Tony Spears on the CMU Lunar X PRIZE Entry

Guest blogger Robin at RLV News posts about an article in the Carnegie Mellon University student paper The Tartan about Tony Spears discussing the CMU Moon Prize Team. The talk was at CMU. Here's a quote that I thought was interesting, especially since Mars Pathfinder's landing doesn't seem all that long ago to me:

“It’s a very fun project. As a child, I created a LEGO model of Spear’s Pathfinder robot,” said John Thornton, a Carnegie Mellon alumnus and research engineer on the project. “It is a chance of a lifetime to work with Tony Spear, the man who was behind that,” he added.

CNN Money on Red Whittaker

CNN Money has a career history of William "Red" Whittaker in "Whittaker Unleashes the Robots". This covers his DARPA Urban Challenge work in a reasonable amount of detail, and gives a little space to his Google Lunar X PRIZE work.

It's good to see some prize-related content appearing in the "Money" section rather than the "Science" or "Space" sections.

Tony Spear and Astrobotic

The South Mississippi newspaper SunHerald.com has a press release about a prominent Mars Pathfinder team member, Tony Spear, joining a prominent Google Lunar X PRIZE team - Astrobotic. The Astrobotic mission is called "Tranquility Trek", a name I haven't heard before.

First Google Lunar X PRIZE Compilation of the Year

In the spirit of compilations (and quickly catching up on posting after my time off), here are some collected updates on the Google Lunar X PRIZE.

• Is this rover going to the Moon? (From Hacked Gadgets DIY Blog).
• Popular Mechanics has 9 questions on robotics for Matthew Mason, robotics expert from CMU. The Lunar X PRIZE is only mentioned briefly (as is the DARPA Urban Challenge), but it gives some perspective on how CMU, and perhaps therefore the Red Whittaker Lunar X PRIZE team, sees robotics.
• The Space Fellowship has an interview with Interplanetary Ventures. (link from RLV News)
• The Space Show has an interview with Odyssey Moon's Robert Richards.

Lunar Lander Challenge and Lunar X PRIZE Updates

I don't have much time today for posting (it's the end of the semester, which means the computer is in heavy use in this house), but you can get plenty of space prize news at RLV News:

- Masten Space has a setback during testing, but it's all to be expected in a test program.

- Armadillo also gives a progress report.

- There's more information about the Google Lunar X PRIZE team led by Astrobotic.

CMU Moon Team and University of Arizona?

Spaceref posts on the possibility that the University of Arizona will work with the CMU Moon Team in their attempt to win the Google Lunar X PRIZE:

Editor's note: Word has it that the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory is looking to partner with Carnegie-Mellon and Raytheon in a Google Lunar X-Prize bid.

If it gets approved by the university, this would be a quite formidable team. The University of Arizona is the first university that comes to my (admittedly non-expert) mind when it comes to planetary science. Perhaps Cal Tech (JPL) or Johns Hopkins (APL) occur first for planetary science probes, but U Az is up there, too. Here are links to the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Lab, as well as the important Earth and Space Sciences catalog from the University of Arizona Press. I shouldn't forget the link to the Phoenix Mars Mission.

Pomerantz Report on Odyssey Moon

RLV News posts on, among other interesting topics, the latest X PRIZE Foundation Pomerantz Report blog post. This one is on the Odyssey Moon announcement for the Lunar X PRIZE, and compares the results from teams that let the public know the details about their progress to the ones that keep quite.

Also check the Teams button at the Google Lunar X PRIZE site. There's a page or two
for Odyssey Moon, and also a forum, similar to the Automotive X PRIZE forum. The forum is a good communication tool to allow teams to communicate with preferred partners, find suppliers, find team members, discuss the fine points of the rules, and so on. W. Pomerantz has started a lot of the discussions with a post that clarifies what each category is meant to cover. If you look through the discussions, you'll see (already, and presumably more in the future) a lot of interesting information from teams, prospective teams, and the X PRIZE Foundation folks. For example, from Moderator William Pomerantz on a question on a 2008 Conference/Summit/Event:

We are working on finalizing those details, and hope to be able to distribute them in the near future. However, I can tell you that we will indeed be hosting a "Team Summit" event in the May/June timeframe. It will be held in Europe. The event will be a forum for people to ask questions about the rules and for leading thinkers to talk about important issues related to the prize (such as how does one respectfully visit a historical site on the Moon), and will also be a great venue for potential teams to meet each other, find partners and suppliers, et cetera. Please stay tuned for more info!

Look around the forum for a lot more interesting Lunar X PRIZE information.

Ambitious Lunar X PRIZE Teams

RLV News has more on the CMU Lunar X PRIZE team, including some comparisons of launch costs that teams like this have to consider.

Wired has been publishing lots of articles on the Lunar X PRIZE teams the last few days. Here's one that concentrates on the advertising and media angles of the GLXP:

Presenting at the Space Investment Summit in San Jose, London said the company was seeking $75 million of funding, but that they expected to return 5 to 10 times that amount of money to their investors via selling the media rights to their HD footage of the moon.

I've expanded the list of links on the right for Lunar X PRIZE teams. We'll see how well I keep up if lots more teams are announced. Interplanetary Ventures is one of the teams. If you look on their discussion forum, you'll see that their team roster includes Bob Steinke from Lunar Lander Challenge competitor SpeedUp as a Technical Advisor/Consultant. They also list some potential competitors there (and I've seen others in my web surfing), but I'm waiting to learn more about them before including them.

Odyssey Moon and CMU Moon Team Rollout

Continuing the news from my earlier post, here's more on the rollout of 2 Google Lunar X PRIZE competitors. (The links I gave earlier are a good place to start, though).

The Odyssey Moon site is now up and running. It's time to go surfing around there and find out all the details about the project. The Google Lunar X PRIZE site has a full page of such details. The Planetary Society has announced a role on the project, as does big-time aerospace firm MDA.

Apparently Odyssey Moon was in the works before the Lunar X PRIZE announcement, but the prize has brought focus to their efforts. Space.com notes that the Google Lunar X Prize was a catalyst to their plans – but the group had been shaping a lunar business strategy and a pathfinder mission to the Moon for over a year.

Space.com also gives insight into their business plan:

Richards said that science, exploration and technology validation will be the Moon market needs of government enterprises. "There are ways that the private sector can play a role in helping them do that."

Moreover, there are ancillary markets that also constitute lunar dealing, Richards added, be it for entertainment, education, or novelty ideas. "But those are not driving what we see as our business plan. We are an exploration company for lunar commerce."

According to the Planetary Society link, the Odyssey Moon lander is designed to deliver scientific, exploration and commercial payloads to the surface of the Moon.

Meanwhile, Space Pragmatism has a press release on the CMU Moon Prize Team, which is using the experience of Raytheon. The Moon Prize team has formed AstroBotic to go after the prize. The business clearly also intends to go after more markets than the prize itself:

Astrobotic Technology, Inc. is the commercial organization through which Dr. Whittaker plans to carry out the lunar mission as well as engage in potential commercial orbital transfer services and potential cis-lunar services that may be best enabled by leading-edge robotics.

Both teams are making their announcements at the Space Investment Summit 3.

Not to be a Grinch, but it would be good to hear some healthy skepticism about the teams' plans along with the promotion. I'd like to see no more and no less skepticism than what's needed to make the teams think seriously, if they haven't already, about their business plans. I suppose these 2 teams have considered their business, but have all ~340 teams? The Space Cynics, at least 1 of which is supposed to be at the Investment Summit, should be able to do the job.

In addition to all of these links, RLV News has another post on the announcement with several prominent links I haven't included above.

CMU Moon Prize Team

ComputerWorld has an article on the CMU Moon Prize Team that wants to win the Google Lunar X PRIZE. There's not a lot of new news, but it gives you the background if you haven't already been following them.

Lunar X PRIZE in the Magazines

The X PRIZE Foundation points to another news article on their latest prize, this time from Popular Mechanics. Earlier they had an article (linked by this one) that made it sound almost impossible to win since the team would have to build a launcher, but that requirement never existed, so this newer article (by the same author) presents the challenge as much more achievable. Not easy ... not certain to be won ... but achievable. It should be very interesting to see how it all turns out.

Also see this RLV News post.

Space.com has a detail look at the CMU Lunar X PRIZE team. Don't look for a lot of details from the team like you see from some of the Lunar Lander Challenge competitors:

Neither Whittaker nor Gump would say much about Team X-PLORE's technical approach at this early stage, and Gump said that is unlikely to change even as the approach matures.

Of course, as is so often the case, the business end is as important, if not more so, than the technical end:

But both Whittaker and Gump said they believed securing early financing, either in the form of corporate sponsorship or a benevolent angel, is critical.

"What is clear from the Ansari X Prize is that you need to have solid funding soon — a Paul Allen equivalent who can make sure that you are motoring away at a good speed," Gump said. "One of our team's top priorities is securing that early funding."

They have some ideas on how to get the financing:

The key to profitability, according to Whittaker, is making sure that there are a series of payoff opportunities for sponsors along the way to the actual competition. Auctioning off naming rights and holding contests to select people who will actually get to drive the rover once it lands were among the examples he and Gump mentioned.

The article also goes into some of the technical challenges, like rad-hardened CCD arrays.

Wired on CMU Lunar Lander X PRIZE Competitor

Wired has an article on the CMU Rover team competing in the Google Lunar X PRIZE. They're already getting to work:

I spoke to Whittaker this morning and he was very excited about their plans, the team had just met last night and already have their first iteration of a design as we pass the two week mark from the announcement of the prize. You can tell he has space in his blood. With 15 years of robotic experience, from DARPA Grand Challenge, to Antarctic and Arctic robots, he now has his chance to go for the golden ring.

Space Cynics on Google Lunar X PRIZE

As they warned, the Space Cynics have a full article on the Google Lunar X PRIZE showing the technical, schedule, and financial difficulties in winning the prize. They seem to see a possibility for a company that's already working on a lunar rover (eg: the CMU team), but not much hope for a fresh starter. The commenters aren't as sure, but noone is saying that it will be easy.

BusinessWeek on the Business Side of the Google Lunar X PRIZE

BusinessWeek has an article on the Google Lunar X PRIZE. Some snippets from the article:

Peter Diamandis expects that it could easily cost the winner more than the prize amount to win. With that situation, will anyone be able to justify the project, or even make a profit on the trip?

'"There are companies that will have a great interest in flying their computers, sensors, their communications, and their cameras with us," says Carnegie Mellon's Whittaker, who has in the past tapped such big-name sponsors as Caterpillar (CAT), Google, and General Motors (GM) to fund and equip his DARPA Grand Challenge teams.'

"The Carnegie Mellon Moon Prize Team will also look for opportunities to sell the novelty of having a robot on the moon. For this, Whittaker has reunited with David Gump, his former colleague at LunaCorp ... A visitor to an amusement park, for example, might take a turn driving the rover around the lunar surface like a remote-controlled car. But LunaCorp fizzled out in 2003 because, according to Gump, it lacked credibility in the eyes of potential backers. That, he believes, has changed overnight. "With Google's announcement, you now have a credibility factor and an interest factor that didn't exist."

Also, "there could be even bigger customers—government agencies—waiting in the wings".

You can also check out a commented slide show of prize-related pictures that goes with the article.

Carnegie Mellon Lunar X PRIZE Team

There has been a lot of Internet discussion of the Lunar Rover team announcement from Carnegie Mellon University.

The CMU School of Computer Science issued a press release on the team's intentions. From the press release:

“Planetary exploration is a dream we pursue and a technology we create,” said Whittaker, the Fredkin Research Professor in Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute. “We have spent decades building and testing robotic technologies for just this purpose. We are also veterans of competitive technology challenges. These are the things we do, so combining lunar rovers with a competitive race to the moon is a great opportunity.”

They already have a web site. Here's more about their current rover work for NASA.

The Daily Galaxy posted on their earlier lunar rover work for NASA, and how that should help in the competition.

Universe Today covers CMU's current lunar rover work, and the challenges they'll have for that and for the Google X PRIZE rover.

If you want to follow a long conversation, here's a thread on the CMU entry at Slashdot. Unreasonable Rocket contributes to the conversation.

Google Lunar X PRIZE Announced!

My first question: Where is Microsoft? Where is Bill Gates? You guys don't want to become anachronisms, do you?? It's time to step up to the plate ...

Well, now that I'm back at the computer, there are already a ton of sites, videos, and discussions about the new Google Lunar X PRIZE. Since I don't have much time, I think it's best for me to just provide some links to what's already out there, for the time being. In all likelihood I'll add to this post later, since I have some thoughts of my own about it, and there's more to link to than I can right now.

First for the main site: Google Lunar X PRIZE - Moon 2.0. I like how they make it sound like a software release, with the implication that the first round was just a test version, and this one will be much better (private and government together, sustained, etc). There is too much on this site to describe, and I haven't even seen much of it yet, so you'll just have to explore on your own.

Here's an X PRIZE YouTube Channel with a lot of videos about the new prize: X PRIZE YouTube. Some of the videos there include:

Google Lunar X PRIZE - or "GLXP" - introduction video, which gives an introduction to the prize, shows a scenario of a team winning the rover prize (including the bonus prizes for things like surviving a lunar night and imaging past lunar mission hardware), and gives some motivation for why the people on the Earth need the Moon to solve problems here.

Earth Offshort Island - Part 1 - an educational piece about the Moon, emphasizing the interactions and interdependencies between the Moon and the Earth (and of course the Earth's fragile biosphere). Environmental applications are described, such as Solar Power Satellites built using resources launched from the Moon, which is easier to launch from, in energy terms, than the Earth. Other Lunar resources that would make lunar development easier, and may be economical resources, such as oxygen and the possibility of ice, are described.

Here are some words of support for the prize from James Cameron and Arthur C. Clarke.

Now for a number of blog posts with conversations and comments about the new prize:

NASASpaceFlight has started a thread on the prize with some technical speculation about how one might win the prize without blowing the bank. The posts are pouring in even as I type.

SpaceForAll - on the Google Lunar Legacy, a way to get a picture to the Moon via the rover competitors, and at the same time to support the Lunar Rover Prize and educational activities.

RLV News - introduces us to the Lunar Prize. There's a heated debate about the value of the prize. My point of view closely matches that of anonymous.space, but in a more easy-going way.

RLV News - brings us a number of good links to more articles about the prize. The interesting and controversial comments continue.

Cosmic Log has what I think is the best overview of the prize, and the background leading to the prize, that I've seen so far. Impressive. There are some rather loopy comments, but the article goes into so much detail that you may need even need to bother with them.

That article gave a hint about a Carnegie Mellon University team that's already planning to enter the competition. CMU is well-known for its robotics capabilities. Here's their news release.
MSNBC also has another article on the prize. This one has some interesting comments by Pete Worden on NASA's role as an "interested observer" for the prize. I guess NASA is too cash-strapped with Ares I to get into the prize, but Dr. Worden is, I think, the most credible NASA spokesperson for talking about low-cost lunar missions and working with commercial companies like Google.

Rand at Transterrestrial Musings isn't too impressed, since he's more interested in human space flight. However, he does see the benefits of the prize. Personally, I'm more interested in robotic space flight, because I'm interested in advancing all sorts of existing commercial and government robotic space applications (comsats, GPS, remote sensing, rovers, and on and on). I'm also into computers (even though I'm not into spending a lot of time making this blog fancy). It's just a personal thing, and I certainly am pushing all out, with skepticism in the short term but confidence in the long term, for the commercial human space flight folks, whether NewSpace or, if their accountants get interested, traditional big companies. I'm sure the X PRIZE folks are supporters of this, too, but Google may be more excited about the automation and searching of a lunar lander.

Personal Spaceflight discusses an article in the Huffington Post with an early sneak preview about the prize. There's a family connection that might have helped get the word in that direction out a bit early.

I think this must be the Huffington Post article just described. This one goes into some of the educational benefits of having this challenge. It should inspire a lot of interest in science and math for today's upcoming generation, which is more interested in things like Google and the possibility of getting rich through entrepreneurial work and cautious risk-taking, just as the generation of current leaders were inspired by the original, ground-breaking large government human space program. There are a number of educational efforts associated with the prize.

Yes, it is true; I read the article the first time around. Mark from Curmudgeons Corner had a detailed article that advocated a space prize for a lunar lander. Maybe he should write a few more articles like that and see what happens? It can't hurt ...

Here are some articles without the discussions:

NASA Watch "Google Sponsors Lunar X PRIZE to create a Space Race for a New Generation" - Press release about the prize from the X PRIZE Foundation. It gives an overview of the goals of the prize, rewards for achieving specific objectives, and help that might be gained from SpaceX and the Allen Telescope Array. This is a good place to start to learn about the prize.

Wired has several articles about the prize:

Google Offers $20 Million X Prize to Put Robot on Moon - This goes back to the days when Google headquarters had a fundraising effort for the X PRIZE Foundation, complete with the replica of SpaceShipOne. Apparently this was a good time for some "networking", and the Foundation wound up convincing the Google team to sponsor the prize. I thought Larry Page would have been the Google founder most interested in the prize, but this article makes it sound like it was Sergei Brin. (They both have space interests and connections). I like the closing paragraph. It would be good if a lot more companies started thinking this way when they're ready to spend on advertising:

"Which raises the question: What's in it for Google? Lunar data centers? Google Maps Street View for Tranquility Base? For the record, Mountain View's corporate feet are planted squarely on terra firma. "Companies today spend more on stadiums and sailboat races than we will spend on this," says Brin, who was barely out of diapers back in Moscow when the last — Soviet, as it happens — moon lander, itself a robot craft, sent a scoop of soil back to Earth three decades ago. "Expanding science and technology is a far better way to reflect Google's values," he says. Plus there's the possibility of putting a Google logo on the moon."

Also, yes, the total prize money is $30M, but the big prize for first place is $20M as the article title says. There is $5M for second place, and $5M for bonus challenges.

Your Face on the Moon, Thanks to X Prize Foundation - Explains how you can help the X PRIZE Foundation, and at the same time send a picture to the Moon, if your competitor in the challenge makes it there.

How to Win $20 Million - Gives a big, commented pictures, and step-by-step instructions, for how to build that lunar rover and get it to the Moon to win the money.