Google Lunar X Prize

cIclops · 2007-09-13 13:57:46

SANTA MONICA, Calif., September 13, 2007 – The X PRIZE Foundation and Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced the Google Lunar X PRIZE, a robotic race to the Moon to win a remarkable $30 million prize purse. Private companies from around the world will compete to land a privately funded robotic rover on the Moon that is capable of completing several mission objectives, including roaming the lunar surface for at least 500 meters and sending video, images and data back to the Earth.

Does it include travel expenses?

SpaceNut · 2007-09-16 19:06:54

While this is a good thing to get more interested in the attempts at conquering space travel one must wonder where the seed money will come for to allow such efforts from unknowns.

Somewhere on the site is an image of a Radioshack effort to do a rover on the moon from more than a couple of years ago IIRC related to some sort of a contest as well....

gaetanomarano · 2007-09-18 06:16:55

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in my new article the possible WINNERS of the Google Lunar X Prize: http://www.ghostnasa.com/posts/009prizewinner.html

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gaetanomarano · 2007-09-21 01:29:34

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YouTube video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=lqIgl0kXkmo

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gaetanomarano · 2007-09-22 17:16:56

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A SERIOUS EPISODE OF CENSORSHIP !!!

I know that just a few peoples like my ideas, proposals and opinions while other peoples dislike them, but, I'm sure that, BOTH peoples, WANT their countries will ALWAYS have DEMOCRACY and FREEDOM and nobody likes that Google does in USA, Europe, etc. the same things it does in China for business (if you don't know what, just search more info googling...).

TWO years ago I've invented (and published on my website and several space forums and blogs) the idea of a Moonrovers Prize competition:

http://www.gaetanomarano.it/moonprize/moonprize.html

Then, I've (also) sent dozens emails to websites, newspapers and big companies to propose my idea, and that emails included one to Google (that I still have with the files of "mail read" replies).

So, when Google has announced "its" ("original") "Lunar X Prize", I've published two articles on my ghostNASA.com blog (hosted by Bravenet.com) including the mail sent to Google, as evidence of the TRUTH.

But, last Sept. 21, Bravenet, that seems be a Google's partner (like half world...) has SUSPENDED my website (that's now inaccesible) and (worst!) has DELETED my Bravenet account (and a PAID web hosting) so I can't access to my three domains (two of them now inactive) to move them to another server in Italy or Europe or Russia or India or wherever there is NOT that censorship.

Well, until I'll have back my domains and put them on another server, I want your help, since, what happened to me to-day, could happen tomorrow TO YOU or to every FREE peoples that want to publish their opinion without be CENSORED by BIG companies that believe they can do everything they wants!!!

I'm posting this message on as many as possible forums and blogs (and send to newspapers and websites) all over the world, but, of course, I can't reach all them, so, if you have a website, a forum, a blog (or write on other blogs/forums/websites/newspapers) please post this full message on them to allow peoples know WHAT Google and/or Bravenet have done!

Thank You

Gaetano Marano

Until I'll have my blog again, you can download a .pdf file with all blog's articles (including those about the Google's "original" lunar prize) clicking this link:

http://www.datafilehost.com/download.php?file=85344279

PS - If you'll experience any problem to download the .pdf file, please send a mail to me, so, I'll put it on another server (and another, another, another... if necessary) and its link on my website's home page:

http://www.gaetanomarano.it/

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gaetanomarano · 2007-09-24 23:35:33

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for those who are curious to know more about the censorship story...

now I've more info about that case to explain why that happened

all that was due to three "blames" ...from Me, Bravenet and Google:

My blame: I've "put my head in the guillotine" posting my protest about the lunar X prize also on Google.Groups ("the house of wolfs"...) in the space policy, shuttle and four others, offering them an easy opportunity to "cut my head"

Bravenet blame: they have received a report and immediately deleted my blog and account without ask me or verify if that report was true or due to a dispute (so, if you have a site on Bravenet, everybody can "kill" it just sending a report to Bravenet, since they never ask you!)

Google blame: despite I've offered them a juicy opportunity to cut my head, that "gift" had come to me from Google (as I've imagined) ...but they are not so "smart" since I'll re-open soon my blog and they have only collected a further negative publicity

of course, I will never do again the mistake of posting my protest about the lunar prize on Google.Groups...

now that this story is known in details and ended (hoping I'll have no problems to transfer and re-open my blog) I wish to say my thanks to all forums and blogs that have hosted my protest without any censorship (nor having fear of Google)

last, since I need time to put my blog online again, those that want to read my blog's articles can download this .pdf file:

http://www.datafilehost.com/download.php?file=85344279

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SpaceNut · 2007-09-25 10:47:51

Gaetano While I am sorry that a banning has occured It is just as I indicated thou that there have been past efforts for private moon missions.

I posted about using rovers a long time ago
Posted: Tue Aug 24, 2004 8:45 am Post subject: The need for a Moon direct - and sustainabilty program

I think that was Lunar corp. with radio shack as a sponsor for such a mission?

Actually misspelled Lunacorp and it took a while to find since I did not post the link at the time. But here it is...and it was even older than I had remembered...

Radio Shack Joins the LunaCorp Rover Team Thursday, June 15, 2000

http://www.lunacorp.com/

LunaCorp created several projects that engaged the public's interest in space, and that were aimed at enabling direct participation in space exploration. It was founded in 1989 and was dissolved in 2003 after working with NASA, the Russian space agency and commercial sponsors on visionary projects. The company's former president, David Gump, is now CEO of Transformational Space Corp.

gaetanomarano · 2007-09-25 12:10:51

...Lunar corp. with radio shack...

NEVER said that I've "invented" the lunar rovers!!!

you know that the first rovers was landed on the moon by Soviet Union in '60s, NASA has launched the mars rovers and developed (relatively) low cost lunar rovers in a (now deleted) Ames project

many countries and space agencies plan to land scientific rovers on the moon (like China in 2012) and some companies have planned to land their NASA-level/costs rovers on the moon for various purposes (also, I'm sure that Boeing, LM, etc. have several secret project of rovers)

about eight years ago there was also a project (involving the movies' Director John Cameron) to develop a lunar rover and buy a $50M military rocket to launch it, that aimed to make a movie with the images of the moon and Apollo sites

that project was (clearly) deleted due to costs... the expected final costs (all inclusive) was probably near (or over) $100M ...but only if they had a success at the first attept... just imagine the final price of this "movie" if two, three, four attempts was necessary to have a success...

the idea I've developed, published, posted (and proposed to Google) TWO years ago, was to establish a "Moonrovers Prize competition" ..that's EXACTLY the idea proposed by Google with its "Lunar X Prize"

also, ALL peoples that claim they have proposed a similar idea before, CAN'T SAY THE TRUTH for the simple reason that three, four, six, ten years ago a prize like this was COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE due to the very high price of the commercial and military launchers (in the range of $100M each!)

can you imagine a "moonrovers prize" where all partecipants must spend $20+ million to develop the rovers, then, BUY a $60M Soyuz or a $100M Atlas to launch it ...that just to (HOPE to) win a $30M (max) prize???!!!

and you must consider that the first attempt of a so complex mission could FAIL, so, each partecipants MUST have enough money to build two, three, four rovers and BUY two, three, four rockets at $60-100M a piece!

and the prize's losers? ...they must find and spend (at least) $100M each but WITHOUT win the $30M prize!!!

a $30M moonrovers prize competition (or Google Lunar X Prize) is possible to-day (and could have some chances of success) ONLY thanks to the PROMISE of very cheap alt.space rockets like the $7M Falcon-1

but, if Musk & C. will FAIL in the attempt to launch their low cost rockets, ALSO THE LUNAR X PRIZE WILL FAIL, since the prize's competitors CAN'T BUY a $100M rocket to win a $20M prize!!! (...and ONLY if they succeed, of course... )

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SpaceNut · 2007-09-25 14:43:46

...Lunar corp. with radio shack...

NEVER said that I've "invented" the lunar rovers!!!
you know that the first rovers was landed on the moon by Soviet Union in '60s, NASA has launched the mars rovers and developed (relatively) low cost lunar rovers in a (now deleted) Ames project

So true and here is a link for such missions as those that have come befroe in Clementine, Lunar-A, Lunar Orbiter, Lunar Prospector, Ranger, Soviet, Surveyor just to name a few.

As for prizes that is not new but how far back and to what connection is one made to a specific task I feel no longer matters....nor does this new one by google.

cIclops · 2007-10-01 13:35:07

Carnegie Mellon Sets Sights on Google's Lunar X Prize - 1 Oct 2007

By Brian Berger
Space News Staff Writer
William "Red" Whittaker and the wizards at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute in Pittsburgh, hope to use their expertise to snag $20 million in the Google Lunar X Prize.
Carnegie Mellon is one of seven teams so far to have sent in a letter of intent and a $1,000 deposit to compete for the $20 million grand prize, according to Brett Alexander, the X Prize Foundation's executive director of space prizes and the Wirefly X Prize Cup.
Announced Sept. 13 at Wired magazine's NextFest event in Los Angeles, the Google Lunar X Prize is offering $20 million to the first team that can soft land a privately funded spacecraft on the Moon, travel a minimum distance of 1,640 feet (500 meters) and transmit high-definition video and other images and data back to Earth for viewing over the Internet. Second place is worth $5 million and up to an additional $5 million in bonus prizes can be won by completing extra tasks beyond the core mission.
David Gump, president of Reston, Va.-based Transformational Space Corp. (t/Space) and an advisor to Whittaker's Team X-PLORE, said the team wasted no time registering for the competition, sending in its letter of intent via overnight delivery the day it was announced. Gump said the team since has translated the contest guidelines into 50 "expressed or implied" mission requirements.
"We are already making great progress coming up with a mission design that will win the prize," Gump said in a Sept. 24 interview.
Neither Gump nor Whittaker are strangers to planning lunar missions meant to be done on the cheap. Gump spent most of the 1990s running LunaCorp, a small firm that left no stone unturned in searching for the right combination of corporate and government sponsorships to get a profit-driven lunar lander mission off the ground.
LunaCorp eventually signed RadioShack as a sponsor and helped the electronics retailer pull off a number of space-based promotions before Gump folded the company in 2003 to focus on the space transportation company t/Space.
Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute, meanwhile, not only worked closely with LunaCorp on mission studies, but also submitted multiple Discovery-class mission proposals to NASA in the 1990s for robotic lunar landers and rovers designed to explore the craters and polar regions of the Moon.
NASA passed on those proposals, in part because the agency was not especially interested at that time in exploring the Moon. But Carnegie Mellon-built robots have been put through their paces in a variety of environments here on Earth, including meteorite-hunting expeditions in Antarctica. Whittaker and the engineers at his institute also contributed software to NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers, which have been exploring the red planet since 2003.
Whittaker said that Carnegie Mellon is ready to meet the Google Lunar X Prize challenge head on.
"Carnegie Mellon is a world leader in software and world leader in robotics and we have experience with and appetite for challenges," Whittaker said in a Sept. 26 interview.
In 2005, a pair of driverless automobiles designed by Carnegie Mellon completed a 132-mile (212.4-kilometer) trek through the Nevada desert, taking second and third place in the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Grand Challenge.
On Nov. 3, Carnegie Mellon will compete in DARPA's $2 million Urban Challenge, entering a driverless Chevy Tahoe sport utility vehicle, dubbed Boss, that will attempt to autonomously navigate a closed 59-mile (96-kilometer) course in Victorville, Calif., complete with stop lights, speed limits and traffic.
Neither Whittaker nor Gump would say much about Team X-PLORE's technical approach at this early stage, and Gump said that is unlikely to change even as the approach matures.
"You have to remember that this is a race with competitors that shouldn't know about your strategy," Gump said.
But both Whittaker and Gump said they believed securing early financing, either in the form of corporate sponsorship or a benevolent angel, is critical.
"What is clear from the Ansari X Prize is that you need to have solid funding soon — a Paul Allen equivalent who can make sure that you are motoring away at a good speed," Gump said. "One of our team's top priorities is securing that early funding."
Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, bankrolled the $20 million development of Scaled Composites' piloted SpaceShipOne suborbital launch system, which won the $10 million Ansari X Prize in 2004 by completing two back-to-back flights to the edge of space.
Whittaker said the real trick of challenges like the Google Lunar X Prize is coming up with an approach that ensures that all stakeholders win, even if the cash prize exceeds the team's grasp. Win or lose at the Urban Challenge next month, Whittaker said, Carnegie Mellon's teammates and sponsors will see a return on their investments.
"If a team were backed by $400 million of philanthropic money on Day 1, the technical and programmatic challenges for X Prize success would be foregone. There would be no difficulty," Whittaker said. "You can buy victory, but not profitably."
The key to profitability, according to Whittaker, is making sure that there are a series of payoff opportunities for sponsors along the way to the actual competition. Auctioning off naming rights and holding contests to select people who will actually get to drive the rover once it lands were among the examples he and Gump mentioned.
Similar pitches were made to would-be corporate sponsors during Gump and Whittaker's LunaCorp days. But Gump said there are some big differences between what LunaCorp tried back then and what Team X-PLORE is facing today, not the least of which is the involvement of Google, the Internet powerhouse worth more than $170 billion.
"Two great things that Google did is they put the Google stamp of credibility on the overall enterprise and they also set the target to be relatively fixed and small effort," Gump said.
"The Google threshold for wining the prize is pretty constrained. You have to land and make a broadcast, move 500 meters and broadcast again. This means you don't have to broadcast while moving which is very difficult. It means you don't have to last on the surface for longer than it takes to move 500 meters and you don't have to take along tens of kilograms of science instruments."
But the technical challenges still are formidable. Whittaker and Gump said building a lander that is capable of making a soft touchdown on the lunar surface is probably the biggest single expense ahead for any team. Launch is not cheap either, with prices starting around $6 million for Space Exploration Technologies' still unproven Falcon 1 launcher and going up from there.
Broadcasting at least 1 gigabyte of high-definition quality video back from the moon is no mean feat either.
"That's the most stressing requirement in the list," said Gump, noting that he knows of no space-qualified high-definition (HD) video camera. Japanese broadcaster NHK and Silver Springs, Md.-based Discovery Communications got together in 2006 for the first live HD broadcast from space. But even in the relatively benign radiation environment aboard the international space station, "many, many pixels were being knocked out by radiation damage" within a matter of days, Gump said. Travel time to the Moon ranges from several days to a month, depending on the technical approach.
"We haven't gone to Mike Malin yet to ask him what he might charge us for a Mars-qualified camera but you certainly cannot walk down to BestBuy and get an HD camera that can survive the radiation environment," Gump said.
San Diego-based Malin Space Science Systems has built numerous cameras for NASA Mars missions and currently is working on a video camera for the 2009 Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft. That video camera will be capable of 720 lines of progressively scanned vertical display resolution — a common HD video standard known as 720p.
Mike Ravine, advanced projects manager at Malin, said it is not a given that the camera being designed for the Mars Science Lab (MSL) would work as is on a lunar mission. "I can imagine a mission where with the overall package it would make sense to build a copy of the MSL camera, but I can also imagine a number of mission approaches were it would not make sense," he said.

Maybe he should talk to JAXA, they just released an image from their HDTV cam.

gaetanomarano · 2007-10-01 14:22:14

...prizes that is not new...

so, if you invent a car that consumes half the gasoline per mile than now, every big car company CAN copy it since "the car was already invented 100 years ago" ?

PS - my ghostNASA blog is online again

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gaetanomarano · 2007-10-01 14:25:10

Carnegie Mellon Sets Sights on Google's Lunar X Prize

build a lunar rover is not so complex... the REAL challenge is send the rover EXACTLY towards the Moon and land it SOFTLY

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cIclops · 2007-12-06 13:25:13

Odyssey Moon team register (PDF)

San Jose, CA, December 6th, 2007 – The first team to complete registration for the $30M Google Lunar X PRIZE unveiled its plans today at the Space Investment Summit in San Jose, California. Representatives of Odyssey Moon announced their plans to make history with the first private robotic mission to the surface of the Moon and their intent to win the Google Lunar X PRIZE competition. Odyssey Moon’s inaugural mission will involve a unique small robotic lander designed to deliver scientific, exploration and commercial payloads to the surface of the Moon. Odyssey Moon, a private commercial lunar enterprise headquartered in the Isle of Man, is the brainchild of Dr. Robert (Bob) Richards, a founder of the International Space University. “We applaud the X PRIZE Foundation and Google for creating the first privately funded race to the Moon,” he said. “For Odyssey Moon, the Google Lunar X PRIZE was the right thing at the right time to compel us to unveil our plans. We have a long term vision and now with the Google Lunar X PRIZE we have a short term goal: Odyssey Moon is setting its eyes on the prize.” Richards said that the company’s goal is to lower the price of getting to the Moon by an order of magnitude and in doing so help catalyze a “MOONRUSH” to Earth’s sister world, which he describes as an eighth continent rich in energy and resources floating just offshore.

cIclops · 2007-12-19 02:32:12

Another Google Lunar X Prize contender

Posted by Michael Mecham at 12/17/2007 10:30 AM
Last September when Google announced it would provide a $30 million prize for the first teams to land a rover on the Moon and send pictures back to Earth, Mitchell London saw an opening.
Two months later, Astrobotic Technology was born in Redmond, Wash. The young company sent in its $1,000 registration fee immediately, and has become the second group to announce that it’s going after the prize. Odyssey Moon was the first earlier this month.
Astrobotic has set an ambitious schedule. It wants to land in the Sea of Tranquility in time to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission. So it will have to be ready to go in July 2009. It is collaborating with Raytheon to make the trip possible.

cIclops · 2008-02-22 08:24:14

Meet the teams

Latest team announcements.

SpaceNut · 2014-12-31 22:01:09

Wow memories...not good...

The XPrize’s Lunar Deadline Looms

Aspiring moon explorers now have until 2016 to win a top prize of $20 million from Google

Astrobotic, hopes to be the first private team to make a moon landing, move 500 meters across the lunar soil, and send high-definition images and video back to Earth. If it can do all of this before any of its competitors, it stands to claim a top prize of US $20 million, provided by Google.
Astrobotic has already penned agreements to deliver cremated remains managed by the space-burial company Celestis, based in Houston, and a time capsule made by a Singapore-based company, Astroscale.

SpaceNut · 2015-01-27 13:36:07

Here is another example of everyone gets a trophy....

Google Lunar X PRIZE awards milestone prizes
Posted: Tue, Jan 27 7:05 AM ET (1205 GMT)
The X PRIZE Foundation announced Monday that it has awarded $5.25 million in "milestone prizes" to five teams participating in the Google Lunar X PRIZE competition. The prizes reward teams that achieved goals in the development of their landing, mobility, and imaging systems. Three teams each won $1 million for landing systems: Astrobotic, Moon Express, and Team Indus. Astrobotic and Moon Express, along with Hakuto and Part-Time Scientists, also won smaller prizes for imaging and/or mobility milestones. Those five teams, along with 13 others, are racing to be the first to land a privately-developed lander on the surface of the Moon, move at least 500 meters across the surface, and return videos and other data. The prize expires at the end of 2016.

SpaceNut · 2015-02-01 20:23:14

Their Team Indus is already prepped for landing on the moon, with a working moon rover that looks like WALL-E.

By the end of 2016, teams must send a spacecraft to the moon, release a robot to explore a minimum of 500 meters of the lunar surface, and send HD images to earth. Investors are chipping in for the $45 million needed to make their dream mission a reality.

New Mars Forums

Announcement

#1 2007-09-13 13:57:46

Re: Google Lunar X Prize

#2 2007-09-16 19:06:54

Re: Google Lunar X Prize

#3 2007-09-18 06:16:55

Re: Google Lunar X Prize

#4 2007-09-21 01:29:34

Re: Google Lunar X Prize

#5 2007-09-22 17:16:56

Re: Google Lunar X Prize

#6 2007-09-24 23:35:33

Re: Google Lunar X Prize

#7 2007-09-25 10:47:51

Re: Google Lunar X Prize

#8 2007-09-25 12:10:51

Re: Google Lunar X Prize

#9 2007-09-25 14:43:46

Re: Google Lunar X Prize

#10 2007-10-01 13:35:07

Re: Google Lunar X Prize

#11 2007-10-01 14:22:14

Re: Google Lunar X Prize

#12 2007-10-01 14:25:10

Re: Google Lunar X Prize

#13 2007-12-06 13:25:13

Re: Google Lunar X Prize

#14 2007-12-19 02:32:12

Re: Google Lunar X Prize

#15 2008-02-22 08:24:14

Re: Google Lunar X Prize

#16 2014-12-31 22:01:09

Re: Google Lunar X Prize

#17 2015-01-27 13:36:07

Re: Google Lunar X Prize

#18 2015-02-01 20:23:14

Re: Google Lunar X Prize

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