Subscribe by EmailThe Google lunar challenge
September 14, 2007 by Geeks are Sexy | 5 comments
Google, in partnership with the X PRIZE Foundation, has just announced that they will give $20 million to the first privately owned corporation that succeeds in landing a rover to the moon. Additionally, to be eligible for the prize, the rover will have to travel a distance of 1312 feet and send footage of its trip back to Earth.
The race to the moon won’t be easy or cheap. Teams have to raise money to build a roaming spacecraft that will be tough enough to survive a landing and have the smarts to complete a set of tasks. Each rover must also be equipped with high-definition video and still cameras to document the journey.
Whoever accomplishes the feat by the end of 2012 will receive $20 million. If there is no winner, the purse will drop to $15 million until the end of 2014 when the contest expires. There is also a $5 million second-place prize and $5 million in bonus money to teams that go beyond the minimum requirements.
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Of course it’ll probably take MORE than $20 million to achieve that goal, but I guess whoever won would be able to recoup some of the cost. Maybe they’ll hold a giveaway/competition for a civilian to tag along. That’d be way cool.
Its nice to see the Google guys doing something fun with their money.
You may have reported on moon.google.com previously. Since they introduced the site, they have really brought it along with detailed information about each landing, waypoints along their exploration and great photos and more.
Yeah, I did, and I’ve been using it ever since. It’s absolutely awesome…. and awesome is an understatement in this case :)
I checked 1993 launch prices and got about 45 million for a Titan II (if you could buy one). A Soyuz goes for about $15m. That’s enough to put a 500KG package on the moon, figure about 50kg for the robot. You can build a robot to do everything you want on the moon for under a million, but the ‘air’ freight and soft landing is gonna hurt ya.
Ok now this is already WEIRD but i would definitively enjoy watching the clip (once it gets on the net).