SoCal Selene Group Drops Google Lunar X Prize Bid

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."

Comments

Its sad

[phpmysqldev]

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.

Re:Its sad

[mrisaacs]

Anyone (with the right team and skills) can scavenge parts to build a lander - but the idea is to develop technologies and components that could be used on and reduce the cost of real missions.

Using stuff that's cheap because it's left over doesn't meet the goals.

Spending limits are also a good idea in contests of this kind - if you win, with a solution even more expensive than currently in use technologies - what have you accomplished?

This is not just a gee whiz contest, the idea is to advance the science and technology in hopes of jump starting private industry in the space arena.

Re:Its sad

[evangellydonut]

Being a former member of the team...

first, the tanks can be purchased on the open market if you know the proper vendor.

second, the tanks in question was not the first choice, was not even the second choice. it just happens that we were able to get our hands on some, and may consider using them when the stars aligned.

third, something novel WAS disallowed due to vagueness of the rule.

fourth, to our knowledge we are the only team who's even trying to achieve the goal within the stated prize money. everyone else is doing it for the publicity, especially the CMU team.

4.1 - I wonder where does the CMU team's student's stipend come? research grants? university? or they truly do all their work AFTER they fulfilled their obligatory research.

Only one comment to make

[johnlcallaway]

Waaaahhhh!!!!

The article as written makes the author look like a cry baby. Whether that is an accurate representation or not I can't tell until someone with better communication skills can provide something of substance.

You sign up for something someone else is running, you better make sure you understand everything ahead of time. If the rules are vague, get someone to clarify them first before dragging mock ups across country.

Or accept the fact they are vague and someone may make decisions you don't like but will have to live with.

Or ... take your toys and go home. Nothing prevents anyone from continuing the task on their own. I'd say if someone was really interested in doing this, they would continue. Imagine taking the wind of of the XPF sails by being able to say "That's nice. Did you see the pictures from our landing 6 months ago???"