FROM: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6993373.stm
Firms interested in trying for the prize have until the end of 2012 to mount their Moonshot
Anyone fancy a crack at this?
Cheers
Brian
I can understand how and my why the first X-Prize was won... it was essentially a back-dated seed-fund for sub-orbital tourism. What does this seed? I mean - a little rover on the moon - very very very very cool - cool beyond words - but where's the commercial return on it?
Doug
I thought this was an interesting add on (from the New Scientist online http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn12647-google-sponsors-30-million-moon-landing-prize.html )
"To help aspiring lunar explorers, startup launch services firm Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) of El Segundo, California, is offering to fly contestants' rovers on its Falcon rockets at cost, which would be about $7 million for its smallest booster."
Do you think there will be any takers?
Apparently, each team has to be at least 90% privately funded.
Full details at the competition website:
http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/
How about the Planetary Society?
Emily?
http://www.spacetethers.com/massfraction.html
VERY VERY rough figures - but that would suggest a mass fraction of approx 75-90% to achieve 6km/sec delta V. Staging might help (at that scale?) - so you've got something like 175kg to 70kg of vehicle structure, engines, systems, fuel tanks ( carrying 600kg of fuel). What's left for the actual rover? To coin a phrase, roughly 9/10ths of 4/5ths of 'f' all
Doug
On paper it's a bit better than a cubesat.
If you can get 670kg to LEO, then you need a further 5.7km/s of dV to the lunar surface. Using hypergolics (for all the right reasons) and a realistic Isp means that the dry weight of the package landed on the surface could be around 80 to 100kg.
Not too shabby.
Andy
Edit: just seen Doug's "no you can't". I'm not sure it's as cut-and-dried as that.
I didn't know Kaguya had it onboard - hopefully we'll be seeing some ultra cool footage in the not to distant future. . It's about time that 'our' generation ( i.e. born >Apollo 17) got our Earth rise moment....But when you're 3 tonnes and have 3.5 kw to use.....HDTV's not too big a challenge (any lunar orbiter's a challenge, but you know what I mean) Size 46cm x 42cm x 28cm Mass 16.5kg Power consumption 50W
That description describes the HDTV cameras onboard Kaguya...and probably not far off the bottom lines of size, mass and power for a Falcon 1 launched landed payload in full.
Doug
This Google prize is getting a LOT of media attention, so perhaps that's the whole objective. Notice also that they're offering $5M bonuses for visiting "historical sites", which of course would mean Apollo landing sites.
Still...$30M isn't much of an incentive, unless it's meant to help an aspiring company recoup at least some of its development costs. Presumably any company that could pull this off would be "made", though, and perhaps become a prime govt contractor for lunar exploration someday...something like a super MSSS.
Doug's right, though; at the end of the day, it's hard to figure out what Google's real angle is in this; they need more publicity like I need more alimony. Do you suppose that they're so rich that true philanthrophy is their core motivation? (Nah...I don't think so either!)
EDIT: Horrible thought- Rover lands at Tranquility Base, drives right over Neil's first footprint on the Moon...
What about the five million dollar secound prize? that seems acheivable, the question is would $5000,000 be enough of an incentive to make it worth while?
So google will give $20 million to the first private company to land on the moon, rove 500 m and return 'mooncast' video. see here: http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/lunar/competition/guidelines
So am I the only one to which this prize money seems like way to little to cover the cost of such a thing. At that pice you probably couldn't afford a launch vehicle and would have to launch piggy-back with another satellite... so you would have to get out of whatever orbit the piggy-back launch put you in and get to the moon... which probably would require electric propulsion. And you would still need chemical propulsion to be able to land. So that's two prop systems _and_ some way to locomote after you land _and_ you have to send back high def video (lots of power and lots of ground station fees).
It seems like for this to work you'd have to already have your own launch vehicle and tracking network all built and paid for... but the prize is only for a 100% private venture, so you coucldn't even use a donated vehicle or tracking.
Did they even think this through before they announced it? what am I missing?
Thinking out loud - if you can get to GEO as a piggyback - (not gto...GEO) - then the dV to get to the moon drops - significantly. The TLI is <1km/sec instead of 3km/sec. If you're really cunning about it - maybe even only 900m/sec.
If you can take 2km/sec off the requirement like that - then you get a mass fraction of more like 70%. If someone's prepared to have a 500kg hitch-hike to GEO - you could put as much as 150kg on the surface. Thing is - which kind-soul telecoms company is going to give someone a free lift to GEO..anyone....hmmmm....it's gone quiet
Doug
Yeah; I was wondering about opportune piggybacks as well. Also, how many commercial GEO launches are using kick motors (Star-48s, etc.) these days to get there from LEO? Most of the gov ones I know use Hall Effect xenon thrusters, which takes a lot of time & obviously does not impart much dV per sec.
Reason I ask is that the optimum separation time would presumably be after a nice, decisive boost to GEO...but it would have to be well-timed with the primary SV's needs, of course. Can't have the main sat spending station-keeping fuel to traverse 120 deg of longitude or something to get it where it needs to be.
Well, the artifacts need not be Apollo - they could be Surveyors or Lunokhods, or Ranger debris fields, or SMART-1's impact site, etc. etc.
For most Apollo sites it would be possible to get very close to the LM or ALSEP without ever touching old tracks, if you came in the right way using maps of surface activites. There would be some controversy about any disturbance, so it would be best avoided from a PR point of view.
As for the prize not being enough... it doesn't have to be. The original X-prize covered less than half the cost of the attempt. The builders need other sponsors, the prize is just a subsidy.
I'm not sure if this will work. THe X-prize obviously did, but I have a feeling Bigelow's "America's Space Prize" ($100 million to the first private launch of a crew to orbit) is not realistic. Hard to say. But people have been trying this for a while - Transorbital, Applied Space Resources, Lunacorp. They couldn't get adequate funding. But this might help, and we're getting more of an 'angel investor' thing under way now than those companies had available to them.
Phil
The Google link that AscendingNode posted had a pretty obvious Apollo site bias, Phil; more PR.
I think that oDoug's right, though; go to any of the others, but leave Tranquility Base alone. That's a sacred place, likely to be right up there with the Pyramids (and last longer in our collective memory) if we do indeed survive and spread out through space.
EDIT: Heck, I vote for Apollo 12; it's a two-fer, along with Surveyor 3!
Beginning to wonder if they're just trying to emulate the early days of aviation...various prizes for various feats. Their ultimate goal has to be just plain publicity, of course, but Silicon Valley also has a vested interest in stimulating new technologies and fields of endeavour that naturally open new markets for theor products.
Google might just be sticking a toe in the water to diversify 10-20 yrs down the road, betting that UMSF will become a contracted government activity by then...in this scenario, NASA just hands out performance-based contracts, and all the work & risk of a mission is assumed by a contractor. This contest would be a good way to find a good company to buy. Their secondary assumption here is that lunar exploration will become very hot, as China, India & Russia get a lot more aggressive in lunar activities.
Yeah, pretty thin...hell, I don't know why they're doing this!!!! Pure charity, pure publicity, pure foolishness, or the equivalent of buying a long shot, very expensive lottery ticket...I'll go with a combo of the second & fourth options.
I think it's worth pointing out, here, that Google has some serious space exploration fans in its upper ranks. Google never fails to commemorate the date of July 20 each year, and at one point (I believe it was on a July 20 several years ago), Google announced it was accepting applications for positions at its new lunar facility which was to be located (IIRC) on the floor of Copernicus. (I actually sent in an application, all in fun, and got a very nice letter stating that they already had enough applications, but to keep them in mind when they begin hiring again for this facility, in about 35 years... *smile*...)
Google would be doing something like this, not for the PR value (although there is that), but just because it appears that the people who run Google *want* to do it! They think space is cool, and even if no one ever knew what they were doing, they'd love being involved in getting new, fresh-off-the-wire views from the lunar surface.
-the other Doug
Something else that no one has said about Google backing it, to a degree they already have an agreement with NASA with several things, why not try to fund something privately? It does make sense. Google isn't above doing things that help people with different things, even some of which might not turn a profit, but, well, it doesn't hurt.
As to what the commercial value is of such an application, there are 3 things that I can think of (One of which I heard from here). First of all, someone could potentially land a rover on the moon, and sell the rights to control the rover for a period of time. The moon would be idea for this, because there's always somewhere facing the Earth, and it gets 2 weeks of sun at a time. I know many people on here are MER fans, just imagine if you could control it for a period of time. There are people who would pay alot of money for that. If you can get to the moon for around $30 million, and stay there for say, 3 lunar days, assuming 2 weeks of sellability per lunar day, and you've got 6 weeks worth of time to sell. That's 40 days, so you only have to make $1 million or so per day, and you're in the green. If you could sell an hour controlling the moon rover for $40,000, or perhaps some kind of exclusive footage for a price, you're doing quite well. Add in corporate sponsorships, etc, and you're in real good condition. Of course, there's alot of ifs here, but, well, it is in theory possible.
Secondly, it's one more stage to the moon. If you can get a robot there, then it's not that much harder to get a habitat, then humans there. It's a building block for future manned missions to the moon, that don't have anything to do with the government.
Lastly, as someone mentioned, anyone capable of doing such a thing can easily get NASA contracts.
So, as a whole, it's probably not going to turn a profit right away, but it's a start. I could see alot of technology being played at because of this mission. Just thought I'd toss in my $.02.
Oh, just to talk a little about the Apollo landing sites, well, if someone could land something there, it'd prove once and for all that we did land there, so the Apollo conspirators could go back to Mars or something else.
My thoughts exactly there, Doug. It's pointless to even try to prove something to those guys, it's best to just let them go.
Believe it or not, I used to work with a contractor--a satcom guy!-- that subscribed to this, er, [insert polite term for what I'm thinking]. He believed in satellites, of course, but maintained that the logistics of getting to the Moon were patently impossible.
Another guy I knew a few years ago was an absolutely brilliant electronics technician who maintained, with utter solemnity, that Apollo proved that the Earth-Moon system was only 6000 years old because 'NASA's computers crashed every time they tried to reconstruct orbits' farther back than then.
What's scary is that both of these men are extraordinarily good at what they do, and work in technically demanding fields. I took it as a lesson in the dangers of insufficient imagination combined with unrestrained credulity towards negative arguments. Keep on educating, UMSFers...
http://whyhomeschool.blogspot.com/2007/09/carnival-of-space-week-21-xprize.html has some interesting blog entries about the Lunar X-Prize...
Looks like the cringemaster wants a piece of the action:
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070927_003043.html
Team UMSF.com?
Nahh - we're doing balloons
Doug
I was at the International Aeronautical Congress conference last week, in India. The X-Prize people did a large presentation there about the prize. They had a Google rep there, too, but the presentation was done by a guy from Ansari X. Most of what was said is on the web site, so I won't repeat it. And I didn't take much in the way of notes, so this is from memory.
I asked if an employee of a large, ponderous, out-of-date giant aerospace organization could volunteer time to the competitors. They said yes, most definitely. You'd just have to document somehow that you worked and didn't get paid in any way.
By last week when I talked to them (Thu, 27 Sept), they had receieved seven team registrations and expected more soon.
It costs $1000 to register your team. And as for the launch costs, they had an official launch 'partner' who would offer discounted launches to the teams that wanted them. I think it was Space-X, and the discount was about 10% off, as I recall.
There was also a group who was offering the use of their ground station for free to all the teams. Located in California, I think. Don't recall the name.
And they seconded the idea expressed earlier in this thread about the money covering the costs. There is no intention that the prize money finance the whole cost. It is indeed meant as an incentive to the winning team. The intention is that the winner (of this or any of their prizes) immediately becomes the leader in their field and can leverage the prize money and prize notoriety into a viable business which provides real returns.
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