Last week, Google and X PRIZE Foundation offered a multimillion-dollar prize to the first team to land a rover on the moon. Let’s not be shy. If you have the experience, and connections for launching expertise, systems guidance robotics, telecommunications and a source for funding, this is your big chance.

“The Google Lunar X PRIZE calls on entrepreneurs, engineers and visionaries from around the world to return us to the lunar surface and explore this environment for the benefit of all humanity,” Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation, said in a statement.

The rules:

1) Any team/company can compete.
2) The rover must roam or travel for 500 meters.
3) The rover must take a series of panoramic images (stills).
4) The rover must shoot video (about a gigabyte, according to Voice of America).
5) Create a cached set of data, according to The Space Review.
6) The rover must stream or deliver the footage to Google’s Web site.

If a team can accomplish this by the end of 2012, it wins the $20 million grand prize.

In addition to this offering (or as I call it, bait), a competing team can earn a $5 million bonus if the rover does more than meet the minimum requirements, according to Google News. Would delivering Osama bin Laden to the moon qualify as going beyond the minimum? What definitely qualifies as additional mission tasks is roving longer distances (> 5,000 meters), imaging man-made artifacts (e.g. Apollo hardware), discovering water ice and/or surviving through a frigid lunar night (approximately 14.5 Earth days), according to the announcement.

To create some competition, Google also is offering a $5 million prize as a second prize to the team that lands its spacecraft on the moon, roves and transmits data back to Earth. Ah, pressure to win … don’t you love it?

Should no company manage to accomplish these tasks by Dec. 31, 2012, then the grand prize drops from $20 million to $15 million, assuming the competing company can accomplish the task by 2014, after which point the competition will be terminated unless extended by Google and the X Prize Foundation.

Last Friday, according to The New York Times, Carnegie Mellon University announced that “a roboticist on its faculty, William L. Whittaker, would be pulling together a team to seek the prize.”

“Why would anyone sign up for a challenge that will almost certainly cost more than the prize will bring?” The New York Times asked.

Let’s see, how can the (winning) teams offset the costs of competing?

If this is a private venture, the competing team could slap decals on the rover’s side like the NASCAR sponsors do for racecars, right? That’s got to be profitable. And what about endorsements? No doubt, Whittaker and his competitors, if any, will use some software to manage the project. The lucky company chosen could get some thrust from such a testimonial. This could be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The toy industry will need a boost, so toy rockets and rovers with licensing from any winning corporate team(s) could bring more money into the corporate coffers. And who wouldn’t want a cap with the winning company’s logo embroidered on it — why else would those caps with “Top Gun” embroidered on them have become so popular?

Don’t you think an entrepreneurial tinkerer would welcome a movie about the struggle to land a perfectly functioning rover on the moon? Maybe we better put a bug in Brad Pitt’s ear. Hollywood scriptwriters can undoubtedly embellish reality into a suspenseful and seat-gripping 120-minute blockbuster.

If someone writes a book on the tremendous teamwork and working long hours to accomplish this goal — not to mention the divorces and affairs — that should make for some engaging writing. So the book tour and book sales will help make this venture profitable.

What about a video game based on the team’s attempts to aim the rocket and rover in the right direction — not to mention controlling the thrusters to land the rover without damaging it? Teens and college students might find this challenging and enjoyable.

Once again, why would anyone sign up for a challenge that will almost certainly cost more than the prize will bring?

As John M. Logsdon, the director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, told the NYT: “There are a variety of reasons to do it, including ego gratification, including loss-leader reputation building, including a fascination with doing things in space. I don’t think they’re driven by the amount of the prize.

Or, as Dr. Diamandis put it, Google and the X Prize Foundation hope to “usher in an era of commercial exploration and development, in which small companies, groups of individuals and universities can build, launch and explore the moon and beyond.”

Resources

Google Sponsors Lunar X PRIZE to Create a Space Race for a New Generation
GoogleLunarXPrize.org, Sept. 13, 2007

A Word From the Founders of X PRIZE & Google
X PRIZE Founder – Peter H. Diamandis, MD
GoogleLunarXPrize.org

Internet’s Google Offers Prize for Private Moon Landing
Voice of America and The Associated Press, Sept. 14, 2007

Google’s Moonshot
by Jeff Foust
The Space Review, Sept. 17, 2007

$25 million in Prizes Is Offered for Trip to Moon
by John Schwartz
The New York Times, Sept. 14, 2007