The X Prize Foundation—which sponsored the $10 million prize that went to Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites for sending the first manned vehicle into space—has announced a new, bigger prize for a bigger goal. The Google-sponsored Lunar X Prize will go to the first company, group, or individual to land a rover on the moon that will be able to travel at least 550 yards and send high-resolution video, still images and other data back home. That prize is $20 million. For an additional $5 million, other tasks will have to be completed, such as traveling more than 5,500 yards or sending back images of artifacts like lunar landers from the Apollo program.
Carnegie Mellon University immediately announced that William L. Whittaker, of its Robotics Institute, will be trying for the prize (see CMU’s press release).
When asked why anyone would sign up for a challenge that will almost certainly cost more than the prize will bring, John M. Logsdon (the director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University) told the New York Times: “There are a variety of reasons to do it, including ego gratification, including loss-leader reputation building, including a fascination with doing things in space. I don’t think they’re driven by the amount of the prize.”
Like the original X Prize, the Lunar X Prize is avaiable for a limited time only. The $20 million grand prize will be available until 31 December 2012, after which it will drop to $15 million for two years. After that time, the contest would most likely be over, although there’s nothing forbidding Google and the X Prize Foundation from extending it. The original $10 million X Prize was funded with an insurance policy which limited the length of time it could be offered. It was claimed within that limit.
Dr. Peter Diamandis, chairman and CEO of the X Prize Foundation, said the new prize grew out of research performed last year for NASA as a contest that the space agency would sponsor. The research suggested that six or seven contenders could be expected to try for the prize, but NASA decided not to finance the project. In March, Diamandis pitched the idea to Larry Page, the co-founder of Google who is also a board member of the X Prize Foundation. “Sounds like a lot of fun,” he told Diamandis. Page’s partner, Sergey Brin, was also eager to join in.
[SFScope Editor Ian Randal Strock is one of the founders of the the Artemis Project, a commercial venture to establish a lunar colony, along with its constitutent Moon Society.]