is what I'm most looking forward to. Two Orion modules together would be enough for a mission lasting a few weeks, the almost complete lack of gravity would mean no lander would be necessary nor a rocket for the way back, and it would technically be the farthest we had ever gone. Plus the fact that understanding asteroids will help them not kill us.
A binary asteroid would be best.
No, it didn't die. It'll be back here in 2010. Whether it got the samples as it was supposed to do is another story.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayabusa
Hi - Musk has stated that a Falcon 1 would be able to do it, and he's offered discounts as well for those participating in the prize:
"Musk said SpaceX's two-stage Falcon 1 could get a payload to the moon, as long as the team's spacecraft was equipped with third-stage capability for entering lunar orbit. "I would just take the same engine I was going to land on the moon with, and add some tanks that you could drop off," he said."
Not only will companies design rovers in time for the prize, they already have without it:
http://www.diamandis.com/blastoff.html
"After a lot of arguments and negotiations, mostly with Marsha Goodstein (the President of idealab! then Bill's girlfriend and now his wife), we reached an agreement. They agreed that BlastOff would put the money into those 3 entities after BlastOff had raised in excess of $20M.
So I joined the BlastOff team which at that point consisted of a team of 18 world-class engineers working on a 3 robot mission to the moon. In addition, Jim Cameron had signed onto the effort and Steven Spielberg would soon invest $1M. With $12M of initial capital from idealab, we set out to raise an additional $40M to make this $50M+ million mission a reality... Bill wanted us to land on the moon before the end of 2001... That push would cause us to buy expensive U.S.-based launch vehicles and begin a rapid expenditure of capital that would eventually cause us to close down the shop."
Also, don't forget that the prize is open to anybody in the world which means that if Russia or any other country can do it then they get the prize. Add to that the fact that for a company that wants to send a rover to the Moon but is having trouble finding corporate support, this guarantee of 20-25 million at the end makes it that much more feasible than were a company to attempt to do everything on its own.
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is what I'm most looking forward to. Two Orion modules together would be enough for a mission lasting a few weeks, the almost complete lack of gravity would mean no lander would be necessary nor a rocket for the way back, and it would technically be the farthest we had ever gone. Plus the fact that understanding asteroids will help them not kill us. A binary asteroid would be best.
No, it didn't die. It'll be back here in 2010. Whether it got the samples as it was supposed to do is another story. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayabusa
Hi - Musk has stated that a Falcon 1 would be able to do it, and he's offered discounts as well for those participating in the prize: "Musk said SpaceX's two-stage Falcon 1 could get a payload to the moon, as long as the team's spacecraft was equipped with third-stage capability for entering lunar orbit. "I would just take the same engine I was going to land on the moon with, and add some tanks that you could drop off," he said."
Not only will companies design rovers in time for the prize, they already have without it: http://www.diamandis.com/blastoff.html "After a lot of arguments and negotiations, mostly with Marsha Goodstein (the President of idealab! then Bill's girlfriend and now his wife), we reached an agreement. They agreed that BlastOff would put the money into those 3 entities after BlastOff had raised in excess of $20M. So I joined the BlastOff team which at that point consisted of a team of 18 world-class engineers working on a 3 robot mission to the moon. In addition, Jim Cameron had signed onto the effort and Steven Spielberg would soon invest $1M. With $12M of initial capital from idealab, we set out to raise an additional $40M to make this $50M+ million mission a reality... Bill wanted us to land on the moon before the end of 2001... That push would cause us to buy expensive U.S.-based launch vehicles and begin a rapid expenditure of capital that would eventually cause us to close down the shop." Also, don't forget that the prize is open to anybody in the world which means that if Russia or any other country can do it then they get the prize. Add to that the fact that for a company that wants to send a rover to the Moon but is having trouble finding corporate support, this guarantee of 20-25 million at the end makes it that much more feasible than were a company to attempt to do everything on its own.