The Google X Prize

From 2007 until 2018 Google offer a prize of $30 million dollars to a private company that could:
  • Land a robotic spacecraft on the Moon
  • The landed, unmanned craft, was to travel 500 meters
  • After landing on the moon the craft would send back to Earth high quality video and images.
In January of 2018 all teams announced that they would be unable to secure a launch date. The $30 million was left unclaimed.

So we now have a $30 million dollar prize that was unawarded. It was over 50 years since the manned missions were done and here we have a challenge to not put a man on the moon, but just a lander.

We now have Windows 10, and much faster computers with solid state drives and TERABYTES in memory not KILOBYTES.

We still couldn’t put a lander on the moon. The challenge was to private companies not official Government Agencies like NASA. Some of the companies that competed were: How come in 2018 any private company that wanted to enter the challenge could… but under 40 did?

Could it be because the challenge was unattainable? Just think of what a great accomplishment it would have been for Microsoft, Amazon or any other large company to accomplish this goal. Just think of the prestige and the marketing value.Imagine an add on TV saying” Buy Microsoft the company that landed on the moon” Whew!!!

I would buy Microsoft! So why did the companies not take the challenge? Could it be that they knew it would either be unattainable or too expensive to accomplish this? Makes me wonder!!