Google puts up 30 Million Prize for Moon Robot

[Chris_Elston]

http://www.news.com/Google+to+put+30...?tag=nefd.lede

What do you guys say? Form a FIRST "Google Lunar Bot" team and split the prize?

I'm in. I'll handle the mechanical of the robot, if someone else works out how to get the thing up there...

[Bharat Nain]

Originally Posted by 114ManualLabor

I'm in. I'll handle the mechanical of the robot, if someone else works out how to get the thing up there...

I'll handle electrical and programming

[Joe G.]

I'll make the boom

[EHaskins]

I'll watch if I have a chance to get some of that money.

Seriously, I'd love to be involved in a group that did that.

[techtiger1]

Well since Bharat and Craig are in, I'm willing to help out with machining and assembly for sure.

[John Gutmann]

Well the first thing to go to the moon had what? no more computing power then one of out robots? It is certainly possible we just need to get it there. Who is the strongest one here........?

-John

[sanddrag]

Building the rover is the easy part. Getting it there is the rather difficult part. Dealing with the government in the process might prove to be the Rocky Mountains in the middle of the trail.

[Cory]

making the thing isn't even the hard part.

The cost of parts for rovers that are space qualified is prohibitively expensive. It would cost you million(s) just to construct a rover.

[Bongle]

A rover wouldn't be terribly difficult to build, relative to the other tasks involved.

Getting it there with $10,000/lb launch costs, then landing it on the moon with all the complexity (retro-rockets, airbags, robust yet extremely light construction) that entails, that's the tough part.

[AdamHeard]

It's a noble idea.... but 30 million is hardly enough to cover the cost to design, build, program, test and launch a rover.

[Jeremiah Johnson]

If only it didn't have to move once there...

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

It's a noble idea.... but 30 million is hardly enough to cover the cost to design, build, program, test and launch a rover.

It's not out of the question for the launch part of the mission to cost less than ten million dollars. That leaves more than twenty million to design and build a landing system and the rover itself. Volunteer labor is cheap, and off-the-shelf components can be surprisingly capable. You don't need military-grade hardware if you design in system-level redundancy, and you might be surprised at how easy it is to use consumer-grade components if you simply put them in a pressurized and air-conditioned box.

Also, a significant amount of rover design is already complete, as part of a number of long-running projects that never got significant funds raised to go beyond the design phase.

[Dan Richardson]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

Building the rover is the easy part. Getting it there is the rather difficult part. Dealing with the government in the process might prove to be the Rocky Mountains in the middle of the trail.

Who said it needs to launch in the states? It is also possible to work globally with other small countries. Also it seems possible to work with Nasa, companies do it all the time.

[dlavery]

The whole idea is not nearly as far-fetched as some people may think. There has already been significant work done to assess the feasibility of a small, private enterprise to reach the Moon. While you have to be careful not to underestimate just how difficult a venture like this is going to be (and by the way, don't even begin to think that just winning the $20 million prize will recover the required investment to make this happen), it is possible - with a lot of dedication, knowledge, effort, and money. One obvious plan would be to start with a Taurus or even a Pegasus vehicle from Orbital Science Space Launch Systems, plus the output of the Lunar Exploration and Development project from Transformational Space Corporation (formerly LunaCorp), plus the Icebreaker system from the CMU Lunar Rover Initiative. All the basic building blocks are there for some very enterprising group to put a robotic rover on the Moon.

-dave