Google Lunar X Prize

[Bill Morris]

The X Prize this time is for the first privately funded organization (TrekBBS?) to land a rover on the moon ($20 million, $5 second prize, and $5 million bonus to the winner for completing certain missions tasks).

The official rules and competition guidelines are here:

http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/lunar/competition/guidelines

 

[SeerSGB]

The X-prize and the moonshot aside, I'm looking forward to seeing what sort of designs people come up with for the robots.

 

[Brent]

This stuff is awesome, glad it is happening finally. Though imagine if all of this kind of interest happened 10-20 years ago instead of just now.

 

[Bill Morris]

About the rover itself, I was thinking about one that folds up for transport then unfolds after landing, so that it could have a much larger solar array, with large wire-mesh tires (like those of the Apollo rovers) with wide track and long wheelbase but still quite light overall, so it would be better powered to cover more ground per day and do more things.

 

[Brandonv]

I wonder if a team can really put together and launch a lunar rover before 2012? I would guess that it's going to take a powerful launch vehicle to send a spacecraft to the moon. Can a private organization afford to build such a vehicle? Does anyone have any ideas how this might be accomplished?