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Five Google Lunar XPrize Teams Confirm They're Set For the Moon (cnet.com)
The Google Lunar XPrize (GLXP) teams are still soldiering on and, with the deadline now less than 12 months away, the XPrize Foundation has confirmed that five of those teams have signed launch contracts that that will allow them to launch to the moon by the end of the year. From a report on CNET: The GLXP is a $30 million purse of prizes open to independent teams from around the globe, with the overall goal of fostering the development of commercial space exploration. $20 million goes to the first team to successfully land a vehicle on the moon and then successfully cover a distance of 500 meters of lunar surface while streaming high-definition video back to the Earth. $5 million goes to the second team to do the same, while millions of dollars in other prizes are also up for grabs -- including bonuses for extra distance and visiting historic sites. The deadline? It currently stands at midnight, December 31 of 2017. Any team whose lander hasn't left the launchpad by then is automatically out of the running.
Does this mean that the Chinese government might cash in a $20 m prize?
Or are these going to be super secret HD streams?
Not that it's likely to be worth watching most of the time.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
Wouldn't it funny if Industrial Light & Magic won the prize. (ILM is the special effects division of Lucasfilm, best known for Star Wars).
This part of the rules seems unduly harsh:
"Any team whose lander hasn't left the launchpad by then is automatically out of the running."
I think that SpaceX is behind schedule for their launches because of that rocket that recently blew up while fueling. Why penalize the team for an issue with their launch provider?
10 points to whoever spots the first space Nazi on the video streams.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
I didn't think 30mil was enough money to entice the expenditures of space exploration. Would have figured it would be too costly to do so.
"...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive...it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it..."
The prize is for "landing on the moon this year", not "eventually landing on the moon, maybe 60 years from now.
If they partner with a rocket company who can't deliver, and aren't able to make alternate arrangements, that sucks but sometimes disappointments happen. The challenge is to do it quickly.
That reminds me of someone in a competition to visit the most states in six months. One of losers whined "but I visited California more times than the winner did." Well perhaps you did, but the challenge was to visit the most states, not visit one state many times.
The SpaceX team will be landing on a barge on the Moon.
Then the "men never landed on the moon" lunatics will have a real field day (pun intended). "See, we told you it was all done in a studio!"
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Neil deGrasse Tyson had an apropos tweet today:
"Who the hell is Nietzche? It's a question stupid people are asking." -- Newscaster, "Jesus Christ Supercop"
They just want to be able to give you a picture of your lunar destination before you get there
So you're saying we've done nothing in 45 years? No progress?
Seems to me like the industry is rapidly changing from a "because we can" thing to commercially viable and expanding. That will in turn get costs down to the point where we can do a new set of "because we can" things.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The current US administration seems more focused on building walls to keep Americans from escaping to other parts of the world than in doing any "because we can" things. Big vision is not their forte, it seems.
Instead of Mars! It would be interesting to check out Apollo landing sites to see how materials have changed from 40 years of solar radiation. Maybe see how the bootprints have soften due to micrometeorites. Land in places that were out of reach for Apollo landing sites, survey for PGM materials. Check out a crater on the poles, get closer and greater analysis that LCROSS was not able to. See how much updates Paul Spudis and Dennis Wingo will have to do for their next books (these are the only two notable people that discussed the Moon, everyone else is fixated on Mars). Note for human space travel the Moon is only three days away but Mars will always be 20 years away.
mfwright@batnet.com
There has been progress in robotic exploration. However, if we were able put a man on the Moon then why can't we put a man on the Moon? Reason is this is not the same country that did the Apollo program (yes, this is another one of my rants about space on the forums today).
mfwright@batnet.com
The question is not "why can't we" but "why would we"? A matter of priorities. At the moment we (Earth) don't have a compelling reason to go back there, given the expense. The USA has already been there and prefers to spend their space exploration budget on other things. Russia isn't in a space race anymore. China and India might do it for the prestige. But if you want to do anything meaningful there, like run a science programme, prospecting, etc, you'd need to set up camp there; a short visit isn't going to accomplish much more than we already got from the Apollo missions.
Maybe this would be an interesting mission that's not too horribly expensive: land a small temporary habitat, rover, and supplies ahead of time, and have a small team stay there for a month or so. In that time you can do a great deal of science and exploration.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
in 2016 we detected gravitational waves from black holes, a direct observation of something I grew up being told we could never see.. before that we confirmed the existence of the Higgs Boson, oah and we got some fucking badass images of a comet and pluto.
just because the low hanging fruit been grabbed dont mean we're not marching on in progress.
I'd argue that while there's not compelling arguments for "because we can" programmes, there's a very compelling argument for having lofty goals in mind and properly funding those goals. And if those goals include a long-term presence offworld, then that funding means both a robust robotic exploration program, a large systems engineering programme, and most importantly a very sizeable launch cost reductions programme, both the conventional, short term (getting rocket costs down) and unconventional, long-term (exotic forms of launch).
0,5% of the US federal budget plus pittiances from the rest of the world, combined with ever-shifting congressional make-work mandates, does not cut it. 1% plus plan buy-in from congress (particularly those on important committee seats and those in stable seats that are likely to be around for the next 10-20 years), would probably do it. And the rest of the world needs to get off its arse on the space front. Roscosmos's budgets are a shadow of what they used to be. China's space industry is booming, but still relatively small. JAXA's could use to be better. ESA's is tiny compared to the size of the EU economy. But I guess people don't see it as a priority - even though the public thinks we're spending vastly more on space than we actually are and are by and large okay with that.
"Who the hell is Nietzche? It's a question stupid people are asking." -- Newscaster, "Jesus Christ Supercop"