Google Lunar X Prize Adds Milestone Awards
As reported here earlier, the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize has gone forward with a series of pre-flight milestone prizes in an effort to support teams that are competing to land a rover on the moon by the end of 2015.
Alexandra Hall, senior director of the Google Lunar X Prize, explained the prizes and the rationale in an op-ed piece published on Space.com:
The Milestone Prizes are for demonstrating (via actual testing and analysis) robust hardware and software to combat key technical risks in the areas of imaging, mobility and lander systems — all three being necessary to achieve a successful Google Lunar XPRIZE mission. Teams will submit their proposals to our judging panel, which will select up to four proposals to monitor in each of the imaging and mobility subsystems, and three proposals for the lander system, for a total of 11 proposals. A team may have proposals selected in more than one area.
Provided the team successfully accomplishes the tasks described in their selected proposal in the timeframe agreed, they will win a Milestone Prize. The amounts are $250,000 for the Imaging Subsystem Milestone Prize (for up to 4 teams), $500,000 for the Mobility Subsystem Milestone Prize (for up to 4 teams), and $1 million for the Lander System Milestone Prize (for up to 3 teams), for a total purse of $6 million. The Milestone Prizes can be won through the end of September 2014.
With the introduction of these prizes, 2014 is looking to be a very exciting year for the Google Lunar XPRIZE with critical hardware and software testing and many great opportunities to recognize our teams and their significant achievements. While we cannot fix the global economic downturn, we can at least highlight the ways in which our teams are bringing us closer to a new era of private lunar exploration, taking us back to the moon, for good.
The competition has a $20 million first prize for the first team to land a rover on the moon that travels at least 500 meters across the surface. There are $10 million in additional prizes for second place and other achievements on the moon.
6 responses to “Google Lunar X Prize Adds Milestone Awards”
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Committee picking winners based on paper spacecraft is “very exciting” ?
How about this for a milestone : book an actual launch.
… no. these milestones would be for actually getting hardware built. not for “paper spacecraft” lol.
“$10 million in additional prizes for second place and other achievements on the moon.” Why is there additional prizes? Wouldn’t it be better to have that money included in the first since $20 million doesn’t look to be enough and why not take advantage of this and add the requirement to prove the existence of a human moon landing site once and for all.
the additional prize money is for actually getting hardware built. it will be a boost to those teams who are actually making progress and who might need the payoff to keep moving forward. much like the milestone awards NASA is giving to the companies making commercial crew vehicles.
there’s more than enough proof of the Apollo moon landings, the dimwits who think otherwise should not be given the time of day.
“it will be a boost to those teams who are actually making progress and who might need the payoff to keep moving forward” yes but i still doubt 20 million is a big enough incentive, 30 would be better but then again i don’t see that being enough, neither Rutan nor Lindbergh as far as I know had financial assistance from the organizations they where attempting to retrieve the prizes from.
“there’s more than enough proof of the Apollo moon landings, the dimwits who think otherwise should not be given the time of day.” But it could shut most of them up and let’s be honest we would all love to see HD pics of the apollo 11 site 40 odd years after Neil put his boot down.
well, you could think of it as a condolence prize for actually doing something, even if they ultimately never make it to the Moon, they’ve still contributed something to eventually someone, somewhere getting there. that’s the idea, anyway.
i’ve argued with enough of said dimwits to know that no amount of proof will ever be enough to shut them up. they’ll just say it’s all still being done in the original Area 51 soundstage 😛 however, there would be a lot of scientific merit to re-visiting an Apollo site. knowing how well various materials hold up under 41+ years of exposure to the Lunar environment would be tremendously educational.