SoCal Selene Group Drops Google Lunar X Prize Bid

anzha writes "On Saturday, after the vaunted First Team Summit was completed in Strasbourg, The Southern California Selene Group announced publicly that they are dropping out of the Google Lunar X Prize. Citing very strong differences in opinions over how the X Prize was being run, the team felt they could no longer participate. On the flip side, the X Prize Foundation announced at the team summit that there are four new teams. With the drop out, there are now thirteen official competitive teams. Assuredly, there are more to come."

Re:Its sad

[evangellydonut]

Being a former member of the team...

first, the tanks can be purchased on the open market if you know the proper vendor.

second, the tanks in question was not the first choice, was not even the second choice. it just happens that we were able to get our hands on some, and may consider using them when the stars aligned.

third, something novel WAS disallowed due to vagueness of the rule.

fourth, to our knowledge we are the only team who's even trying to achieve the goal within the stated prize money. everyone else is doing it for the publicity, especially the CMU team.

4.1 - I wonder where does the CMU team's student's stipend come? research grants? university? or they truly do all their work AFTER they fulfilled their obligatory research.

Re:Its sad

[FleaPlus]

Its sad that bureaucracy has caused an entire team to become disillusioned with the competition.

What's weird though is that in a post by the same person at the Southern California Selene Group earlier that day, instead of blaming bureaucracy she said that their reason for disillusionment was their opposition to human space missions (and the idea that the Google Lunar X Prize could support that), and their (somewhat belated) realization that the Google Lunar X Prize was intended to promote commercialization of space. I personally think they were being terribly silly, but you can read the post for yourself:

http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/lunar/teams/scsg/blog/some-serious-thinking-at-the-southern-california-selene-group [googlelunarxprize.org]

n my first blog, I wrote why Harold Rosen formed the Southern California Selene Group. In short, he and I registered our team to compete for the Google Lunar X PRIZE to demonstrate that a low-cost space mission to the moon could be accomplished and could lead to lowering the cost of some future robotic missions to planetary moons. Plus, we intended to have fun! Harold and I both are strong supporters of space science and robotic space exploration. (For one, I'm an astronomy and cosmology enthusiast.) We love the kind of work that JPL is doing, for example. But we most definitely are not in favor of human space missions. That is not our goal, nor do we support such a goal.

The Team Summit turned out to be a real wakeup call. In the Guidelines workshop that I attended just last Tuesday, the cumulative effect of hearing all day from Peter Diamandis, Bob Weiss and Gregg Maryniak that the "real purpose" of the Google Lunar X PRIZE was to promote the so-called commercialization of space (which I took to mean highly impractical stuff like mining the moon and beaming power to the earth, as shown in one of GLXP kickoff videos), humanity's future in space, etc. etc., took its toll. I couldn't help but think "what am I doing here?" When I spoke to Harold about it on the phone later, he agreed - no way did he want to be involved in promoting a goal he does not believe in.

Re:Its sad

[evangellydonut]

Bingo. While it's not difficult to come up with an alternative design, the fact that our initial design was dismissed so easily and without reason, makes us wonder what other disqualifications are hidden down the road.

Re:Childish?

[evangellydonut]

There's nothing in our camera design that doesn't meet the rules. It's just that simple.

Re:Childish?

[evangellydonut]

thank you. I've spent 2 grand out of my own pocket so far, and will probably spend more if we continued on. what if by the end, after we find a sponsor who puts up all that money, and ready to launch, and have the X-Prize foundation tell us "even though your design meets all our requirements, it's not what we had in mind, thus you are disqualified", what then?

Re:Its sad

[Mike1024]

Not having seen the rules - I don't know how vague they are - but the mission statement is pretty clear. The specific issue in the article the comes to mind was the disallowing of the scavenged fuel tanks.

Draft guidelines here [googlelunarxprize.org].

I must say, they include some weird requirements:

4.3.5 says the X Prize Foundation gets to give you a video, an e-mail, and a text message you must broadcast from the moon, and they get to specify the soundtrack for your video broadcast.
4.3.3.3 says you must take three substantially different self portraits of your rover, clearly showing the Google Lunar X Prize logo.
4.3.4.9 wants the same again at the end of the drive.
5.3.3 "The Embedded Communications Specialist or other TEAM member or members shall publish a minimum of one blog per week to an XPF-designated website or XPF-designated Blogger account. TEAMs shall also provide online streaming videos, posted to an XPF-designated website or XPF-designated YouTube account with a minimum monthly cumulative duration of 15 minutes. TEAMs shall publish a minimum of 8 discrete, substantively different videos per month, 4 of which shall have a minimum length of 30 seconds."
5.3.4.1 "TEAMs shall send representatives to appear as spokespeople, judges, or attendees for Google Lunar X PRIZE-related public education and outreach events at the request of XPF."
5.5 "Logo Placements TEAMS shall display certain Google Lunar X PRIZE logos as specified by XPF. [...] XPF reserves the right to put logos on all CRAFTs, as well as launch facilities, launch vehicles, secondary vehicles, and other relevant equipment. [...] XPF reserves 50% of available logo space on the CRAFT and all relevant vehicles.
5.11.4 "The TEAM shall make the provision of all data related to the Mooncast and fulfillment of the Google Lunar X PRIZE Mission Requirements exclusive to XPF and XPF-identified Partners."
6.3 "Competition Media Rights are the rights held by and or conveyed to XPF [...] This package shall also include an irrevocable, perpetual, world-wide, royalty-free, exclusive, sublicensable right and license to XPF for all video and imagery, regardless of its inclusion in the Google Lunar X PRIZE Mission Requirements, taken from the launch site, mission control center(s), or spacecraft(s) by XPF, its Partners, or the TEAM "

With requirements like that you can see why someone might think "Hey, this competition suddenly seems less about science/engineering and more about publicity/advertising"