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First 10 Teams in $30M Google Lunar X Prize Announced

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the go-for-the-green dept.

coondoggie writes to mention that the first ten teams racing for the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize have been announced. The competitors will try to be the first team to land a privately funded robotic spacecraft on the moon capable of traveling at least 1,600 feet and returning video, images, and data. The teams include Romanian-based ARCA, Italy-based Team Italia, and several different teams from around the US, many of which competed in the Ansari X Prize.

19 of 87 comments (clear)

  1. Oh no! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Romulans are competing!

  2. Much better challenge by HEbGb · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is a much better challenge than the X-prize, which didn't even include orbit. It was amusing to watch, but really not a huge deal imo.

    I fear, however, that $30m isn't nearly enough to cover the budget for a lunar mission, even if someone does end up winning the prize.

    1. Re:Much better challenge by moderatorrater · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And the original X-prize wasn't enough to cover the budget for developing the tools for a private venture to get into space either. $30 million should be enough to get to the moon once you have the equipment, and it might even be enough to cover the equipment, but it sure won't cover the development of the equipment. Like the X-prize, this is more of a rebate so that companies can expect to get some money back on a venture that's going to earn them a lot of money from other sources.

      $30 million is also a good excuse for rich people to compete.

    2. Re:Much better challenge by CrispBH · · Score: 3, Funny

      I fear, however, that $30m isn't nearly enough to cover the budget for a lunar mission, even if someone does end up winning the prize. If they got the same guys in who designed the 2012 Olympic logo, I'd say this fully buzzword compliant poster probably cost that much alone. Moon 2.0; Cheese Edition?
    3. Re:Much better challenge by johnsonav · · Score: 3, Funny

      I don't know, 30 million will buy a lot of 2-liter soda bottles and one hell of an air compressor. I better go call that Canadian guy.

      --
      ... and that's when the C.H.U.D.'s came at me.
    4. Re:Much better challenge by deopmix · · Score: 5, Informative

      My senior design project is to design a mission from the ground up that could potentially compete in the competition. Our preliminary budgets are coming in around $20-30 million, so it's not impossible to do it for that price. What most people don't realize is that you don't have to send a 1000 kg rover to the moon, we are looking at a mass to the moon of about 75-100 kg. This allows you to use much smaller launch vehicles which are considerably cheaper, in fact we only need to get about 800 kg to LEO which can be done for under $10 million. Additionally most of the technology is already in place to do this, so there wouldn't be a lot of development costs.

    5. Re:Much better challenge by Wilbasa1 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Actually, that's basically exactly what they have: a $20M first place, $5M second place, and $5M in bonuses. Another $2M bonus was just added to the competition if you launch out of the state of Florida.

  3. I'm disappointed that there's no UK team by Finallyjoined!!! · · Score: 2, Funny

    Come on lads!

    You don't need a parachute to land on the moon, don't let the failure of that Mars thingy stop you :-)

    --
    If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
    1. Re:I'm disappointed that there's no UK team by ozbird · · Score: 2, Funny

      The UK team are too busy doing Top Gear stunts.

  4. Well? by Eddy+Luten · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Where's John Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace? I would think that these guys would jump at a chance like this since they could use some promotion after what happened last year.

  5. They're just doing it by Trigun · · Score: 5, Funny

    to see if the U.S. really did land on the moon.

    1. Re:They're just doing it by julesh · · Score: 2

      Actually, I think it's part of google's master plan.

    2. Re:They're just doing it by R3d+M3rcury · · Score: 2, Insightful

      While this is a funny comment, it's not a horrible idea.

      First, you know the topology of the area, which I would imagine would be helpful in designing the rover and lander. You know you won't have to deal with going up big hills or anything like that.

      Second, and more mercurial, I'd imagine pictures and video of the Apollo 11 landing site would fetch a pretty penny. You could probably sell exclusive broadcast rights and such for a few extra million.

  6. Re:Goal? by Nyeerrmm · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'd say its two-fold. To show the possibility of privately funded interplanetary exploration, and to support the development of low cost, space-capable robotics.

    I doubt that anyone will be trying to develop their own launch vehicle to do this, although a custom trans-lunar injection stage might be in the cards. One of the upcoming Falcon 1-extended versions may have the juice to get a small but capable rover to the lunar surface, bringing this reasonably within cost restrictions.

  7. Re:Goal? by moderatorrater · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Developing methods that have a low cost-per-launch? Stimulating private space travel? Yes. Can't have one without the other, really.
  8. maybe not by Quadraginta · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The X Prize and this competition differ from competitions early in the aviation era, to which they're routinely compared, in that they aren't for doing something no one's ever done before. Suborbital flight was achieved in the 1960s, both by NASA and by the Air Force with the X-15 program. Landing on the Moon and sending back photos was achieved by the Soviets and Americans in the mid 1960s.

    What presumably is the point to these new prizes is not the achievement per se, which merely duplicates something done forty years ago, but the goal of doing so much more cheaply, and with the ability to do it much more routinely. Those are reasonable goals: after all, the principal failure of the Space Shuttle is that it can't be launched nearly as often and easily as it was supposed to be. If it had eventually been able to fly 20 times a year to LEO on a routine basis, which was what was promised in the 80s, and which would've brought its per-flight cost down to an extremely modest $60-100 million, we would be now hailing its unqualified success.

    So I think the virtue of the X Prize was not its goal of suborbital flight per se, but the goal of suborbital flight with the same craft twice in a short period (a week, as I recall). Doing it rapidly is at least proof of concept evidence that you've found a way to do it cheaply and routinely. And I'm disappointed that this new competition doesn't seem to have that element. I'm not sure how it could. Maybe they would have been better off going for a similar X Prize competition for actual orbital flight, e.g. can you fly to orbit twice in the same week. That would be a real achievement.

    I fear, however, that $30m isn't nearly enough to cover the budget for a lunar mission

    It's a totally token amount. Merely launching a geostationary satellite on an Ariane 5 rocket costs over $100 million. Presumably if you compete seriously you're in it for the glory.

    1. Re:maybe not by Quadraginta · · Score: 2, Informative

      Well, this sounds rather nitpicky. You can't define "suborbital" flight only in terms of velocity, either, or rocket sleds and railgun projectiles would qualify. Is it even interesting?

      I suggest the natural understanding of "suborbital" flight is flight which goes very high, pretty much out of the atmosphere, but which isn't up to orbital velocity. By that definition the X-15 qualifies, and so does SS1. The SR-71 does not, and as an air-breather is really in an entirely different category.

      Any IRBM or ICBM qualifies, including the V-2, of course, but since I was talking in the context of the X Prize, which specified manned flight, it's a very natural to exclude it. Manned orbital or suborbital flight is quite a different engineering challenge than unmanned flight.

      In any event, I think if we were to play a game of "one of these things doesn't belong" with the set {Freedom 7,X-15,SR-71} then the correct one to drop would be the SR-71.

  9. That's no moon by zdude255 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Is this the first step to building Google's moon base?

  10. Join the GLXP teams by the_kanzure · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Team FREDNET, Team Cringely, and Interplanetary Ventures are all friendly groups of people to look into. Cringely has a wiki up for his project, and FREDNET has a rover going, and Interplanetary Ventures has facebook presence. I did a link dump a few days ago, so go check out all of the teams -- they need contributors, even web programmers willing to bootstrap the communities.