FYI,

"Google Shoots for the Moon - and Gets its First Taker"
San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?
f=/c/a/2007/12/07/MNI7TPM9T.DTL

: It's like a James Bond film come to life. A company based on a tiny
: island in the British archipelago parachuted into San Jose on
: Thursday to become the first private team to enter a race to reach
: the moon by 2014 and thereby pocket most of a $30 million prize
: offered by Google.

: "We are challenging small private teams to do what only two
: governments have done before - land on the surface of the moon,"
: said Peter Diamandis, head of the XPrize Foundation, which is
: administering the purse that Google offered in September.

: Entrants must fly a craft to the moon, operate a robotic rover and
: transmit data to Earth to win the $20 million first prize or the
: $5 million second prize plus $5 million in bonuses.

: Out of 375 inquiries from more than 40 countries, so far only a
: company called Odyssey Moon has completed the registration process
: to become an official contender, Diamandis said at a conference
: about space investment on Thursday in San Jose.

: Among the commercial possibilities of such a mission: robotically
: mining the surface of the moon to extract silicon that could be
: refined into chips to create solar arrays on the moon that would
: eventually - by means as yet unspecified - beam power back to
: Earth.

: Gregg Maryniak, executive director of the XPrize Foundation, began
: the presentation by showing a futuristic video depicting the moon
: as "a natural storehouse of resources that we can use to enhance
: life on Earth and explore our universe."

: Maryniak likened the Google Lunar XPrize to the Apollo challenge
: issued by President John F. Kennedy in 1961.

: "Now there's a new moon race," Maryniak said, calling this "Moon
: 2.0" effort "a race to bring Earth's offshore island, the moon,
: into Earth's sphere of economic activity."

: Odyssey Moon's leaders include Robert Richards, a co-founder of
: International Space University, and Ramin Khadem, former chief
: financial officer of Inmarsat, a nearly 30-year-old satellite firm
: publicly traded on the London Stock Exchange. Officials said the
: company is based on the Isle of Man to take advantage of
: space-friendly tax policies and regulations.

: According to Odyssey Moon's Web site, the company's goal is to
: "lower the price of getting to the moon by an order of magnitude
: and in doing so help catalyze a 'moon rush' to Earth's sister
: world, which (Richards) describes as an eighth continent rich in
: energy and resources."

: Thursday's announcement was timed to coincide with NASA's pending
: launch of the space shuttle Atlantis, which was delayed because of
: an equipment problem.

: Also at the event was Red Whittaker, the robotics expert from
: Carnegie Mellon University who recently won the third in a series
: of robotic car races sponsored by the Pentagon. Whittaker has
: formed a company, Astrobotic Technology, that has announced its
: intention to compete for the XPrize but has not yet paid the
: $10,000 registration fee as part of the requirements to be accepted
: as an official entry.

: Whittaker, a larger-than-life character with a track record in
: robotics, has set an incredibly optimistic goal.

: "I intend to land (a robotic craft) near the Apollo 11 site on the
: 40th anniversary of its landing," said Whittaker, which would mean
: putting a privately built craft on the lunar surface in July 2009.

: Sensitive to the fact that exploration has, in the past, led to
: exploitation, speakers professed that the Odyssey Moon bid and the
: Google Lunar XPrize would be "responsible," without saying how.

: "We are ill-prepared in many ways for a responsible return to the
: moon," Richards acknowledged.

: The race, he said, will open a dialogue about how to divvy up the
: next frontier in a responsible way.

: The XPrize is modeled after a challenge laid down in 1919, when a
: wealthy Frenchman offered $25,000 to the first pilot to fly nonstop
from New York to Paris - a feat that made American Charles Lindbergh
: famous when he landed in France in 1927.

: Diamandis, who is involved with two firms that offer high-priced
: space tourism packages, reminded skeptics that when he concocted
: the first XPrize in 1996, disbelievers said no private firm would
: be able to put a manned craft into space. A team including
: Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and space pioneer Burt Rutan proved
: them wrong in October 2004 when SpaceShipOne made two space flights
: within a week to win a $10 million prize - versus about $26 million
: the team spent.

: SpaceShipOne now hangs in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum
: alongside Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis.

: Richards, the Odyssey official, said it was clear the mission would
: cost more than the prize but that the eventual payoff would be
: getting a head start in space exploration.

: Current government-sponsored robotic missions run from $500 million
: to $1 billion, officials said, but these private firms estimate
: they can do it for something approaching a tenth of the cost. If
: the ratio of prize to project cost in the 2004 win is any
: indication, they said, shooting the moon might carry a price tag of
: $100 million.

: Diamandis said he expects the first moon-launch efforts to get off
: the ground within roughly four years.

: "Get ready for some fun and amazing decades of private exploration
: ahead," he said.

: The lunar challenge

: -- Watch the Google Lunar XPrize rollout video at
: http://links.sfgate.com/ZBSY

: -- Find out more about the competition at http://www.xprize.org

: -- Odyssey Moon outlines its mission at http://www.odysseymoon.com

Mark Reiff