Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: soda72 on September 13, 2007, 02:31:18 PM
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6993373.stm (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6993373.stm)
Search giant Google is offering a $30m prize pot to private firms
that land a robot rover on the Moon
Sending a robot rover to the Moon is a formidable task - involving
far greater hurdles than the first X-Prize
It will be interesting to see if anyone will be able to win this competition.
The first X-prize had some interesting ideas..
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They're giving a $30m prize for something that will take billions to accomplish?
That's brilliant!
I am not offering a stick of gum for anyone who successfully cures cancer!
It's nice to see private entities backing this sort of thing, but with pockets as deep as google's the least they could do is offer to recoup at least a sizable chunk of the R & D costs for whoever pulls it off.
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yes they should give the $30m for just throwing a robot rover into the orbit,
that would be fun enough for private persons. I would immediately start
searching ebay for 'missile' , 'V2' or so ;)
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Why not offer 30 mil to who can make the best fuel alternative or cure something? What a waste of money. Atleast put a monkey in the friggin thing to add some risk!
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But if the monkey were to fart whilst on the moon the moon would get all hot and all the cheese would melt:confused:
Maybe we could send Rosie O'Donnell ..just picture her all sweaty and covered in melted cheese!!! (I know this won't be the first time for some of you);)
I should stick with beer:t
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Think of it this way - anyone who can put a rover on the moon for less than 30mil is into all profit baby.
Similar thing was in the Scientific American a couple of years ago - they offered 25 cents for the guy that discovers the cure to cancer.
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I don't think any rocket smaller than a Saturn I can make it to the Moon. Going to the Moon (and returning) is for all practical purposes impossible, unless you have a Werner von Braun working on the project. I don't think people understand what a great achievement it was, maybe never to be duplicated. The old saying, "we did it once, we can do it again" definitely does not apply to Moon rockets.
Of course you have to have a hell of a lot of money, but without the vision and dedication of von Braun it never would have happened. This was von Braun's dream. Even with adequate money, it takes more than that...it takes desire to do something like go to the Moon.
You know, to pull off a feat of that magnitude, every single mathematical calculation was checked and re-checked by computers thousands of times. And then those figures were checked manually thousands of times using slide rules to the smallest detail. There is no room for error, at least with a man-rated rocket, but certainly you wouldn't want your private built rocket to fail. How many engine tests would have to be made? And that's only for the propulsion solutions.
Every time a rocket behaves as designed it's more miracle than not. A rocket is basically a controlled bomb that vents instead of exploding. These prizes are good indicators of just how much the general public is not aware of how difficult a Moon launch is, or really any launch for that matter. If a trip to the Moon is repeated, it certainly won't be inspired by money. It would have to be a labor of love, akin to Werner von Braun's dream.
Interesting tidbit here: For a trip to Mars, a ground launched rocket would have to be about the size of the Empire State Building.
Les
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Originally posted by Leslie
I don't think any rocket smaller than a Saturn I can make it to the Moon. Going to the Moon (and returning) is for all practical purposes impossible, unless you have a Werner von Braun working on the project. I don't think people understand what a great achievement it was, maybe never to be duplicated. The old saying, "we did it once, we can do it again" definitely does not apply to Moon rockets.
Of course you have to have a hell of a lot of money, but without the vision and dedication of von Braun it never would have happened. This was von Braun's dream. Even with adequate money, it takes more than that...it takes desire to do something like go to the Moon.
You know, to pull off a feat of that magnitude, every single mathematical calculation was checked and re-checked by computers thousands of times. And then those figures were checked manually thousands of times using slide rules to the smallest detail. There is no room for error, at least with a man-rated rocket, but certainly you wouldn't want your private built rocket to fail. How many engine tests would have to be made? And that's only for the propulsion solutions.
Every time a rocket behaves as designed it's more miracle than not. A rocket is basically a controlled bomb that vents instead of exploding. These prizes are good indicators of just how much the general public is not aware of how difficult a Moon launch is, or really any launch for that matter. If a trip to the Moon is repeated, it certainly won't be inspired by money. It would have to be a labor of love, akin to Werner von Braun's dream.
Interesting tidbit here: For a trip to Mars, a ground launched rocket would have to be about the size of the Empire State Building.
Les
NASA has used the Delta series to launch probes out of earth orbit, so you don't need all that much rocket to get a small mass to the moon. The old ranger probes (early NASA moon probes - crashed into the moon taking pictures all the way) and surveyors (soft landed probe) didn't go up on Saturns.
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Ah yes, of course you're right Eagle. I was fixated on a manned rocket, which would have to return, as well as have life support systems on board.
I suppose then it could be done, for a private concern to place a rover on the Moon. No one would be riding it. Not a bad idea. And I'm confident someone will do it before long. I'm wondering now just how much would have to be built from scratch, and how much existing parts could be used. Can you buy the parts from NASA? Rocket engines, bodies and the like? If so, would this be acceptable far as the prize goes?
I'm supposing where most of the money would be needed, would be for replacing failed components. You would have to get to a point where the rocket worked without the payload first, and then hope it worked again on a second rocket with the payload.
Les
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Well nobodys gonna do it, but Google will be the talk of the town for awhile over it. Mission accomplished.
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Originally posted by FiLtH
Well nobodys gonna do it, but Google will be the talk of the town for awhile over it. Mission accomplished.
they got to outer space twice for a ten million dollar prize.
this isnt even a manned mission.
i don't see why it can't be done...especially after trimming out all of the bureaucratic fat.
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A private jet can cost more than 30 million. This is nowhere near enough to finance a moon landing.
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The prize money offered is a way to recover some of the development cost, it's really not intended to make someone rich. Spaceshipone that won the first X prize of 10 Million cost them 20 Million to develop.
If you are able to come up with a cost effetive way to send a rover to another planet you may just find yourself with a very lucrative buisness that would make the 30mil look like chump change.
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Originally posted by FiLtH
Why not offer 30 mil to who can make the best fuel alternative or cure something? What a waste of money. Atleast put a monkey in the friggin thing to add some risk!
XPrize has already had a contest in genomics and fuel efficiency design for cars.
Although you won't be making much in return (unless you somehow publicize it enough or think outside the box), you can hitch a ride on a rocket with leftover payload volume for cheap enough given the 30mill prize... and IIRC there's a number of incentives from SpaceX and others to grease the cogs some more.
All you need to do is drive 500m with a video downstream. You don't need that much for those criteria... I think I remember some proven rocket that has launched payloads on its leftover 180kg racks.
About the space is a waste of time p.o.v.... NASA gets about 1% of the budget. How much do the children & cie. charities like welfare get?
Like it or not, man needs to get off this rock, and the sooner the better. Kids getting a hugely increased exposure to space and science such as youtube'd moon rovers with (e.g.) the public getting some time at the controls would be a lot more effective at producing minds disposed for finding fuel alternatives or cures than today's all pervasive junk culture and apathy.
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First rover on mars cost $300-$450 million. Second one cost $200 million. That includes travel. While I don't see a rover getting to the moon for under $30 million, it's appearently easily possible.
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The $30 million is nice, but y'all are forgetting the purpose. The idea isn't to just pay for someone to put something on the moon, it's to spur progress and development to get private industry more involved in space.
Scaled Composite & Paul Allen spent more than the $10 million prize to develop SpaceShipOne, but they did it happily anyways because the return on investment isn't the prize itself, it's the business that comes afterwards. Scaled is making beaucoup bux building SpaceShipTwos for Virgin, for instance, because they proved the technology. A company that can soft-land a rover and do things for semi-cheap will get other business too. If it becomes practical to put a robots on the moon, then it might be practical to put an H3 refinery on, or better.
Can you get something to the moon for $30? Sure, just buy a surplus Soyuz booster for 15-20 million and spend the rest developing a lander. Armadilo Aerospace has done a lot of that for a fraction of that, for insance. But there's a difference between doing it on paper and doing it for real, and that's where the new industries will come from.
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Those were made by who? You don't need an overengineered rube goldberg gizmo, and you've got 5+ years to get it done. Google wouldn't have done this without finding at least a few feasible paths to success.
I don't think it's such a great contest setup myself, but it's definitely worthwhile, definitely not a waste of time nor an unsurmountable challenge.
15 or 20 years ago, how many people would've correctly predicted the recent surge in the private space industry?
"Easily possible" doesn't mean easily accomplished.. Admitedly the purse value is a bit underweight but we nonetheless must push the boundaries of our territory further. It's imperative, and these sorts of pushes are better than nothing. Like I said I don't think this prize is that great, but it's certainly not bad at all.
edit- What Chairboy said.. The difference between small efforts like Armadillo and government elephants like NASA is the same as between this Lunar prize being ludicrous and a challenge worth every bit of effort.
The expedition project in Bill Stone's TED presentation is another great example.
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Originally posted by moot
"Easily possible" doesn't mean easily accomplished..
Easy = relative term. It's not like they're building a go-kart or something, BUT, people have put things on planets quite a bit further away than the moon. Once you strip all of the beauracracy away, it gets much, much cheaper to do it too.
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Yep.. I guess I mistakenly read your previous post as sarcasm.
Bigelow has sent a few much larger constructs to earth orbit for less than 100M. IIRC lunar orbit payload for a same launch vehicle is 1/2 the mass of that of earth orbit. So 30M sounds about right.
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I'm still waiting for someone to bring back the Orion Project.... ..
Revisiting Project Orion (http://www.thespacereview.com/article/309/1)
“this is the first time in modern history that a major expansion of
human technology has been suppressed for political reasons.”
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Originally posted by Neubob
... with pockets as deep as google's the least they could do is offer to recoup at least a sizable chunk of the R & D costs for whoever pulls it off.
I think the idea is to encourage small organizations to do the same thing NASA is capable of, at a fraction of the cost. Limited the reward is one way to do that.
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Wonder how many days it would take Google to make back it's reward from the website they will be hosting upon a successful run? Risk involved to Google - 0%. That's some great marketing. Some one will try for it.
I'm surprised they only offered 20 mill. :aok
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Originally posted by Neubob
They're giving a $30m prize for something that will take billions to accomplish?
That's brilliant!
I see it as an incentive for people to figure out a way to do it for under $30 million.
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Originally posted by soda72
I'm still waiting for someone to bring back the Orion Project.... ..
Revisiting Project Orion (http://www.thespacereview.com/article/309/1)
Here's a video of the conventional explosive concept test. Kinda cool.
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~tuvas/orion.avi
-Sik
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Originally posted by Thrawn
"well the crap soft eating the ghost out from my box" - minus
I love you Thrawn.
-Sik
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Please dont use NASA's price tags to compare the costs. NASA is a hugely bloated beurocratic agency and in no way does it have the incentive to get things done cheaper or profitable.
Sending a robot to the Moon may not be that much difficult for a private enterprise (if there was any real profit in it).
With 20 million, the Rutan gang sends a MAN into orbit. I'd bet that with much less than this they can easily send a remote probe into orbit on a one-way mission. Getting from the Earth to the Moon is the easiest part really, its all orbital mechanics.
Heck most of the satellites up there are for the past couple of decades are able to make subtle changes to their orbits by remote... its not really a question of if its hard to get a probe to the Moon but just how long it will take to consume the least amount of fuel. You could have that probe landing on the moon in 5 months if you want or in a couple of days if you really spend the money on the propulsion.
Google should put up a bigger prize imo, for whoever can send that probe, pick up a moon rock and bring it back.
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Rutan didn't send anyone into orbit. They made it into space, but they were nowhere near high enough to orbit.
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same crap. add more propellant, lose the pilot.. ;)
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coming soon to your top toolbar: googlemoon
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Originally posted by Neubob
They're giving a $30m prize for something that will take billions to accomplish?
That's brilliant!
I am not offering a stick of gum for anyone who successfully cures cancer!
It's nice to see private entities backing this sort of thing, but with pockets as deep as google's the least they could do is offer to recoup at least a sizable chunk of the R & D costs for whoever pulls it off.
The type of people who would try it, wouldn't be too worried about the prize money. The X prize was only 1 million if I remember right and the winning team spent several million. Remember that winning team would likely make a hell of a lot more than 30 mil from contract work.
The 30 million is just an incentive to try to push more private intrest into space. IMO if mankind are to go to the moon and beyond in any large numbers it will have to be the private sector that takes us there.
A govt can't justify spending money to send average Joe's into space. A govt can't justify mining operations on the moon or else where. In regards to manned missions to other planets or even unmanned, govt can only justify it for science and research.
The private sector is the only chance in normal people ever seeing any sort of space flight or exploration.
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Pfffft the Moon...
Feed me something useful.
Want to grab my Attention?
Surf a Frikken Comet Tail...Space garb and all.
Hang Ten!
Alli Ka Shoca Bra!!!
:aok
Mac
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Originally posted by Sikboy
I love you Thrawn.
-Sik
We shall never see his like again. :(
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Originally posted by AWMac
Pfffft the Moon...
Feed me something useful.
Want to grab my Attention?
Surf a Frikken Comet Tail...Space garb and all.
Hang Ten!
Alli Ka Shoca Bra!!!
:aok
Mac
Well the Russians just sent some Gerbals off to get lost in space or hit Mars if they are luckly.