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.

[Greg Needel]

Well you know how I would do this....I would focus on the maneuvering rocket and the robot itself. Try to get connected with the spaceship one team, and just have the satellite as as payload for one of their flights. Once out of the earth's atmosphere they could release it and it would use maneuvering thrusters to get to the moon.

Now obviously it isn't that simple but I think the opportunity to work with companies or teams already in place is the way to make this affordable.

[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by www.news.com

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.

(Highlight is mine.)

Even still, this was an very generous donation from Google to fund this X Prize initiative. It's a great to see companies take a short break from capitalism every once in a while, and donate millions (or if you're Bill Gates, billions) to charities and initiatives that strive to advance science and technology, or make our world a better place.

But I can't seem to get this thought out of my mind: why does Google seem to be so interested in the moon? =)