Lunar X PRIZE, Universities, and Cringely

RLV News posts on 2 Google Lunar X PRIZE articles. The first, from the Tucson Citizen, is on the University or Arizona's contribution to team Astrobotic. Here's one snippet from the article showing how it's going:

The project has $1.5 million in hand donated by UA, Carnegie Mellon and Raytheon to fund design work and develop a business plan needed to raise funds to cover the project's $100 million price tag, Lauretta said.

What does UA have to gain from the competition?

"The X Prize is not the only revenue stream. We will have a system for pinpoint accuracy delivery to the surface of the moon or other planets. Others will come and pay for that. We really believe in the vision of the Google Lunar X Prize to make lunar surface activities routine."

... and ...

"Instead of being the group that provides the science instruments, we will be able to provide an entire spacecraft and run an entire mission," Lauretta said. "UA will be capable of building and operating entire space missions for NASA. We'll have a bigger share of the workload.

The other article is from the Space Fellowship, which has been interviewing GLXP teams. This time the interview is of Team Cringely.

Finally, here's a GLXP article from Design News on universities and the GLXP.