Talk:Google Lunar X Prize/Archive 1

Critics

I do not undersatand why Google and basically anybody should invest and encourage people to take some actions that are likely to increase global ecological problem such the CO2 green house effect! What a waste of money! How long for these people to undersand that there is a survival priority to save the biosphere, we need great ideas to to change the human passion of burning fossil fuels! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.228.171.155 (talk) 15:35, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Article talk pages are intended for discussion relating to improving the articles themselves, not for discussing the topic of the article.

I understand your reasoning, and despite what I said in the edit summary when I initially removed your comment, there are environmental issues regarding such activities. The preferred launch partner for the prize is SpaceX, and its Falcon 1 rocket. This burns kerosene, a form of petroleum, which would give off harmful emissions. I am unsure as to the extent of the emissions and their impact, but it would contribute to climate change.

That is assuming that teams are using chemical rocketry to reach the Moon. One team has announced that it will use ion propulsion for part of the journey to the Moon. This may likely have a very insignificant effect on the Earth's environment, but probably none at all as this form of propulsion would only be used once in space.

Millions of people watching HD images of the Earth beamed from across outer space, may indirectly motivate environmentalism, as images returned from the Apollo program did.

However, at the end of the day the use of chemical rockets will have a direct negative impact on the environment.

If you wish to start a discussion on this matter, please do so on the Google Lunar X PRIZE official community forums.

--J. Atkins ^{(talk - contribs)} 16:12, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

The first thing I thought when viewing the article is that there is no discussion of controversy or negative aspects at all. Both environmental concerns above, and the issues with the rules that cause SCSG to leave and Team Cringely to not even enter. While it's not appropriate to discuss those things here, I think mention that there has been controversy (especially if it can be accompanied by links to good sources) is encyclopedic. --Rjmunro (talk) 11:59, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Not to go off-topic, but in actuality the emissions from the odd Falcon launch are negligible. But yeah, we should discuss criticisms. --J. Atkins ^{(talk - contribs)} 16:27, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

latest news say that ALL other GLXP teams have nearly ZERO chances to win! as explained in this forum's thread: "Odyssey Moon WINS the Odyssey Moon Lunar X Prize" http://spacefellowship.com/Forum/about7639.html posted by gm —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.220.47.61 (talk) 21:51, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

a source

here's a good source about the carnegie mellon team http://www.space.com/spacenews/071001_businessmonday_lunarprize.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by 160.5.225.172 (talk) 09:05, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. --J. Atkins ^{(talk - contribs)} 19:05, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

the first link in the "References" is BROKEN —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.10.105.108 (talk) 17:30, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Moon 2.0

The summary at the top of the article is worded awkwardly. The statement "The Google Lunar X PRIZE, sometimes referred to as simply Moon 2.0" works better as part of the introduction paragraph in the article's body. riffic 16:44, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. Thanks for making the change.—Mrand ^T-C 00:55, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Team Cringely

Intent to compete

On September 27, 2007 Robert X. Cringely announced his intention to compete in the Lunar X Prize. His team has a website (Main Page - TeamCringely at the Wayback Machine (archived September 5, 2010)) as well. – riffic 04:41, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Progress report

On December 14, 2007 Robert X. Cringely published Revolution, Not Evolution: A generation of space science can only be saved by radical change. – Conrad T. Pino (talk) 18:32, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Competition declined

On May 30, 2008 Robert X. Cringely published Nolo Contendere: Team Cringely makes a course correction on its way to the Moon. – Conrad T. Pino (talk) 18:32, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

wikification

The sentence

The challenge calls for teams to compete in successfully launching, landing, and operating a rover on the lunar surface

can be wikified on the word rover to the proper page. I would wikify it but the word leads to a disambiguation page and it is of no use to link to a disambiguation page. Please help to wikify it to the correct target! Kushal 00:07, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Done :) E_dog95' ^{Hi '} 10:30, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

What about moving this Page to Lunar X Prize? --87.78.21.165 (talk) 03:41, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Team FREDNET

I made a minor change (spelling and capitalization) for this Team: Please note that the name of this Team is "Team FREDNET", and the word "Team" is part of the Team's name. We asked the folks at XPF to make the same changes on their GLXP forum pages, but so far to no avail. I also added a little context on Team FREDNET, saying that it is the "Open Source and Open Participation" competitor. I'd like to add that it is the "First and Only Open Source and Open Participation Competitor", since it is the only such team that has officially entered the race.

Regards,

Fjb3 (talk) 22:05, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Name capitalization

The official website [googlelunarxprize.org] seems to prefer the form "Google Lunar X PRIZE", should the articled be renamed to echo that? As a soft measure, I tried DISPLAYTITLE but it does not seem to do the trick. --Hosszuka (talk) 19:30, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Am I a little confused, or is there not nearly enough highly hostile controversy?!

If I read the article correctly (and indeed the rules at [1]), to win the prize the teams must actually fly their lander to the Moon, before they can even consider what it does there. It is very obvious, both from the competition conditions and indeed previous US and Soviet experience, that getting there is by far the hardest part. (This is not to say that operating a robot on the Moon is trivial, what with the vacuum, radiation, and very weak radio link to Earth. However the requirements of 500 m travel and the various videos required, are really not very demanding; not even the level of a graduate student program.)

Yet when I go to the websites, or WP articles, for all the teams that actually have one, I see no work at all on getting there. Everyone who has done any work at all has been developing lunar rovers (the easy part) and ignoring the fact that they have only 5 years left to develop a nearly-interplanetary spaceship. One team, ARCASPACE, has some ambitious and exciting sketches on the drawing board, but the only vehicles they have actually built at the moment -- after 12 years' work -- sound suspiciously like a dog-and-pony show. They are real rockets, with dramatic exhaust blasts, but capabilities that fall so far short of a lunar launch vehicle, and indeed, so far short of even an orbital vehicle, that one wonders if they are serious test beds or more intended to attract investors.

Yet ARCASPACE has done the most on the space vehicle front. Here's a few other examples:

• Odyssey, widely favoured by the pundits because of the impressive stable of experienced space scientists on their board. Yet their plan discusses only their rover. They say nothing at all about getting there. Some comments seem to think that this is being covered by their prime contractor, MDA Space Systems, who have "a successful history of providing technical space solutions for ... the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station." But MDA's experience is in space robotics and sensors. They have no experience with propulsion systems!
• Astrobotics says that launch and delivery will be provided by the Falcon 9 system. Falcon 9 is intended to be a reusable satellite launch vehicle, and to also resupply space stations. It is very unproven; so far it has had just one flight test. But there are a couple of more serious problems here:
  • A Falcon 9 launch costs more -- a lot more -- than the total prize money pool.
  • Assuming all the tests work out, they have all flights booked out through to the end of 2015. Astrobotics isn't one of the bookings.
  • Falcon 9 isn't designed to take lunar landers to the Moon; it is designed to inject satellites into LEO or GTO orbits. There isn't enough information available to say if it would be possible to modify it to carry a lander to the Moon, but quite apart from ΔV considerations, such a modification is much harder than it looks. For example, satellite launchers generally have upper stage mission endurances measured in minutes. They are simply not designed to operate in space reliably for days at a time. They have limited in-flight manoeuvrability for course corrections. No ability to navigate in space remote from the GPS system. And of course, no capability to land.
• Team Italia does not discuss launch vehicle at all.
• Micro-Space talks in very vague, hand-wavey terms about mating their upper stages to a commercial satellite launcher. They have been working on these rockets so far for decades, and achieved a maximum altitude of 3.3 km. No word on actual space travel, landers etc. Their website doesn't seem to have been updated for several years and a lot of its interesting looking sections are blank.

and so on and so forth. In short, it doesn't seem to me that any of these contenders have buckley's chance of succeeding, and most aren't even trying. So why did they shell out $10,000 to register? Cringley has a theory at [2], and it isn't pretty. It suggests that for most teams, the prize is basically a scam. You pay your $10K, sit back doing just enough not to make it too obvious that you are doing nothing, and wait for your TV royalty cheques to come rolling in. In fact Cringley has concluded that the rules are so bad that the best way to send a private project to the Moon -- which he still wants to do -- is to do it outside the competition, and just ignore the prize money. -- 202.63.39.58 (talk) 15:28, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

I think that with the recent announcement of the Astrobotic Technology team having scheduled a launch, this question may be starting to get answered. See next section. N2e (talk) 06:24, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Mission status

The table contains a column for "Craft status". Given the point of the previous section, and also that Astrobotic Technology (see the AT article for a link to the Aviation Week article with the detail) has now scheduled a Falcon 9 mission for a moon ride as early as late 2013, perhaps it would be useful to add a "Mission status" column to the table. It would seem to me that entries in such a column would begin to make useful distinctions between the teams. Thoughts? N2e (talk) 06:24, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Going once..., twice ...,

If no one expresses any objection, I will plan to come back here in a few days or weeks and add a "Status" column to the extensive table. N2e (talk) 19:11, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

WIRED Science article about the GLXP

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/02/lunar-x-prize-teams/

. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.10.106.154 (talk) 07:47, 20 February 2011 (UTC) Hey, Does this contest have to be an official group? Because I have a group but dont know how to enter — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.49.101.112 (talk) 22:49, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

More articles

• here is one from NewScientist: The robots in Google's race to the moon. It is light on detail, but has a set of good images of the lunar rover designs for about eight of the teams. N2e (talk) 19:07, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Moon 2.0

Hi all

I am a little confused. The term Moon 1.0 was referred by Xprize and Google reps as being the space race to land men on the moon the first time round, and abandoned in the 70s.

They use Moon 2.0 to refer to a new initiative to carry things and people to the moon for various reasons, one of which is the moon rover project. Isn't the lander Google_Lunar_X_Prize just a part of the Xprize initiatives (along with lunar-lander-challenge), which is in turn just a part of Moon 2.0; or is Moon 2.0 a Google term? Chaosdruid (talk) 12:41, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

The definition of Moon 2.0 is to return to the moon and it is not only a Google term. It is often used by the people.--Eetac (talk) 01:15, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Closing date

I remembered the closing date to be announced for Dec 2012, when it now stands at 2015. So I added a sentence on this move, accompanied by refs, one of which to an older version of LunarX' own press release as provided by archive.org. Can anyone provide a source where the shift is announced? --Edoe (talk) 08:36, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

article doesn't say some of these companies want the minerals, water, land etc.

is google hiding something? 'moon express' for example, believes they can go up and start taking the moon minerals as if they were private property.

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-naveen-jain-20111210,0,6032753.story

Clarksmom (talk) 05:39, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Clarksmom, you may have an interesting point here for discussion, but WP is not a discussion site but an encyclopedia - and explicitely not the place for WP:OR. This is why I removed your short chapter and wrote: "pls follow WP guidelines with respect to WP:OR, why a separate chapter? "Privately"?"

The only way to bring your crtical remark into this article is by finding a reputable source that shares it - or write an article in a newspaper and cite this article. - Also I do not feel this aspect justifies a chapte ron its own. So for the time being I removed that chapter again and I'd like you to comment here before you undo that again. Thanks --Edoe (talk) 12:49, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

disagree with you edoe. several companies are indeed profit-oriented and any prize would subsidize those efforts. ownership of moon minerals, land, water etc. is a huge issue. thanks.Clarksmom (talk) 08:50, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Clarksmom, you continue to try to reinsert this inappropriate material. Please refrain from doing so again. As Edoe has stated, Wikipedia is not a place for your opinions. Furthermore, the GLXP article is not an appropriate location for this information (even if properly cited), as GLXP is a prize competition, not about mining or profiting from lunar resources. Other articles may be appropriate - if you can find reliable sources to cite in such material. Until that time, you are using the article as a soapbox and your material will be reverted. Arjuna (talk) 12:35, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

arjuan you are the one off-topic. the prize will basically subsidize private profits in space. deal with it, because many people are not going to allow such a thing to happen. it is totally relevant. we all love google, but you cannot doubt that financial interests are involved, NOT just "pure research". thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Clarksmom (talk • contribs) 20:32, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a soapbox. You are certainly entitled to your opinion, but it has no place in the article unless you can find reliable sources that make that contention - and again, even then it is very probably inappropriate in this article. If such a point is to be made - and that is legitimate - then it should be on the MoonExpress article, not one dealing with GLXP, which again is a prize competition and not a lunar mining endeavor. You would be well-advised to familiarize yourself with Wikipedia guidelines before proceeding with further efforts on this article. Arjuna (talk) 05:20, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

aruan i don't need your education on wiki, thanks. get real, google is offering a huge cash prize to private businesses who aim to take resources from the moon. again: deal with it, it is relevant here. thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Clarksmom (talk • contribs) 03:15, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Clarksmom, what other post-GLXP plans companies may have are another matter that are appropriate for other articles (if properly cited using RS) but not this one. Since such criteria or awards you outline are NOT part of GLXP, you have a very tough case to make. But in any case, your opinion about the matter is not in compliance with Wikipedia guideline. You may have read them, but did you understand them? Btw, it is considered better etiquette to spell other editors names properly. Arjuna (talk) 21:30, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

not much detail on the "preservationists" here

the people who want landing sites untouched, etc., there is not much information about them here. also since everything that is happening now will soon be "historic", we are left wondering about the limits these historians are trying to put on new activities. i imagine all the 'ecology' people will be jumping on board too.Clarksmom (talk) 03:19, 6 February 2012 (UTC)