Private race to the moon (and money) takes off

By Dave Mosher and Anthony Duignan-Cabrera

updated 5:32 p.m. ET Feb. 22, 2008

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIF. - Google and X Prize officials have unveiled nine new privately funded teams that will compete for $30 million in the Google Lunar X Prize challenge, a race to the moon.

"It's not just a new mission," Peter Diamandis, chairman and CEO of the X Prize Foundation, said during Thursday's announcement here at Google's headquarters. "It's a new way of doing business."

The Google Lunar X Prize, unveiled last September, aims to encourage privately funded lunar exploration — just as the $10 million Ansari X Prize provided a jump start for space tourism three years ago. Private-sector moonshots could open the way to commercial ventures ranging from robotic mining operations to lunar hotels and virtual reality-TV expeditions.

The competition offers a multimillion-dollar prize for the first team to send an unmanned rover safely to the moon, and then get it to beam imagery and data back to Earth. The nine new teams join the Isle of Man-based Odyssey Moon team, which was the first group to take up the challenge.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin said he was amazed that so many competitors had signed up so soon after the prize's announcement.

"I was floored," Brin told the team members and reporters who attended the press conference. "We had no such expectation."

Brin credited Google's participation to conversation he had had with Diamandis and mutual friend and Silicon Valley entrepreneur-turned-rocket builder, Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX.

Large companies often invest money in entertainment ventures or sponsor competitions and competitors in events like boat races, Brin said. But those ventures are limited in their purpose.

"We should be doing new kinds of things as companies," Brin said. "If we're going to sponsoring things it should be for discoveries."

Quantum3 / Google Lunar X PRIZE An artist's view of the "Moondancer" lander/rover at the Sea of Tranquility, where Apollo 11 touched down in 1969. Quantum3, the spacecraft's designer, hopes to win the top Google Lunar X PRIZE Cup purse.

That's incentive
The Google Lunar X Prize organizers also announced their partnership with Space Florida, a group vested in drawing the Sunshine State onto the commercial spaceflight map. Voted into creation in 2006, the local organization is offering launch site services and $2 million in extra prize money to the winning team if they blast off from Florida.

"The folks at Space Florida are really offering to enhance the prize purse at a significant level," Brett Alexander, executive director of space prizes for the X Prize Foundation, told Space.com. "It lowers the bar and makes it easier for teams to compete."

Steve Kohler, Space Florida president, said that launching a commercial spacecraft to the moon from Florida would add to the state's rich spaceflight history as home to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and NASA's Kennedy Space Center.

"Florida's long been recognized as a preeminent leader in any activity that involves our exploration of the moon," Kohler said. "Part of our effort as a state and as an organization is to continue that legacy. We believe (this competition) will allow the state to become a future hub for commercial projects."

According to Google Lunar X Prize rules, 90 percent of a winning team's funding must come from the private sector to qualify for a piece of $30 million in total prize money.

The first team to land their robot on the moon and complete a gauntlet of tasks with it by Dec. 31, 2012, will snatch the $20 million grand prize. In 2013, the first-place purse drops to $15 million, and the program will expire on Dec. 31, 2014.

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