Moon Mining Race Under Way

New submitter rujholla writes "The race to the moon is back! This time, though, it's through private enterprise. Google has offered a $20m grand prize to the first privately-funded company to land a robot on the moon and explore the surface (video) by moving at least 500 meters and sending high definition video back to Earth by 2015."

Comments

Doesn't seem realistic

[Hentes]

The Surveyor program cost about $500m. A mere $20m prize won't make this profitable. Also, 2015 is far too close for a program like this, I don't think Google wants to pay that money.

Re:It's the bonus that concerns me

[FatLittleMonkey]

Not quite. Thermal cycling of the top inch or two of regolith means that the footprints are likely to be lost in a century or three. Even 45 years is probably enough to soften the sharp outlines. The flag will be UV-bleached-white or radiation-black. The descent stage and other equipment will be peppered with micro-meteorite holes.

Frankly, this is another reason to preserve the sites. As experiments which provide 6 points of reference to calibrate the fine erosion rate for lunar features.