Comments on: Google lunar challenge gets under way

Google and the X Prize Foundation kick off their Google Lunar X Prize, announcing the first 10 registered competitors.

[Gary Treible]

$20M?

Well i admit I don't know the rules of this contest, but it would
seem like you would want a tracking system that works as the
Earth rotates. I'm guessing you can't even purchase the land for
$20M much less construct even a single 26m antenna.

Further, it would seem like you might want to have landing site
data, so you know where it's safe to land. Being totally
commercial and all that, they certainly wouldn't think of using
Lunar Orbiter or Apollo images of the surface. No, they'll need
to gather that data independently . With their own imaging
missions. That might just cost more than $20m too.

I do have an agenda here. And that is, in my opinion, the
commercial guys achieve a goal, and instantly point to how they
did it faster and cheaper than NASA. Well the simple fact is, they
stand on the shoulders of giants, and they thumb their noses at
the people who have enabled their achievements.

And, oh yeah, before anyone could really claim the prize, they
should be in a position to demonstrate the lunar surface is
stable and will support the weight of a landing spacecraft. In
commercial land, that's unknown. As is virtually every skill
needed to travel to and land on the moon.

[Marcus Westrup]

Should not be so expensive.

From what I've seen of the designs so far, all these teams want to build a Ferrari [to get to the corner store], when a bicycle will do.
Seriously, it's NASA's million dollar pen all over again. Are there any engineers out there who remember how to work without monster budgets?

[BCCM]

Fantastic-Great News from Google

I was wondering why Google Admin came to our webpage below on; 21/Feb/2008:16:08:56 (3:08 pm CST).

http://www.bccmeteorites.com/misconduct-planetary.html

They want to make sure they have the right people on the project I guess. Now give us the list of all participants please.

Cordially,
S. Ray DeRusse
www.bccmeteorites.com

[rnieves1977]

wow... who cares

obviously that guy that claims it was his idea didn't front the money so therefore WHO CARES

[MarkAdkins]

Can anybody seriously "thumb their nose" at the work that has gone on before? The ground work has been laid with a lot of hard work and money. Now comes the fun stuff. I have personally launched rockets over 36 feet tall and scratch built rockets that went through the sound barrier, and it was a piece of cake because the math was all done back in the 50s. All I had to do was plug in numbers. Yeah, I stood on the shoulder of giants and I love the view! (Thank you NASA)