The problem with the Google Lunar X-Prize.

[DiggyCoxwell]

   
Peter Diamandis had/has good intentions.
Where does the road of good intentions lead though, unfortunately?

I think he, and those who registered for his prize have 'bitten off more than they can chew'.
 Seriously! We need to reappraise the 'amateur' spaceflight philosophy.

 Just as a baby cannot run and jump and lift heavy weights until it grows to infancy; then into childhood; then into a youth; and finally into adulthood.
Likewise, the 'amateur' spaceflight projects need to learn to crawl first
before they can walk; and they need to learn to walk before they can run.
   The metaphorical philosophy is based on the premise
that the Google Lunar X-Prize sponsor and these amateur groups involved in the Lunar X-Prize would best have set their goals this way, with the support of Google sponsership:

1) Develop an amateur booster with a 50 Kg payload to be sent to an
altitude over 200 km (125 miles) by December, 2012.
100,000 dollars prize money.

2) Develop an amateur multistage booster and payload of 50 kg to be sent into LEO by December, 2014. 500,000 dollars prize money

3) Develop an amateur multistage booster with a 50 kg payload
to be sent to the Moon (to flyby the Moon, consolation prizes awarded; to hit the Moon, first prize handed out) by December/2016.
Consolation prizes about a million dollars apiece.
First prize; two million dollars.

4) Develop an amateur multistage booster with a TLI payload over 200 kg
to orbit the Moon by December, 2018.
First prize; five million dollars.

5) Develop an amateur multistage booster with a TLI payload over
500kg to soft land over 150kg of hardware on the Lunar surface, intact and functioning by December, 2020.
Second prize for a stationary Lunar lander, ten million dollars.
First prize for a Lunar rover, twenty million dollars. 
   

[SpacexULA]

Part of the reason the prizes look so 'bitten off more than they can chew', is because the harder the prize, the higher the muliplier Xprize gets on their money.

The way these prizes get funded is Xprize buys an insurance policy, which actually does the pay out.  So if it was a sure thing, they would only get a 1.5 multiplier, so AIG or some other company would pay out 150k for the 100k that Xprize puts up.  As the prize gets harder and harder the insurance company gives a higher and higher multiplier.  So the 20 Million dollar prize might only have .5 - 1 million out of pocket for the foundation.

X Prize foundation allows the contestants to use off the shelf launchers, like Orbital, Russian, Chinese, and Indian launchers.  most of which use state of the art 1st stages, your not going to improve 1st stage efficiency much more than has already been done, especially as an armature.  On the other hand there are MANY directions they could go with their earth departure stage, they could use electric, slings, tethers, hydrocarbon, LH2, or any number of other options, most of which have never been tried in practical application.

Diamandis is no fool.  He is very likely not going to pay out 1st place , but by 2014 he might get to pay out a few million for the secondary prizes, and who knows, most people didn't think Space Ship 1 was possible at the price.  Of the total X Prizes announced to date most look like they are going to hand out SOME amount of money for at least their secondary prizes.

The Ansari X Prize - Full payout
The Archon X Prize - Likely going to have full payout
The Automotive X Prize - Likely a full payout
The Wirefly X Prize Cup - Full payout
The Google Lunar X Prize - Likely at least secondary prizes,
The Ocean X Prize - Don't know enough to guess

Diamandos joked in 1 interview that if he kept having successes with his prizes they where going to start charging X prize more.

[hop]

FWIW, we already had a long thread on this when the prize was announced: http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=9818.0

I don't think anything that has happened in the interim has changed my opinion.

[Diagoras]

http://astrobotictechnology.com/2010/03/15/astrobotic-announces-expanded-opportunities-to-send-payloads-to-the-moon/

Looks like one team at least has already chartered a flight. Astrobotic has apparently netted a Falcon 9 flight.

[neilh]

http://astrobotictechnology.com/2010/03/15/astrobotic-announces-expanded-opportunities-to-send-payloads-to-the-moon/

Looks like one team at least has already chartered a flight. Astrobotic has apparently netted a Falcon 9 flight.

It's worth noting that Astrobotic is pretty much the favored winner if there will be a winner at all, as they're a direct offshoot of Carnegie Mellon's Red Team, which won the 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge and 2007 DARPA Urban Grand Challenge. The team's also had a number of prior robotics collaborations with NASA.

<-- proud Carnegie Mellon computer science alumnus

[Nathan]

Part of the reason the prizes look so 'bitten off more than they can chew', is because the harder the prize, the higher the muliplier Xprize gets on their money.

The way these prizes get funded is Xprize buys an insurance policy, which actually does the pay out.  So if it was a sure thing, they would only get a 1.5 multiplier, so AIG or some other company would pay out 150k for the 100k that Xprize puts up.  As the prize gets harder and harder the insurance company gives a higher and higher multiplier.  So the 20 Million dollar prize might only have .5 - 1 million out of pocket for the foundation.

I never knew that. I always thought that they just gathered sponsors and pooled the money into a prize. That's really creative and smart. I'm going to look into it further.

[SpacexULA]

Part of the reason the prizes look so 'bitten off more than they can chew', is because the harder the prize, the higher the muliplier Xprize gets on their money.

The way these prizes get funded is Xprize buys an insurance policy, which actually does the pay out.  So if it was a sure thing, they would only get a 1.5 multiplier, so AIG or some other company would pay out 150k for the 100k that Xprize puts up.  As the prize gets harder and harder the insurance company gives a higher and higher multiplier.  So the 20 Million dollar prize might only have .5 - 1 million out of pocket for the foundation.

I never knew that. I always thought that they just gathered sponsors and pooled the money into a prize. That's really creative and smart. I'm going to look into it further.

Mr Diamandis explains it in his TED Video

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/peter_diamandis_on_our_next_giant_leap.html

Many prizes are paid for in this fashion.  I know the RepRap one I am trying to win is.

[neilh]

Part of the reason the prizes look so 'bitten off more than they can chew', is because the harder the prize, the higher the muliplier Xprize gets on their money.

The way these prizes get funded is Xprize buys an insurance policy, which actually does the pay out.  So if it was a sure thing, they would only get a 1.5 multiplier, so AIG or some other company would pay out 150k for the 100k that Xprize puts up.  As the prize gets harder and harder the insurance company gives a higher and higher multiplier.  So the 20 Million dollar prize might only have .5 - 1 million out of pocket for the foundation.

I never knew that. I always thought that they just gathered sponsors and pooled the money into a prize. That's really creative and smart. I'm going to look into it further.

Apparently a running joke amongst space entrepreneurs in the late 90s and early 2000s was the "NASA brother-in-law" effect, where an investor would initially get very excited about a potential idea, but then they'd call up their "brother-in-law" or some other relation who happened to work with NASA or a NASA contractor -- after all, they're supposed to be the ultimate experts in this kind of thing, right? The NASA-affiliated "brother-in-law" would then assure them that the business plan was rubbish, and bash the idea and assure the potential investor that it was impossible to do the sorts of things NASA does in a more cost-effective way.

One running story (no idea if it's true of not) is that in the case of the X Prize this effect actually ended up benefiting private spaceflight, as the people at the insurance company called up their NASA insiders who ensured them that it would be impossible for a private company to win the X Prize. Based on this NASA/contractor expert advice they then gave an absurdly low price for the insurance policy and presumably ended up kicking themselves once the X Prize was won.

I suspect insurance companies have probably wised up since then, at least when it comes to space, and I'm guessing Google is big enough to just self-insure the prize.

[SpacexULA]

I suspect insurance companies have probably wised up since then, at least when it comes to space, and I'm guessing Google is big enough to just self-insure the prize.

I am a huge "fan" of space exploration, but even I wouldn't bet on the success of any of the new space companies.

Any prize funded by insurance money that would actually be inspiring to the public will likely always find very willing group of insurance companies to bet against it.

[beancounter]

Please define 'new space companies'.  Who are you referring to please?

Cheers

[Garrett]

Please define 'new space companies'.  Who are you referring to please?

Cheers

He was referring to "New Space" companies, not actually companies that have just recently started up (though some New Space companies do fall into that category).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NewSpace

[simonth]

I believe you can skip all your X-prize challenges 1) to 4) and just implement a two prong prize challenge:

1) 5 million for the first team that builds a vehicle and sends an impactor of at least 20kg to the Moon and actually manages an impact while sending pictures of the Moon back on the way to the impact.

2) 10 million for the first soft landing whatever you land

3) 20 million for the first rover

That will be incremental enough and inspiring enough, especially the first "hard landing/impact" challenge is something that would be great.

[JohnFornaro]

The main problem with the prize is that I'm probably not going to win it....

[neilh]

I believe you can skip all your X-prize challenges 1) to 4) and just implement a two prong prize challenge:

1) 5 million for the first team that builds a vehicle and sends an impactor of at least 20kg to the Moon and actually manages an impact while sending pictures of the Moon back on the way to the impact.

2) 10 million for the first soft landing whatever you land

3) 20 million for the first rover

That will be incremental enough and inspiring enough, especially the first "hard landing/impact" challenge is something that would be great.

I think I recall seeing in the FY2011 NASA budget documents/presentations that they're planning on reviving Centennial Challenges funding. Part of the new funding would go towards things like adding onto the Google Lunar X Prize, perhaps adding "milestone prizes" like you describe.

One thing to keep in mind though is that for these X Prize teams, launch is quite possibly going to be their dominating cost. It doesn't really make sense to buy a launch for a $5M prize, but rather just aim for a larger all-up prize. One possibility might be to have secondary prizes based on how far a team gets in an all-up attempt; for example if their rover ends up inadvertently becoming a hard impactor, they'd still get some money.

[iamlucky13]

   
 Just as a baby cannot run and jump and lift heavy weights until it grows to infancy; then into childhood; then into a youth; and finally into adulthood.
Likewise, the 'amateur' spaceflight projects need to learn to crawl first
before they can walk; and they need to learn to walk before they can run.
   The metaphorical philosophy is based on the premise
that the Google Lunar X-Prize sponsor and these amateur groups involved in the Lunar X-Prize would best have set their goals this way, with the support of Google sponsership:

Why do all this work with boosters all over again? There's plenty of rockets available today, potentially for reasonable cost if you can piggyback with another payload. Focus instead on the lunar part of it.