Land a Robot On the Moon for Google

(((Man, no wonder Sergey digs free-fall.)))

(((I'm rooting for the open-source team. "Yeah, our robot gallops around on the Moon. Running Linux."
Eat your heart out, Yuri Gagarin.)))

http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/lunar/press-release/the-x-prize-foundation-announces-official-contenders-in-private-moon-race"

Link: The X PRIZE Foundation Announces Official Contenders in Private Moon Race | X PRIZE Foundation.

February 21, 2008, Mountain View, CA – The X PRIZE Foundation and Google, Inc. today announced the first ten teams to register for the Google Lunar X PRIZE, a robotic race to the Moon to win a remarkable $30 million in prizes. This international group of teams will compete to land a privately funded robotic craft on the Moon that is capable of roaming the lunar surface for at least 500 meters and sending video, images and data back to the Earth.

Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation, announced the teams at Google Headquarters in Mountain View, California. “I’m very pleased to welcome our first 10 fully registered teams to the Google Lunar X PRIZE. Only 6 months after the announcement of this competition, the response has been incredible – we’ve received over 560 expressions of interest from more than 53 nations. By comparison, at the 6 month point of the Ansari X PRIZE we had only 2 teams registered. I think we’re going to see an exciting and very competitive race to the Moon, (((okay, maybe, maybe not, but it's making my day just to read this declaration, which sounds like something straight out of a Robert Heinlein novel))) highlighted by some very creative designs unlike anything we’ve seen come out of the government space programs.

Many of these teams represent some of the most creative and entrepreneurial minds in space exploration today. I wish them all the very best of luck. I can’t wait to join with Google in paying the winner,” said Diamandis. (...)

(((Lunar Rumanians...)))

Aeronautics and Cosmonautics Romanian Association (ARCA): Based in Valcea, Romania and led by Dumitru Popescu, ARCA was also a contender in the Ansari X PRIZE. Two of ARCA’s most innovative projects to date have been the Demonstrator 2B rocket and Stabilo, a two-stage manned suborbital air-launched vehicle. The craft they plan to enter in the Google Lunar X PRIZE will be called the “European Lunar Explorer.”

(((The gallant Indo-Texan Scheherezade, straight outta the Arabian Nights...)))

Chandah: Chandah, meaning “Moon” in Sanskrit, was founded by Adil Jafry, an energy industry entrepreneur. He is now chairman and CEO of Tara, the largest independent retail electricity provider in Texas. Jafry’s goal is to catalyze commercialization of space, and bring advances in space travel, tourism, sciences, and technology to the general public at large. Team Chandah’s spacecraft will be named “Shehrezade.”

(((The Italian team – Forza Milano!)))

Team Italia: Based in Italy and led by Prof. Amalia Ercoli-Finzi, Team Italia is a collaboration between several universities. The team is currently running a prototype of its system at Politecnico di Milano. The architecture of the robotic system is under study: a single big rover or a colony of many robots, light and mobile, with many legs and wheels, able to be compacted in the lander and distributed quickly on the Moon's surface with cameras and sensory support.

(((Frednet. Go, go go. Moon 2.0, baby. Yowzah.)))

FREDNET: Headed by Fred J. Bourgeois III, this multi-national team is comprised of systems, software, and hardware developers who serve as the leaders and overall coordinators of an international group of Open Source developers, engineers, and scientists. Their goal is to bring the same successful approach used in developing major software systems (such as the Internet, and Linux) to bear on the problems associated with Space Exploration and Research.

(((And when they get there, I wanna see 'em robotically build an inhabitable lunar colony with open-source "Liberator" bricks!)))