Posted on 01/28/2015 10:45:13 AM PST by BenLurkin
Five teams competing for the $30 million Google Lunar XPRIZE have just been awarded a combined $5.25 million for meeting significant milestones in developing a robot that can safely land on the surface of the moon, travel 500 meters over the lunar surface, and send mooncasts back to the Earth. A tiny startup from India, Team Indus, with no experience in robotics or space flight just won $1 million of this prize.
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What has changed since the days of the Apollo moon landings is that the cost of building technologies has dropped exponentially. What cost billions of dollars then costs millions now, and sometimes even less. Our smartphones have computers that are more powerful than the Cray supercomputers of yesteryear — which had strict export controls and cost tens of millions of dollars. We carry high-definition cameras in our pockets that are more powerful than those on NASA spacecraft. The cameras in the Mars Curiosity Rover, for example, have a resolution of 2 megapixels with 8GB of flash memory, the same as our clunky first-generation iPhones. The Apollo Guidance Computer, which took humans to the moon in 1966, had a 2.048 MHz processor — slower than those you find in calculators and musical greeting cards.
...
Innovation prizes are not new. ... In the 1920s, New York hotel owner Raymond Orteig offered a $25,000 prize to the first person to fly non-stop between New York and Paris. Several unsuccessful attempts were made before an American airmail pilot named Charles Lindbergh won the competition in 1927 with his plane, The Spirit of St. Louis. Lindbergh’s achievement made him a national hero and a global celebrity. And it sparked the interest and investment that led to the modern aviation industry.
(Excerpt) Read more at venturebeat.com ...
I would have thought traveling to the moon would require the opposite of “digging in”.
The affirmative action pick?
No need to. Earth will be a smoldering crater and Jesus will have taken his flock home by then...
The innovation and risk-taking will most definitely have to be from “around the globe”, because it won’t happen in the U.S.
Our days of leading the way are over, thanks to our tort system and scumbag lawyers.
The only thing America excels at today is liability avoidance.
Within 20 years?
Maybe, but I got a hundred bucks that says no.
Loser donates $100 to FreeRepublic.
> A tiny startup from India, Team Indus, with no experience in robotics or space flight just won $1 million of this prize
The affirmative action pick?
Somebody just got enough to live on for awhile. I wouldn’t expect anything to come of this. I would also expect the recipient to be connected to someone within the administration too.
No one is going to take you up on that bet around here. We KNOW the score...: )
We stopped going there 43 years ago.
...when it became too "routine".
This is getting WAY to popular for the peasants and entrepenuers. We need to regulate these efforts into oblivian.
Not necessarily. If there is going to be travel to the moon, the people there are going to have to eat, so who better than someone from India to build the New Del(h)i. They could curry favor with the customers...
In 20 years? Can I have your stuff?
Come over to my house when I’m unfortunate enough to see a picture of Dorkbama on the TV.
I’ll show you a moon.
Why do I want to go to the moon?
To visit Alice?
There’s one in every crowd...
...sometimes two.
;-)
Imagine the moon base we would have now if they started right at the end of the Apollo program.
Then they start landing Tatas on the moon, I’ll begin to worry
20 years away to get back to where we were 46 years ago?
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