"Google's" 30 Million dollar Lunar X Prize!

[amicus]

Internet giant google is offering thirty million dollars for a private, ngo, who can land a robot on the surface of the moon and transmit back a certain amount of video material.

Hotel magnate, Bigelow, is offering fifty million dollars for the first, private, ngo, that can put a person in orbit around the earth.

Hello private enterprise, where the hell you been?

Amicus...

edited to add: http://www******.com/news/070913_google_xprize.html

http://www.bigelowaerospace.com/multiverse/space_prize.php

 

[SeaCat]

Not a surprise to me at all. There are if I recall a couple of other prizes out there from Private Industry. (The X-Prize started it all.)

As far as I'm concerned this is a good thing.

Cat

 

[amicus]

I agree seacat...just kinda wondering why it took so long...


amicus...

 

[SeaCat]

I agree seacat...just kinda wondering why it took so long...


amicus...

Why did it take so long? Several reasons I'm sure.

Some of these are political in nature. (I hesitate to think of the hoops one must go through to get a permit for a test launch.)

Some of these are purely financial. Most large corporations didn't want to, (and still don't want to,) spend the needed money on the R&D.

There still isn't a lot of money to be made in Space right now. Or should I say not a lot of short term money. Long term profits are iffy but they could be huge.

Government funded Space flight like N.A.S.A. and it's Russian counterpart, (no I don't remember their name.) have their place. They did get us into space after all. Unfortunately being government funded and run they have the typical beurocratic(sp) mindset. Maybe it is time for them to take the backseat and for private enterprise to move ahead.

Cat

 

[SimpleGifts]

Why no private enterprise? Easy--no profit. Even the guys who won the X Prize admitted that they did it for the prestige--they spent more than the prize money that they won. Even though guys like Dick Rutan are geniuses at figuring out how to engineering things on the cheap (like how they used SCUBA gear for retro rockets). The DARPA Robot Grand Challenge was probably a much better deal for the winners (and even they needed corporate sponsors to get the seed money to win).

There's been a commercial space industry for years. There are enough commercial spaceports if you know the industry--SeaLaunch has done some, MARS in Virginia is also up and running. No one knows how to make money off it, unless your target market is Charles Simonyi.

If we had waited for private companies to start the space industry, it probably would have taken a few extra decades to give us innovations like GPS and satellite communications. So the Lunar X Prize is a great idea, but I wouldn't expect to see too many takers unless Richard Branson or someone decides he's got nothing better to do with his own $50 million or so...which may happen, seeing as how he's trying to promote Virgin Galactic.

SG

 

[amicus]

Why no private enterprise? Easy--no profit. Even the guys who won the X Prize admitted that they did it for the prestige--they spent more than the prize money that they won. Even though guys like Dick Rutan are geniuses at figuring out how to engineering things on the cheap (like how they used SCUBA gear for retro rockets). The DARPA Robot Grand Challenge was probably a much better deal for the winners (and even they needed corporate sponsors to get the seed money to win).

There's been a commercial space industry for years. There are enough commercial spaceports if you know the industry--SeaLaunch has done some, MARS in Virginia is also up and running. No one knows how to make money off it, unless your target market is Charles Simonyi.

If we had waited for private companies to start the space industry, it probably would have taken a few extra decades to give us innovations like GPS and satellite communications. So the Lunar X Prize is a great idea, but I wouldn't expect to see too many takers unless Richard Branson or someone decides he's got nothing better to do with his own $50 million or so...which may happen, seeing as how he's trying to promote Virgin Galactic.

SG

~~~

Good points all, SG, I have followed SeaLaunch closely, not aware of MARS in Virginia (but will look).

You make another good point, even RADAR, which was a British military discovery and invention fits in, and GPS and Satellites, yes, with tremendous government tax monies, it may indeed have taken decades longer.

So, point in your column, I guess, although government can direct the research and fund it, on a non profit basis, I still maintain that the individuals, the private individuals in our society, are still the source of all the new ideas and inventions and that they cannot function without an atmosphere of freedom to think and experiment, which government seldom allows.

Any room there for an agreement to disagree occasionally?

Amicus...

 

[Liar]

Hello private enterprise, where the hell you been?

Busy making money.


Cool stuff, ami. Thanks for the links.

 

[SimpleGifts]

~~~

Good points all, SG, I have followed SeaLaunch closely, not aware of MARS in Virginia (but will look).

You make another good point, even RADAR, which was a British military discovery and invention fits in, and GPS and Satellites, yes, with tremendous government tax monies, it may indeed have taken decades longer.

So, point in your column, I guess, although government can direct the research and fund it, on a non profit basis, I still maintain that the individuals, the private individuals in our society, are still the source of all the new ideas and inventions and that they cannot function without an atmosphere of freedom to think and experiment, which government seldom allows.

Any room there for an agreement to disagree occasionally?

Amicus...

Oh, I have absolutely no quarrel with the argument that, on the whole, the private sector produces many more useful innovations than the public sector. I mean, that's the whole point of the private sector--identify and create solutions where people can see the value so clearly that they will PAY for them. Look at cellular phones--the National Science Foundation funded a study to identify the role of the Federal government in encouraging the development of the cellular phone, and the researchers found that...pretty much nothing, except for providing the spectrum licenses (which really were superfluous--spectrum-hopping had already been invented by then).

However, I've been in a lot of government, academic, corporate and non-profit research institutions--part of my job--and there isn't THAT much difference among them. There are examples of good work and useful innovations that come out of all four. And the researchers in a Department of Energy National Laboratory are private individuals, just as much as researchers at Alcatel Lucent Bell Labs. Maybe even moreso, since government labs can provide more freedom of inquiry and research investigation than a corporate lab can.

I do think this X Prize concept is an interesting one--NASA has looked into doing this, and so has the National Institutes of Health (such as offering $20 million to anyone who can invent a vaccine for malaria). It's a good way to induce innovation towards goals where no market incentive exists. And the Google.org guys are very smart--they probably realize that some of the most useful innovations will come out of the teams that lose.

SG