GLXP Update Thread

[Llian Rhydderch]

Looks like the X Prize Foundation itself has called it quits on the GXLP.

Jeff Foust, on Twitter:

It’s official: The X Prize Foundation says today no team will be able to claim the $20M Google Lunar X Prize.

9:45 AM - 23 Jan 2018

And here is Foust's article on SpaceNews.

[Pomerantz]

Which is why I'm attempting to contribute back here to you in a supportive way.

And this is a mere post. Meant to be crisp. Take it in the spirit of how it is offered.

Oh, I most definitely am! This is fun for me. I don't really feel it is prudent / ethical for me to comment on specific teams, so they only time I get to talk about a program that was very important to me is in conversations like this, about the rules, the competition as a whole, and what comes next.

Re: your comments. I think one could definitely craft an interesting competition in that way; I just think it isn't an incentive prize. Even with the most competent of judges and the most well designed ways of distributing access, this concept would still by necessity result in constraining innovation and in having someone (even a very smart, very well intentioned someone) serve as gate-keeper.

That's a totally fine thing to do, especially assuming you have declared that up front so that all teams start from the same working position. But it's not as interesting a competition to me personally, in part because my gut feel is that it wouldn't actually increase the likelihood of achieving the long terms goals of the effort--e.g. not just a prize victory, but a lasting change to the industry/field.

[Andy Bandy]

Seems like the competitors got caught in a no-man's land. Doing the mission in the low 10's of millions wasn't possible. So the money they raised only went so far. However, they weren't able to get to the high tens of millions needed to actually do the mission properly. ispace has managed to raise $90 million, but not in time to allow Team Hakuto to undertake a mission. That team was dependent on a ride from Team Indus. The $90 million sounds like a lot of money, but it might only cover one mission or a mission and a half. if mission one fails, then do the investors continue to put money into the company?

Paul Allen and Burt Rutan managed to win the Ansari X Prize spending only $28 million, a multiple of 2.8 on a $10 million prize. Between the prize money, licensing the technology to Richard Branson, and donating the vehicle to the Smithsonian Allen managed to make a profit on the venture.

Not clear how to make money on a moon mission that costs $80 million or so on a $20 million prize. Not clear there's a market for taking payloads to the moon after someone wins. Might be.

The very cheapness with which SSO was built caused problems down the road. The flight test program was too short. The engine took a decade to scale up. Rutan & company didn't understand the dangers of nitrous oxide. They were overconfident. The very success of SSO led them down some bad paths.

[Space Ghost 1962]

But it's not as interesting a competition to me personally, in part because my gut feel is that it wouldn't actually increase the likelihood of achieving the long terms goals of the effort--e.g. not just a prize victory, but a lasting change to the industry/field.

Hackerthons have already been credited with achieving lasting changes to industry in many fields.

(One with the most change has been healthcare and medicine - they have broken ground around the security, ubiquity, and deployment of medical devices, wearables, mobile applications, and productivity improvements.) I did one of these with 3 young university students to understand why, and got to know Jason Calacanis in the process. (Went without sleep for a week in doing so.)

He says that they make accessible "change makers" to communities that need change. And vice versa. Talk with him about it.

Ask yourself which is better - a too visionary program with no results, or a slightly constrained program with results.

[Llian Rhydderch]

It is precisely the short-term, high-energy, ideate-anything, build-a-minimum-viable bit-of-a-product attitude so prevalent in hackathons that helps ramp up innovation.

I was involved in a hackathon in New York City last summer, and will be in one in Denver next month, both ideating and building apps for the fast-moving blockchain space. 

[Andy Bandy]

It is precisely the short-term, high-energy, ideate-anything, build-a-minimum-viable bit-of-a-product attitude so prevalent in hackathons that helps ramp up innovation.

I was involved in a hackathon in New York City last summer, and will be in one in Denver next month, both ideating and building apps for the fast-moving blockchain space.

Software is easy to iterate. So are the devices that they run. Space hardware is a lot more difficult. It's costly. There are harsh conditions it must survive particularly on the moon. And you can't just recall it, fix whatever's wrong, and send it back up again. Planet manages to iterate because they launch a lot of satellites and can tweak software and sensors and so on. But, a lunar mission doesn't lend itself to that.