Google Sponsors Lunar X PRIZE to Create a Space Race for a New Generation

[savuporo]

Another thing. There should be no trouble finding sponsors for this competition.
Every company trying to bring robotics to consumer marketplace should welcome the chance to get their logo and technology on the lander. Honda, Sony , US based iRobot, heck, even Microsoft has pitched robotics recently as their Next Big Thing.
Honda has spent north of hundred million developing ASIMO, and so far all they have gotten out of it is PR. Putting a few tens of millions behind this, and providing technology bits should be a comparatively good investment for them and the like.
TransOrbital ( http://www.transorbital.net ) was shooting for becoming the first privately funded mission to moon, and even with their obscurity and low publicity they secured sponsorship from HP. With publicity around google and everything they do, getting sponsorship from tech giants should be  way easier.

[tnphysics]

It can be scaled up to a manned mission, which NASA is paying dearly for.

[savuporo]

huh .. leaving aside all the technicalities of "scaling up", i'd say that manned lunar launches have far less business case at the moment,
There arent just enough interested multimillionares to go around to mount a manned lunar tourism operations, and just about everything else can be done far more effectively with teleoperated robots. Given current launch costs, that is.

[Michael Z Freeman]

hop - 17/9/2007  2:31 AM  

DJ Barney - 16/9/2007  4:29 PM So the Virgin Galactic Spaceport in Nevada has no connection with the previous X Prize ?

This is an apples to oranges comparison.  

Or Planets and Moons ?

I don't see how the state of the art will be advanced, or new markets opened.  

Take a look at the history of innovation and technology. Pick a random technology or endeavour on Wikipedia and trace it's development. There are common factors that inspire innovation, too numerous to list here, and easier to understand if you have first hand knowledge, or have at least engaged with the spirit of the endeavour.

In fact, look at Wikipedia. An idea that seemed ridiculous not so long ago. Mass editing of a single article ... chaos ! Of course now we know.

I was watching a video  of  Sergey Brin , one of the founders of Google. This guy followed up an idea in his college days that was regarded as "impossible", a comprehensive algorithm that could actually index the internet properly. He "dropped out" and their idea worked ! He is now worth 16.6 billion dollars. In the talk that was recorded in 2005, the Google relationship with NASA comes up (I remember hearing about this in 2005). Brin perks up, and says "maybe we'll build space tethers later on, but we're just more interested in some office space at the moment.." :bleh:

I'm starting my own Rover team, or at least, would like to join one. I may not attract big funding, or get very far, but I know I can participate. Anyone can.

DJ Barney

[savuporo]

thinking about the problem a bit, i think it would be doable within $20M budget if all and any feature creep can be avoided.
No science payloads at all. Just the equipment to fulfill competition rules ( wheels, cameras and antennae are pretty much the only requirement ).
Perhaps no solar arrays at all. to fulfill the 500m driving distance, a set of batteries could be enough. You can get up to 350Wh/Kg from non-rechargeable batteries, and up to 200 from rechargeables. Maybe just have thin-film solar cells on the body of the thing, to prolong the battery life a bit.

[wannamoonbase]

savuporo, I think solar cells are essential, who knows what driving problems and how many rocks need to be avoided or slopes climbed.   I would shift more emphasis on solar cells and less on batteries.  Because even if you try to survive a lunar night you won't be able to keep anything alive through those 2 weeks (assuming non-polar landing.)  

Perhaps you can run a hybrid system.  Charge a battery or capacitor with the cells and take a burst of movement then wait to recharge.  If you assume a landing that gives 10 days of drivable conditions you need to average 2 meters per hour, so at about 1400 Watts per Meter squared then you can assume a solar cell efficiency, then assume a mass of your rover, energy needed to move 2 meters per hour, size your solar power (lots of factors in there to evaluate, angle, exposure etc.) and you have a good base to start with.

Light rover with lots of solar cell surface area is a good place to start.  

I think one of the most interesting parts of the Prize is trying to wake up and function after a lunar night.  That will  require a robust design.  If possible that opens up some very interesting possibilities as to range and probably the only way to meet the 5000 meter bonus.

Edit: And the flattest's smooth place to land and sprint for the hills before sunset.

[Bill White]

savuporo - 17/9/2007  11:31 AM

thinking about the problem a bit, i think it would be doable within $20M budget if all and any feature creep can be avoided.
No science payloads at all. Just the equipment to fulfill competition rules ( wheels, cameras and antennae are pretty much the only requirement ).
Perhaps no solar arrays at all. to fulfill the 500m driving distance, a set of batteries could be enough. You can get up to 350Wh/Kg from non-rechargeable batteries, and up to 200 from rechargeables. Maybe just have thin-film solar cells on the body of the thing, to prolong the battery life a bit.

Why stick with a $20 million budget?

According to the Business Week / Interbrand 2007 report, in the last year Google increased its total brand valuation by more than any other global company. Google is hot and getting consumers to subconsciously or emotionally link a company's brand identity with Google would be a big win for the marketing and PR department of that company.

Therefore, all contestants should immediately start seeking sponsors who desire to associate their brand with Google. A contestant can sell BOTH participation in a lunar rover mission and the opportunity to associate a sponsors corporate identity with the Google corporate identity.

For example. Suppose Aardvark Aerospace lines up XYZ Technology Corp as a sponsor.

XYZ can advertise that they are a proud contributor to the Google X Prize Moon 2.0 challenge and thereby link XYZ with Google in the minds of consumers.

Wash, rinse and repeat and a savvy team of salespeople might well raise well over $20 million from ancillary sponsors without needing to take the prize money into account at all.

[Bill White]

PS -- Perhaps the Google Prize is less about technology and more about changing the paradigms of how spaceflight is financed.

[savuporo]

surviving the lunar night is not the core prize requirement, thats a bonus.
thats where the feature creep starts too. Designing the rover to survive few days in cruise phase and couple hours on surface is far easier than designing it to survive lunar night.
easier = cheaper

By the way, here is an early paper on existing rover design, led by the very same Red Whittaker
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~afoessel/publications/icebreaker_a_lunar.techrep1997.pdf

[hop]

DJ Barney - 17/9/2007  8:44 AM

Take a look at the history of innovation and technology. Pick a random technology or endeavour on Wikipedia and trace it's development. There are common factors that inspire innovation, too numerous to list here, and easier to understand if you have first hand knowledge, or have at least engaged with the spirit of the endeavour.

You keep posting generalities that have nothing to do with the specifics of the lunar x prize. There's no doubt that throwing a 30 million prize at a plausibly achievable technical goal will result in SOME work in that area (as would simply handing the cash to a university as grant in that area), but as I understand it, the X-Prizes aim for something bigger.

The 30 million google puts up is supposed to be a catalyst for much larger advances in that field. You can see clear examples of this in the original x-prize (and the Orteig Prize which inspired it). How specifically do you believe this this particular prize accomplishes that ?

tnphysics:
The suggestion of "scaling up" the results to support manned exploration is ludicrous. The key to winning this prize (barring some spectacular miracle) is going to be:
1) getting the cheapest possible ride to orbit. It's hard to get ANYTHING in orbit for much less than $20 million, so this is going to drive everything.
2) miniaturization (driven by the above)
3) using off the shelf components.
4) accepting high risk (because of 1 and 3)

1) means one of the following:
- a surplus Russian missile
- a cheap launcher from the a developing country (Indias PSLV is rumored to be available in the range of 10-15 million dollars),
- unproven and very small Falcon 1
- riding as a secondary payload.
None of these are applicable to manned flight, nor to advancing the state of the art.
2) means having the absolute minimum capability to meet the goals. It also isn't applicable to manned flight, unless you are proposing NASA only hire children or midgets
3) isn't likely to be very applicable due to safety concerns.
4) is directly opposed to manned flight.

[tnphysics]

I meant the lander, not the rover.

What you said is true, except maybe for being risky (could add redundancy)

[savuporo]

The suggestion of "scaling up" the results to support manned exploration is ludicrous.

While technically its ludicrous, what a lot of people seem to miss is a different type of scaling up: organizational.
Thats the same argument that is often made that suborbital launchers are no stepping stone to orbital ones.
Thats wrong, because it neglects organizational issues. You see, having an organization ( likely a company, maybe a nonprofit entity ) that has done successful manned suborbital launches, is far more likely to pull off successful orbital launches than the one that starts from zero. While the technology may not directly apply, experience base, contacts in industry and existing organizational structure all apply.
The same holds true for that lunar thing. The team that pulls this unmanned landing off, will have quite a lot of relevant experience in mounting a manned flight. They may not have the cash or all the technologies, but successful companies are known to attract investments ...
Building functional organizations is often more important than having the technology ( which can be acquired, licensed, bought ), for success.

Notice that NASA went through both of the exercises, suborbital flights and unmanned landings on moon before undertaking the next steps.

[rpspeck]

Thorny - 14/9/2007  3:03 PM

rpspeck - 13/9/2007  2:49 PM

I have noticed that Spirit and Opportunity have attracted A LOT of public attention.  At present a smaller portion of the Lunar surface has been explored in detail than the Mars surface.  

No, that's not true. There were six manned lunar landings in Apollo, plus various Surveyor and Lunakhod rovers.

There have been five successful Mars landings (Viking 1, Viking 2, Pathfinder/Sojourner, Spirit and Opportunity.)

Apollos 15, 16, and 17 each covered more ground than Spirit and Opportunity have to date.

I may have overestimated the amount of ground covered by Spirit and Opportunity, but I have not  overestimated the amount of public interest they have attracted or the national prestige they have earned for their research accomplishments.  Very, very little of the surface of the Moon has been examined in detail.  A $20 to $30 Million investment to put a nation, and its research teams into this arena - with proven success for the transportation system and research platform to get the sensors into position - will be very attractive to the countries which have spent far larger amounts to be counted as partners in the ISS.  

This will be seen as a godsend for nations, and their high tech, national corporate sponsors, to secure a permanent place in the history of space, and lunar, exploration.

[yinzer]

I just saw a talk by Peter Diamandis about the Lunar X-Prize.  It was an interesting pitch, and while I'm not sure how well it went over, there were some laughs and applause, even at the non-cheesy parts.

I asked him if there was the same ban on government funding that the Ansari X Prize had, and he said something about only being able to use technology that was available to all teams.  The natural follow-on question to that was "does this mean that if an Iranian team enters, that no one can use anything covered by ITAR?".  Didn't get a good response to that one, and it seems like it could be pretty important.  He did say that American teams would be at a disadvantage.

That said, I could see this advancing the state of the art in low-cost deep space navigation and attitude control and such.  Not sure that that's relevant to manned space flight, but it'd certainly be useful for unmanned stuff.

I need to think more about this.

[hop]

savuporo - 17/9/2007  11:20 PM
While technically its ludicrous, what a lot of people seem to miss is a different type of scaling up: organizational.
Thats the same argument that is often made that suborbital launchers are no stepping stone to orbital ones.
Thats wrong, because it neglects organizational issues. You see, having an organization ( likely a company, maybe a nonprofit entity ) that has done successful manned suborbital launches, is far more likely to pull off successful orbital launches than the one that starts from zero. While the technology may not directly apply, experience base, contacts in industry and existing organizational structure all apply.

This is certainly true, but IMO, a low budget micro-rover isn't significantly better at achieving this than developing any other spacecraft. Which is better for developing a lunar team, a manned sub-orbital craft or an unmanned rover ? Either one is a very small step toward the larger goal.

Again, I'm not saying the lunar x-prize is a bad, or that it will not produce anything of value. On the contrary, demonstrating low cost planetary exploration would be great. There's a pretty good chance that the winner would be able to sell science oriented follow-on missions, following the MOST philosophy of having one (or maybe a couple) relatively simple instrument that does one interesting thing well. For the price of a traditional planetary mission, you send a bunch of these to your target, which in some cases would be a better overall investment. It could even dovetail nicely into the VSE for pre-scouting landing or ISRU site.

What I'm skeptical of is the ability of this prize to attract funding for the competitors, and the extent of it's possible impact outside a very narrow slice of space science.

[yinzer]

Thinking about this some more, one of the big issues that small launch vehicles run up against is a comparative lack of payloads.  And when small payloads exist, they usually cost enough money that saving a million bucks here or there on the launch vehicle isn't worth the added risk.  Developing reduced-cost payloads would be very useful to the small rocket guys.

[colbourne]

I wish that the competition had been to Mars instead , as then we could use aerobraking instead of having to rely on rocket thrusters.
I guess an inflatable crash bag could do the trick if we can slow the spacecraft down with the ion drive enough.

[savuporo]

we could use aerobraking instead of having to rely on rocket thrusters.

Aerobraking buys you some reduction in propulsion system delta-V, while adding lots of complex systems to the craft ( heatshield, parachutes, and final landing method: either airbags or still retrorockets ) and also additional points of failure.
Its not clear-cut, for small payloads like these, that just adding more propellant wouldnt be simpler and cheaper in the whole picture.

[savuporo]

Something just occured to me.
There should be some reasonable entry barrier for participating in competitions like these, to avoid completely bogus teams creating noise and riding the publicity, while in process maybe discrediting the entire thing.
There were some "participants" in the original X-Prize that were obviously just poor jokes, and there's at least one enlisted for LLC as well.

DARPA GC does this based on proposal evaluation and in qualification runs, before the actual event. I this case, maybe submitting a general parametric overview of the approach taken, with launch vehicle selection, mass budgets, and so on, so they could be run through basic sanity check filter.

Thats not to discourage nontraditional approaches, like using specifically developed launchers or something, but at least the model would have to be physically feasible, and detailed enough to produce virtual models that can run through simulators and animations of the approach taken.
In other words, interesting website and PR material for Google to use.

[Michael Z Freeman]

savuporo - 19/9/2007  10:12 PM   In other words, interesting website and PR material for Google to use.  

I don't understand what you're saying savuporo. First you support this prize (in your posts above) and then you try and shoot it down. What is your stance. Where do you stand ?

For anyone who is interested I have just written a blog  about the wider aspects of the Lunar X Prize and similar endeavours.

DJ Barney