They are in it for themselves and they don't care about you.
I mean.. that's no moon! ^_^
Interestingly for the price of one or two cruise missiles you could run a few of these $30mil competitions and *lower* your taxes.
People who quote themselves bug the crap out of me -- Me.
On one hand, it's awesome that a huge company like Google can spend what amounts to a pittance to further space exploration. Even if the program fails to produce winners, a lot of great thinking and technology might come out of it. I'd love to see companies like Google, Microsoft, and IBM do an order of magnitude more. On the other hand, if I were a shareholder, I'd be a bit peeved.
I assume they'll check with telescopes so that contestants don't just pull a _Capricorn One_?
And will they blow it up?
Meh, time go go for a ride on an unusually nice day..
Why is Google doing this? Is it really just about the founders' dreams, or is there actually an angle here, where Google somehow ends up making money?
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
It is cheaper to offer a suplementary prize for 3rd place of 5 million, knowing it is a virtual certainty that it won't be collected.
Yes, there's a lot of hype. The simple facts of the case are the fact that it's a second-generation fuel when we don't even have first generation fuels working yet. This means that it's much harder to burn. And the only benefit you get from that is low neutronicity. It's far from even the only second generation fuel -- it's just the only one that people can use to justify trips to the moon, and thus it gets lots of hype. Might as well go p-B fusion if you're going to deal with that kind of Coulomb barrier.
Then the winter came, and the Grasshopper died. And the Octopus ate all his acorns. Also, he got a racecar.
I agree with your premise that fewer entrepreneurs would be participating in a high-cost mission, but I don't think the cost of this mission falls into that category.
Most of the expense of the mission will be launch costs ($20m+). These can be easily purchased from one of the many companies that offer it, like Sea Launch, United Launch Alliance, SpaceX, etc. The cost of developing the robot itself, which is what this contest is really trying to spur research on, is much lower, and enters the same tier as the original X-Prize. This allows all the same entrepreneurs to participate, with a possible bigger payout at the end. If a team looks like it's getting really close, and has a great design, I'm sure some company would be happy to back the $20m launch cost in return for some publicity.
I'd expect Armadillo Aerospace to be one of the first in line, since they have already developed advanced thruster systems (for the original X-Prize) that could be easily repurposed for a soft lunar touchdown.
For security, the MD5 hash of this message and sig is 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.
AP: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5ioIwrLaUdgy0B2zqCnTzXswchBGA
Is it likely that anyone will be out there by 2015 designing such an expensive craft, without some serious funding and motivation to do so? I seriously doubt it!
If He3 grew in little balloons on trees, we still wouldn't be making reactors from it now because the Coulomb barrier is too high. The only benefit you get from burning it is low neutronicity, and that's not that big of a deal. You can breed He3 here if you really needed to; our current He3 supply, which is more than we really need, comes from the tritium in nuclear warheads. Tritium can decay to He3, and tritium is bred from lithium.
I've not only read the Wikipedia article, but I helped write it long, long ago.
Then the winter came, and the Grasshopper died. And the Octopus ate all his acorns. Also, he got a racecar.
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.
Check it, they have a donate tab where you can donate like a nonprofit for tax deductions.
God spoke to me.
Perhaps Google can partner with Richard Branson, but then again perhaps Branson will win it.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Yea, the moon landing was all staged. There was no real moon landing.
FalconShould there be a Law?
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.
I second that, all in favor signify by saying Ay.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Hi - Musk has stated that a Falcon 1 would be able to do it, and he's offered discounts as well for those participating in the prize: "Musk said SpaceX's two-stage Falcon 1 could get a payload to the moon, as long as the team's spacecraft was equipped with third-stage capability for entering lunar orbit. "I would just take the same engine I was going to land on the moon with, and add some tanks that you could drop off," he said."
http://www.pagef30.com
Explain to me how you plan to get to the moon on a $20m+ launcher. The lightest Falcon 9 is $35m, and it's iffy if you could pull it off with that. Got any launchers cheaper than the Falcons?
Then the winter came, and the Grasshopper died. And the Octopus ate all his acorns. Also, he got a racecar.
Over at my blog I go into some detail... I wish they had thought about the prize more, they left so much on the table! http://digitalcrusader.ca/archives/2007/09/lunar_xprize_mo.html
augment your senses: http://sensebridge.net/
How about developing one?
If it was possible to land a probe on the moon for less than $30 million, then what would be the point in this competition? Google could do it themselves, and get much more PR for that. Who knows, maybe there's someone out there who could do it for $25 million, but hasn't had the funding. Until now.
You're not going to get a better buy than the Falcons, so better hope that they work and SpaceX doesn't go belly-up ;)
Although it's possible SpaceX will go belly up, I seriously doubt it will, the only way I can this happening is if they can't deliver. If it were then Richard Branson wouldn't be investing or putting in orders for any SpaceShipOnes so he could offer flights to space tourists. His Virgin Galactic has sold tickets to its first 150 passengers for $200,000 each. They have collected more than $15 million in deposits.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Not really. One cruise missile costs $1.3 million. But I agree with the spirit of your post.
Plus, few people are going to call Google how lame Google Moon was/is. For people that want to index all the world's knowledge, this thing is shallow. I'm sure there must be good databases of lunar images and other data, just as there is for asteroids, various biology databases, etc.
From there, you can go off into discussions about the Deep Web, the Semantic Web, etc. IMHO, Google is a *long* way from that stated goal, which is something fundamentally impossible (how do you deal with literally innumerable database schema?), and they're just trotting it out as PR.
In some ways, Google's failures are a Good Thing, vis-a-vis privacy, as this is also a company with *another* stated goal of wanting to know all about you. But they can garner mondo press (given how lame our press is) along the lines of, "Wow, Google now does Outer Space".
What you do with a computer does not constitute the whole of computing.
Got any launchers cheaper than the Falcons?
:-) The probability of world economy tanking aside, it's reasonable to assume that launches will cost less 7 years from now.
Sure. Probably all of them, 7 years from now.
Besides, could you get away with something even lighter than Falcon9? You can get 750kg to LEO for $7-$8 mil today, on Falcon 1. From LEO, would it be possible to use an ion drive to get to Moon orbit? I don't know if delta-v needed to get there is achievable with an ion drive in realistic time-frame, but even if it takes 6 months, so what, the rover wouldn't mind. Or am I totally off base here?
Its CHICKEN FEED for this type of mission. You can't even buy a launch for $30 million, never mind develop and manufacture a lander. It'll be the most expensive $30 million you ever got.
I don't think anyone realistically expects the prize to pay for it, but it gives people some motivation. Anyone who does it is liable to come out with some money making patents or opportunities. Someone like Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic can offer vacations on the moon to the wealthy. They've already got more than 150 people to buy $200,000 tickets for a flight on SpaceShipOne, and have collected $15,000,000 in deposits. Look at what Russia has been doing, selling tickets on trips to the Space Station for millions. I bet if someone's willing to pay $30,000,000 to go to the space station, people will be willing to pay twice that, heck even $100,000,000 to go to the moon.
FalconShould there be a Law?
The idea isn't to do this for the sake of the prize, even the X prize cost more to get the first time than it actually rewarded. The idea is to use the contest to fuel research and a huge publicity factory for the companies involved in the competition. I for one, think it's a good idea. Much better than raising my taxes to fund it centrally.
Aboslutely!
FalconShould there be a Law?
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.
Cool, yeah, me and my roommate just sat down and figured out that it could work (4:1 mass ratio for a chemical rockets, 1:1 for an EP booster, both from LEO, based on an old project), so if you can pull off ~100 kg you could do a falcon 1 for a chemical system, and you could make a monster, closer to 300 kg if you're willing to take a while with an electric thruster.
Of course, then you get to the robot that's that small and capable, which I don't know as much about it. From what I understand, the point is really to encourage the private robot capabilities, not the getting to the moon part.
You're going to have a really tough time landing a hundred pound or so lander with a .05 lb-thrust Ion thruster.
Brett
Because if we made sure everyone was well and housed before we did anything interesting the world would be an extremely boring place. I stand just as much chance as anyone of finding myself a sufferer from Alzheimer's, or cancer, or Parkinson's, or some other horrible disease before my life is up, so I don't think I'm being selfish in saying that I'd like to see money spent on space research as well as medicine. After all, if I find myself dying of cancer, say, I'll take solace in knowing that though I die, at least the rest of humanity is making bold steps elsewhere. In fact, if humans stop making bold steps, I may as well die now anyway. What would be the point of being a member of such a pathetic race of beings?
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Bullcrap. I hear the Mexicans will do moon shots for 200 bucks a pop...
$1.3 million a year is under $4,000 a day. Assuming the airstrip saves each passenger about two hours and the average Googler's internal billing rate is about $100, the airstrip would be economically viable at twenty passengers a day. Of course, it is more for the use of the bigwigs than the average Googler, and their internal billing rate might be literally tens of thousands an hour.
And then we have the PR excercise, which will be middle-of-the-newspaper news once when announced and once when won. For $30 million. That can't possibly be justified other than by the PR department having too much money chasing too few opportunities. (A well executed *product launch* by Google could get the cover of Time, just like Apple routinely does.)
Luckily, I'm not a Google shareholder (that P/E gives me shivers -- and this is exactly one of the reasons why, plenty of money and running out of obvious avenues for growth), so this is mostly academic.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
that moon.google.com has gotten really bad ass all of a sudden. Street view, for the *moon*.
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?
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.
That's even more silly. You expect to develop a launcher for less than the price of buying one? Good freakin luck ;) Might as well "develop a CPU" rather than buy one.
Then the winter came, and the Grasshopper died. And the Octopus ate all his acorns. Also, he got a racecar.
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.
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
To the person whom modded me as flamebait: I am very, very sorry for you. Have you forgotten what it is like to be down and out and struggling? Have you spent so much time in front of the computer screen, that you have lost your humanity? I hope you will not be a coward and explain just why, when we have starving, homeless, and sick people, you feel throwing money away is a good thing. Perhaps you should transit to the Bush Company camp.
I don't understand how everyone is so negative about this, I mean it's pretty silly to assume: A, that nobody will figure out how to do this, and B, that the limiting factors we have now will still be the same in 6 - 7 years. I mean, ten years ago, you wouldn't say "People will never use digital pictures in professional settings because the quality is too low..." It's just as dumb as all the old black and white 'futuristic' tv programs picturing the future as a bunch of polished silver knobs with little twitter dials and needle indicators beeping and squelching as you crank up the computing power.
Speak for yourself.
Helium-3 can be used to make fusion mostly aneutronic (you can't get it completely aneutronic because of side reactions) which avoids the problems caused by high energy neutrons. The big downsides are the availibility of He-3 (which mining on the moon may relieve) and the fact that it requires much higher temperatures than D-T fusion.
He-3 is so rare on earth that extracting it here would require more energy than can be gained from fusing it! Tritium decays into He-3. However tritium has a half life of over a decade and making tritium is a bit of a pain too (it requires the very high energy neutron flux that proponets of helium-3 based fusion seek to avoid). Our current stocks of He-3 are a byproduct of the nuclear weapons industry.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Or, they could compete for it themselves--and win both fame and fortune, from a rival, to boot.
I don't think that you understand how little money $30m (actually $20m; $10m of it goes to little $5m extra prizes) is when it comes to producing hardware of any kind, let alone hardware that needs to escape from this gravity well. It's actually rather humorous that you think you could build a brand new launch system, including all of the component testing, for less than you can purchase one for which someone else has already made all that expense and is dividing said costs among all of its customers' purchases.
Then the winter came, and the Grasshopper died. And the Octopus ate all his acorns. Also, he got a racecar.
You do realize that rocketry costs have gone down very little in the past five decades, right? Even the $7k/kg Russian and Chinese rockets aren't much cheaper than the $10k/kg we in the US were paying back in the 1960s.
Rockets are not computers. The primary limiting constraint on rocketry advancements are not lithographically printed transistors. They're the constraints of metallurgy and fuel energy density. These are advancing neither exponentially nor quickly.
The logic of "Technology A was poor, and it became great relatively quickly, so technology B, which is poor, will end up great relatively quickly!" is a transparent fallacy.
Then the winter came, and the Grasshopper died. And the Octopus ate all his acorns. Also, he got a racecar.
That's in modern dollars, by the way, so inflation doesn't come into play.
Then the winter came, and the Grasshopper died. And the Octopus ate all his acorns. Also, he got a racecar.
Well, it is not in their area, but heck yeah. That would be interesting to see. In fact, Google might just go for it as well.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Be that as it may, there is now a $30 million reward where there previously was none. I fail to see how this can do anything else but spur some development in the field. ;)
All your base are belong to us.
ok given that even, now that there is a focus on it, and perhaps some competition, and multiple investors, not just one company crossing their fingers to get the prize... then I think it's POSSIBLY doable. Company A gets a tax write-off donating a million dollars to the fund, or even more, maybe a company will partially sponsor a team... Right now, for example, there is a team from Carnegie Mellon planning to try and do it. So, far be it from me to say they won't be able to. And far be it from anyone to say that nobody will be able to. It's going to be a monetary loss most likely, but for example the original x prize winners spent more than twice the $10 million prize getting their stuff working. I just think you're possibly underestimating the forces at work here when you say it's not going to happen. Even if a rocket costs 35 million, the prize is 30 million, and then they have to blow 10 million on the device itself, just silly estimates on my behalf of course I have no idea what it costs... I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility.
Speak for yourself.
Ah, the guilt trip. This is the typical weapon of people like you. Ever consider that you're asking people to throw money at intractable problems instead of ones that can be solved, and that advances in science that benefit everyone come from funny places? A large portion of homeless people in the US are mentally ill. Since it's illegal to forcibly institutionalize them anymore (at least in the US), they don't stay in the shelters that do exist unless it is cold. Sickness is obviously inevitable, we all die someday. The solution to starvation, etc., is to reduce overpopulation. There are .. um.. difficulties in implementation here. Handouts, in general, don't work. What are your *solutions* (not band-aids) to these problems? Use your own money how you want. Judge other people for how they use theirs, and no one is going to think it's particularly *insightful*. They'll think you're an ass.
What competition? SeaLaunch? Nah, their prices are about the same as the Russians. Orbital? Their prices are *more* expensive per kilogram (but only because they only do very small launch vehicles). The only real price dropper is SpaceX, and they're still unproven.
Even if a rocket costs 35 million, the prize is 30 million, and then they have to blow 10 million on the device itself, just silly estimates on my behalf of course I have no idea what it costs... I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility.
The prize for landing is $20 million. There are two $5 million prizes for other goals, like being the second team to land. 35$ million to get a small payload to the moon is a solid *maybe*.
Asking people to take a guaranteed loss for a *chance* at making that loss be only half of what it is otherwise, and asking people to do this when the dollar amounts are large instead of small (like the original X-prize), is just plain not realistic. Sponsors will kick in a few hundred thousand dollars (say, GoldenPalace.com) to a few million dollars (say, M&Ms) for this kind of PR. Not the $50-100 million that such a task realistically takes. Likewise, if idealistic invididuals have $50-100m to spare, they're just going to start their own company to pursue space in their own way (ala Musk), not try for some little "prize".
It's purely PR.
Then the winter came, and the Grasshopper died. And the Octopus ate all his acorns. Also, he got a racecar.
"why...you feel throwing money away is a good thing"
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
I fail to see how this can do anything else but spur some development in the field.
That's an easy one: it can do absolutely nothing.
Then the winter came, and the Grasshopper died. And the Octopus ate all his acorns. Also, he got a racecar.
Outline of how to win the prize using potentially less than the prize money [PICS] [Links to reference papers details]
1. $10 million to get to orbit with a Dnepr rocket. (rules do not say build your rocket)
2. Use low energy transfer from earth orbit to lunar orbit (Done in 1993 by Japan's Hiten satellite)
3. Make and use a more powerful than Armidillo Aerospace lunar lander.
Would be far smaller than the 10 ton LEM descent module.
do not need to carry astronauts or 5 ton ascent vehicle
4. Make a small MArs sojourner size rover (11kg)
You're wrong on that account. Thanks to this $30 million reward I spent 10 minutes thinking about new methods of launching a probe to space. The world is now a better place. :)
I guess we'll have to chalk this up to me being more optimistic. Only time will tell if anything comes out of this competition.
well and it's also possible to have more than one sponsor, like nascar :)
Speak for yourself.
I think this is just an advertising stunt. Moon is not like going out into atmosphere, is a task just too great even for countries with space budgets and experience into putting stuff into orbit. This is not a science article but an advertising one and will escalate into a full row of X or Y or Z prizes that only want to be a newsletter header. My full impression here: http://valugi.ro/en/article/50-million-euro-prize
$10m loss != $40-90m loss.
If someone had $40-90m to throw away, they'd pull a Musk and start their own company to go about space *their own way*.
The reward is simply disproportionate, and even if it was proportionate, the scale of the field of people who would (or even could) put down this kind of money is greatly diminished.
Then the winter came, and the Grasshopper died. And the Octopus ate all his acorns. Also, he got a racecar.
informative? the mods must have been smoking crack today