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Google Lunar X-Prize Extends Deadline Through March 2018 (space.com)
schwit1 writes: The Google Lunar X-Prize has announced that it has extended its contest deadline from the end of 2017 to the end of March 2018 for the finalists to complete their lunar rover mission and win the grand prize of $30 million. They also announced several additional consolation prizes that all of the remaining five contestants can win should they achieve lunar orbit ($1.75 million) or successfully achieve a soft landing ($3 million), even if they are not the first to do it. At least one team, Moon Express, will be helped enormously by the extra three months. This gives Rocket Lab just a little extra time to test its rocket before launching Moon Express's rover to the Moon.
Clearly you know nothing about dirty stinking Nazis. They have captured Jewish engineers and are making them build the winning device.
Luckily, Google caught wind of this and is letting the Allies enter the war and drive the Nazi scum back from whence they came.
Well we see SpaceX is doing well but they have customers like NASA. Inserting satellites and supplying the ISS is where the money is right now. Lunar rocks aren't too lucrative at the moment. And just LANDING there is a complete waste of money. (initially) So yeah, startup costs are high.
There's a name for that but I forget what it is, 'sunk cost' or something like that. Meaning the initial investment just to get your technology figured out (with no other return whatsoever in the process) has the appearance of being a complete waste of money, and can be a difficult or impossible barrier for a new company to overcome trying to create a new market. Nuclear power is an area that's always been that way, and is a topic that's come up recently with the growing interest in thorium. And just like with space exploration, it's hard to say whether or not it'll be profitable in the future. That's what makes it hard to find venture capital to fund it. The x-prize is there to fill in that gap, because we've been waiting years for something to happen and nobody's been able to pull it together. If you can't prove it's possible on paper, nobody wants to loan you money to try to figure out how to do it, or how to do it in a way that can turn a profit. That's just the nature of R&D.
It's also neat to see how failed research can have totally unexpected benefits in other areas. Read up on the military's research on personal jet packs. While those were ultimately a failure, their development of simple and compact jets helped other markets years later. There's lots of other examples like that.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
This is designed to start a flame war please don't continue the discussion they just want to stir up trouble.
That isn't a lot of extra time in the grand scheme of things
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
This is designed to start a flame war please don't continue the discussion.
He is setting you up here. Next he will stick in a racial slur and it will take off. This is designed to start a flame war please don't continue the discussion they just want to stir up trouble.
then slowly without fail sinks again... phlame on.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRjItDLnAwc
You have just taken the bait next post will be the most vile thing imaginable. This is designed to start a flame war please don't continue the discussion they just want to stir up trouble.
The market doesn't exist yet, so it isn't profitable.
But I see this as forward thinking investment. Quite simply our growth as a population and society needs to expand beyond earth. The moon is close by, and the stuff that we learn on how to survive and thrive in such an extreme environment could be used back on earth to help solve our own problems.
So a hundred and fifty years down the line we can see a full lunar community of a billion people. All clicking on Google Adds.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Bravo ..... Now why not go play elsewhere ?
How do Neo-Nazis play into this decision? Time to investigate...
Presumably by wishing to join their Nazi brethren at their lunar base?
Ezekiel 23:20
So a hundred and fifty years down the line we can see a full lunar community of a billion people.
We still have a LOT of uninhabited land here on this rock. A lot of it's not real attractive, but it's more hospitable than the moon. I've heard the moon can be a pretty harsh mistress. There are some interesting things about the moon, but we're a long, LONG way off before it's an attractive population center. We've gotten spoiled splashing around in all this water and air.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Parent moded "-1 Flamebait", but other two replies to parent, up to now, are considered thoughtful comments, far from any "flame".
... even though NASA did it almost sixty years ago, with ancient technology by today's standards.
Don't tell me - 'nobody wants to go back to the moon', 'there is no interest from the public in seeing men walk on the moon again', blah blah blah.
The cost and size of the modern computer required to complete a moon landing, compared to what the Apollo missions used, is tiny. First of all, we already know the maths, because NASA worked it all out almost sixty years ago, and nothing has become more complex about it since then.
So why haven't we got rovers travelling all over the moon right now, sending back 4k live video to subscribers - of which I am sure there are millions on Earth, who would be happy to pay the same as they pay for a Netflix subscription, to watch 4k footage of the moon as the rovers explore it?
"the morons marching in Charlottesville".
You mean white people who don't want to become a minority in their own countries, a HATED minority at that? How 'evil' of them! They aren't going along with what the Jewish tyranny tells them to... aren't they just awful.
So you're suggesting that I should want to spend my last twenty or thirty years living in a third world country as a white minority. Please explain why.