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Original air date:
11.7.07
Huge Cash Prizes are Pushing Science Forward like Never Before
At the annual Wired NextFest, held this year in Los Angeles, aerospace entrepreneur Peter Diamandis announced that we're going back to the moon - courtesy of Google. The Internet colossus is offering a fat $20 million to any private team that builds a robotic lunar explorer, lands it on the moon, has it rove around for at least 500 meters and successfully makes it send back high-definition video and photos. Hey, how hard can that be?
The Google Lunar X Prize is the latest in a series of X Prizes, all designed to jump-start technological breakthroughs with big-ticket competitions. In 1996, when Diamandis created the X Prize, space research was dominated by the government. He announced a contest aimed at bringing private-sector ingenuity to the game. The challenge: design and build the first-ever private spaceship capable of carrying three people into suborbital flight and back to Earth, twice in two weeks. The prize: $10 million.
Dozens of teams from around the world entered. In October 2004, aircraft designer Burt Rutan walked away with the prize. His Space Ship One, financed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and using a specially formulated fuel, made it 62 miles up to the edge of space and back down - twice.
Since that success, Diamandis has recruited a staff of advisors to come up with new ideas for more multimillion-dollar competitions. The second $10 million X Prize was announced in 2006, this time in the field of genetics. The goal is to speed up the pace of human genome sequencing, something that could profoundly impact benefits for future medial treatments. Also in the works: prizes to address poverty, education, clean water and energy. You know, the easy stuff.
WIRED SCIENCE takes you inside the X Prize, and brings its founder into our studios for an exclusive interview.
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11.7.07 11:05 PM PST
Charles Wilder
Peter,
Space is sexy, but it's pointless. There isn't anything there, except uneconomic rock. It has no value in helping solve the world's problems. Your prize will just create another exclusive club for people that don't live in the real world.
The real potential to save the earth is in the oceans. It isn't as glamorous as space, but it's a lot closer and a lot more valuable.
It's your choice; sexy or useful,
Charles
11.8.07 5:49 AM PST
ernst wilson
Charles,
as an oceanographer, I may assert the Ocean and the study of the ocean are very glamorous and utmost sexy.
While some people (I hope you are included)are genuinely trying to solve the world's problems(THE WORLD CONSISTS ACTUALLY OF ONE ITEM IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM), some others are also genuinely trying to find through space sciences ways to comprehend the solar system housing planets, stars and natural satellites. It is because we have a sun sending us its resources from 150.000.000 kms that we can have our ocean and the species we all enjoy...it is because we have the moon and its movement that we can understand the mood of our ocean waves and the inhabitants, meaning the ocean species...and we can design and construct the reliable means of transportation which our ships...etc.
Years ago, I felt compelled to go all the way to acquiring a degree in Space sciences in the efforts to comprehend those magic and sexy mysteries.
Your commnent is not pointless for, it shows the challenges that innovative and progressive minds like Peter Diamandis' are facing and how much hurdle Aerospace has to overcome through enabling technological capacity, knowhow transfer, before "terrestrians" like you, Peter and myself could really be able to solve the world's problems.
Charles, I urge you to start contacting the NASA people about the rock samples and their contribution to science including the ocean sciences.
Finally, I do not see any wrongdoing in belonging to any exclusive club as long as there is production, ingenuity, innovations: in fact, what is really THE REAL WORLD? In fact, our planet Earth is an exclusive club creatures with exclusive thinking capacity.
Let's grow up and do our part in the world's problems solving.
regards,
e.w.
11.8.07 9:33 AM PST
George Demmy
Why not a billion with a B dollar prize for the first demonstration of a reliable fusion reactor? All other concerns of people on this planet (and beyond) would be manageable provided we first and foremost had a replacement for current fossil as well as nuculear based energy sources.
11.9.07 11:21 AM PST
Gaetano Marano
.
if you want to know MORE about the "dark side" of the """Google""" Lunar X Prize just read this:
http://www.ghostnasa.com/posts/008moonprize.html
while, if you want to know WHO will win the prize, read this:
http://www.ghostnasa.com/posts/009prizewinner.html
the latter article has also a brief Flash ANIMATION of the winner rover on the moon
.
11.27.07 1:45 PM PST
David
I have an idea for an x prize.
A prize to the doctor who discovers how to, activate the "placebo response" in patients without giving any kind of pill (i.e., conversationally). And to prevent the cure from being labeled as a "miracle cure," a "faith healing," or a "spontaneous remission," the doctor needs to facilitate the "response" in several patients with a process that can be duplicated by (qualified) others.
To sell the idea, you can speak of it as, perfecting the art of assisting a persons "natural recuperative powers."
1.12.08 8:11 AM PST
Sean
The idea that there is "nothing" in space is absurd. The earth itself is in space and according to some (Charles) contains the only value in the universe. I for one would rather pollute the vastness of space as opposed to our oceans. When we colonize the seabed, i will be first inline for a mariannis condo, that doesnt mean we shouldn't conquer space too. Man is at his best on the frontier, where ever that frontier may be.
Sean
Owensboro, KY
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