Google Sponsors a Race to the Moon!

On September 13th, 2007 Google announced that they are cosponsoring a Race to the Moon!
 With a $30 million prize!


68% of Americans in a recent Gallup poll said they support a return to the moon and missions to points farther out.

For those of us who lived through the space race, or have studied it, it is easy to see that a lot of the technological advancements we are able to enjoy are a direct result of that race, so here is hoping that a proportional benefit will come from Google's race as well!

Google is working on conjunction with the X PRIZE Foundation, who are best known for the X PRIZE for private suborbital spaceflight, they are an educational nonprofit prize organization whose goal is to bring about radical breakthroughs to solve some of the greatest challenges facing the world today and into the future.

“The Google Lunar X PRIZE calls on entrepreneurs, engineers and visionaries from around the world to return us to the lunar surface and explore this environment for the benefit of all humanity,” said Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation. “We are confident that teams from around the world will help develop new robotic and virtual presence technology, which will dramatically reduce the cost of space exploration.”

Diamandis also said, “By working with the Google team, we look forward to bringing this historic private space race into every home and classroom. We hope to ignite the imagination of children around the world.”

National space agencies from the United States, Russia, China, India, Japan, and the nations of Europe plan to send probes to the Moon in the coming decade.

Many people believe that the moon could be a stepping stone to further destinations in the solar system as well as being an outpost for us to be able to gather important data about earth.

According to Science Daily, online magazine:

Some practical benefits to lunar exploration include:

Enabling exploration of the solar system and beyond. Space exploration is expensive because every ounce of propellant and spacecraft must be launched out of the Earth’s strong gravity field. A natural storehouse of materials, lunar soil is more than 40% oxygen by weight and oxygen makes up most of the mass of rocket propellant. Because of its shallower gravity well, the Moon is the stepping stone to the universe.



The Moon can help save the Earth. For more than 30 years, NASA and the US Department of Energy have experimented with ways to capture abundant clean solar energy in space for use on Earth. Although the technology for doing this is well understood, the high cost of launching materials out of the Earth’s deep gravity well has prevented the implementation of these systems. However, if lunar material is used for space construction, clean energy could be supplied on a 24-hour basis without carbon dioxide or other hazards to the biosphere.



We can learn about the Earth’s geologic past. Thanks to the Moon rocks and other information returned by Apollo astronauts, scientists now believe that the Moon was created by a collision between a planet-sized object and the early Earth. By exploring our nearest neighbor we are also exploring a remnant of ancient Earth.



We can see more deeply into space. The Moon provides a large stable platform for astronomical observation unhindered by atmosphere. The far side of the Moon is the one “quiet” place in the Solar System that is shielded from the Earth’s cacophony of radio, television and data broadcasts. The body of the Moon itself provides this shielding, and a radio telescope on the lunar far side can detect energy from the beginning of the universe.

Driving new technologies and devices. The Moon may be the most hostile environment we face in the near future. Surviving and exploring will require major advances in technology. Many of those technologies will also have practical use back home. Educational materials are now available online at http://www.googlelunarxprize.org. Educators can sign up for regular updates, classroom plans and news about the teams.

I personally applaud Google for this undertaking! Pushing the boundaries of what science already knows is what has allowed us to progress to the space age and computer age and to have great hope that research and development can continue to tackle big problems to make life better for everyone on the face of the earth!

Thank you,

Dave Briggs