Google Goes To The Moon. Google offers $30 million to land on the moon
LOS ANGELES--Google on Thursday announced it has sponsored the Google Lunar X Prize, a robotic race to the moon with a purse of $30 million.
The contest invites private teams from around the world to build a robotic rover capable of roaming the lunar surface for at least 500 meters and then sending video, images and data back to Earth, among other feats. The idea behind the challenge is to urge private industry to develop new robotic and virtual-presence technology to reduce the cost of space exploration.
"The Google Lunar X Prize calls on entrepreneurs, engineers and visionaries from around the world to return us to the lunar surface and explore this environment for the benefit of all humanity," said Peter Diamandis, chairman and CEO of the X Prize Foundation, a nonprofit prize-generating group. "Having Google fund the purse and title the competition punctuates our desire for breakthrough approaches and global participation. We look forward to bringing the historic private space race into every home and classroom."
The X Prize Foundation staged a splashy event to announce the contest here at the Wired NextFest conference at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Diamandis, Google co-founder Larry Page and former astronaut Buzz Aldrin were all on hand to talk about the prize. The press conference also featured video commentary from Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Tesla Motors backer Elon Musk and filmmaker James Cameron, who applauded new private industry efforts in space exploration.
"We're going back to the moon not because of a massive government program...This is Moon 2.0 with private industry...kick-starting the future of space exploration," Cameron said.
The contest comes at a time when NASA is working on new spacecraft and technology to take man back to the moon within the next 12 years. At a recent artificial-intelligence conference, Peter Norvig, the former head of computation at NASA's Ames facility who is now Google's director of research, suggested that the space agency is taking the more expensive approach in trying to send astronauts to the moon and that it should focus on robotics.
Page, who is a trustee of the X Prize Foundation, said that he and Google co-founder Brin were excited to fund the prize because they wanted to get kids around the world excited about engineering, math and science.
"I gave a speech recently, saying that science has a serious marketing problem. This is solution to that," said Page, who began conversations with Diamandis in March about backing the prize. "These kinds of contests are a good way to improve the state of...humanity in the world."
To that end, Google and X Prize launched a Web site for classrooms to learn about the project at Googlelunarxprize.org.
The challenge is the largest ever for the X Prize Foundation and the first major prize event for Google, which earlier this year threw a party at the Googleplex to benefit the nonprofit. The X Prize is best known for the $10 million Ansari X Prize, in which 26 teams from seven countries competed to fly a reusable spacecraft 100 kilometers above the Earth.
In 2004, Paul Allen-backed SpaceShipOne won the prize, and the craft has become the model for Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic space tourism company.
More recently, the X Prize Foundation has launched the $10 million Archon X Prize for Genomics, one of the largest such medical prizes. The challenge calls on private companies to create new technology that can map 100 human genomes in 10 days--a breakthrough that could lead to a new era in personalized preventive medicine. The foundation also has an automotive challenge, calling on inventors to build an energy-efficient vehicle that can drive 100 miles on 1 gallon of gas.
Extra: Photonic laser--Earth to Mars in a week? Separately, Google has backed contests like the California Clean Tech Open, which will award six fledgling, environmentally conscious businesses with start-up kits worth $100,000 in cash, office space and professional services.
The Lunar Prize will be broken into segments: a $20 million grand prize, a $5 million second prize and another $5 million in bonuses. To win the $20 million, a team must land its rover on the moon by December 2012; thereafter, the prize drops to $15 million until December 2014, when the contest will end.
To win second prize, a team must land its rover on the moon and send data back to Earth, but it's not required to travel 500 meters. A team can collect bonus money for traveling farther than that distance.
X Prize officials said that they expect to see the first teams attempt the challenge within the next four to six years. Teams must be at least 90 percent privately funded in order to compete.
In an answer to a question about whether X Prize is working with NASA's efforts to go to the moon, Diamandis said that he hopes to start a conversation with the space agency about that. "We hope NASA will be a customer of the winning rover," Diamandis said.
Google and X Prize have teamed with several partners to support the contest, including Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), run by PayPal founder Elon Musk. SpaceX will be the preferred launch provider for competing teams. Google and X Prize also have partnered with the Allen Telescope Array, operated by the SETI Institute, to enable the communications downlink from the moon.
Musk, who also spoke at the event, echoed Page's sentiment about inspiring people around the world. "This is the greatest thing we can do for science, engineering and math," he said.Source:Staff Writer, CNET News.com
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The group whose $10 million prize spurred privately funded rocketeers to send a small piloted craft to the cusp of space in 2004 has issued a new challenge: an unmanned moon shot.
With the audacious new contest comes a much bigger prize — as much as $25 million, paid for by Google, the ubiquitous Internet company.
The “Google Lunar X Prize” was announced today in Los Angeles at Wired Magazine’s NextFest conference. The contest calls for entrants to land a rover on the moon that will be able to travel at least 500 meters and send high-resolution video, still images and other data back home.
The X Prize Foundation saw the new contest as one of “the grand challenges of our time that we can use to move people forward,” said Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, chairman and C.E.O. of the foundation.
The prize for reaching the moon and completing the basic tasks of roving and sending video and data will bring the winner $20 million, according to the contest rules; an additional $5 million would be awarded for additional tasks that include roving more than 5,000 meters or sending back images of man-made artifacts like lunar landers from the Apollo program.
The $20 million grand prize will be available until Dec. 31, 2012, and then will drop to $15 million for two years. The contest would be likely to end after that time, though the Google and the foundation would be able to extend it.
The new contest follows the path of the original Ansari X Prize, which was won by SpaceShipOne, a manned spacecraft designed by Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites and funded by Paul Allen, a cofounder of Microsoft.
That prize was paid for through a special insurance policy secured by Anousheh Ansari, a telecommunications entrepreneur in Texas and a board member of the X Prize Foundation who has since flown aboard the International Space Station. Burt Rutan is designing a second-generation spacecraft called SpaceShipTwo that will be used by Sir Richard Branson’s space tourism company, Virgin Galactic.
The Ansari X Prize was based on earlier contests that spurred exploration and the development of previous generations of aircraft, like the $25,000 Orteig Prize that led to the first solo transatlantic flight, by Charles Lindbergh in the Spirit of St. Louis in 1927. Competitions, the logic goes, build excitement for new technology and bring varied talent and creativity to bear on difficult problems from many approaches.
The new X Prize, Dr. Diamandis said, grew out of research performed last year for NASA as a contest that the space agency would sponsor. The research suggested that six or seven credible contenders could be expected to try for the prize, but NASA ultimately backed away from financing the project, Dr. Diamandis said. “We were left with a very strong concept, but without a funder,” he said.
Then, in March, Dr. Diamandis pitched the idea to Google’s cofounder, Larry Page, who sits on the board of the X Prize foundation, at a foundation fundraiser.
Mr. Page’s reply provides a stark distinction between the ways of government and of billionaire entrepreneurs. “Sounds like a lot of fun,” he told Dr. Diamandis.
The multimillion-dollar project, Mr. Page said, would be “doable,” but his Google cofounder, Sergey Brin, would have to sign on as well. This also happened quickly, Dr. Diamandis recalled.
In a video statement prepared to accompany the announcement, Mr. Brin said that “we believe in the entrepreneurial spirit to accomplish the most ambitious tasks.”
NASA has announced plans to return astronauts to the moon as early as 2020. But without the need to keep humans alive or to make a return trip, the X Prize trips will be simpler missions. In fact, getting to the moon could be the easier part, since launch vehicles that could reach the moon are already available from the Russian and American governments, and potentially could be produced by other nations or by private companies.
A number of successful entrepreneurs from the world of computing and the Internet, like Mr. Allen, have pursued a childhood fascination with space through efforts to create real spacecraft. Elon Musk, a founder of PayPal, has developed rockets through his company, Space Exploration Technologies, and Jeffrey P. Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, is developing rockets at a facility he owns in West Texas.
Robert Bigelow, who has made his fortune in hotels, is working on a space transportation system and a space station that could be used as an orbiting hotel or research base.
Mr. Musk, who has a development contract with NASA that could lead to a craft to carry astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station, serves on the X Prize foundation board and has offered participants in the competition reduced prices on its Falcon vehicles to make the 248,000-mile trip.
In his video address, Mr. Brin said that within Google, there had even been early discussions along the lines of, “Why don’t we just man a new lunar mission ourselves?”
He said that he realized, however, that the kind of competition that led to SpaceShipOne would harness the creativity of more entrepreneurs and be “more likely to actually achieve the goal.” Source: NY Times By JOHN SCHWARTZ
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