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SoCal Selene Group Drops Google Lunar X Prize Bid

Posted by timothy on from the lucky-thirteen dept.

anzha writes "On Saturday, after the vaunted First Team Summit was completed in Strasbourg, The Southern California Selene Group announced publicly that they are dropping out of the Google Lunar X Prize. Citing very strong differences in opinions over how the X Prize was being run, the team felt they could no longer participate. On the flip side, the X Prize Foundation announced at the team summit that there are four new teams. With the drop out, there are now thirteen official competitive teams. Assuredly, there are more to come."

4 of 64 comments (clear)

  1. Its sad by phpmysqldev · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Its sad that bureaucracy has caused an entire team to become disillusioned with the competition. The spirit of this competition has always been in the name of science and exploration, but it is becoming more and more bureaucratic to make it 'fair' to everyone. If someone can obtain the materials they need and come up with an innovative way to accomplish the underlying mission, I say more power to them.

    1. Re:Its sad by phpmysqldev · · Score: 3, Interesting

      yeah nothing wrong with what you just said. but the team was mainly upset with the vagueness of many of the rules and questions they had about what could and couldn't be used. Its fine if you want strict rules for a contest like this, but you need well defined rules from the start in order for that model to be effectively followed

    2. Re:Its sad by crymeph0 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Did you know that a rogue wave [wikipedia.org] can strike without warning, rapidly sinking an ocean-going vessel and killing everybody on it?

      rogue wave doesn't accumulate inside the body and does permanent and irreparable damage like radiation.

      FleaPlus' point was that people can die either way. Are you saying the problem isn't that people can die, but how they might die, e.g. cancer versus drowning? That seems like a choice better left to the individual who wants to be an astronaut, not to society.

      --
      It should be illegal to say that freedom of speech should be limited.
  2. non-compete? by bsDaemon · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I don't know if NASA people have to sign any sort of non-compete (I did to intern at the DOE a few years ago, so they might), but otherwise I would assume that a team of engineers that has done something like this before -- for instance, one of the Mars rover teams, would start their own team and be done with this.

    Have none of them thought of it, or are they not allowed to? Perhaps a reader from JPL might tell us? I know there are a few from comments in the Phoenix thread the other day.