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

[mrisaacs]

Anyone (with the right team and skills) can scavenge parts to build a lander - but the idea is to develop technologies and components that could be used on and reduce the cost of real missions.

Using stuff that's cheap because it's left over doesn't meet the goals.

Spending limits are also a good idea in contests of this kind - if you win, with a solution even more expensive than currently in use technologies - what have you accomplished?

This is not just a gee whiz contest, the idea is to advance the science and technology in hopes of jump starting private industry in the space arena.

Re:non-compete?

[bornyesterday]

I doubt NASA has a non-compete agreement, but the goal of the X-Prize is a privately funded venture. Just because a guy who worked at NASA has the knowledge to design a similar system doesn't mean that he can get the necessary money to make the prize worthwhile economically speaking.

Only one comment to make

[johnlcallaway]

Waaaahhhh!!!!

The article as written makes the author look like a cry baby. Whether that is an accurate representation or not I can't tell until someone with better communication skills can provide something of substance.

You sign up for something someone else is running, you better make sure you understand everything ahead of time. If the rules are vague, get someone to clarify them first before dragging mock ups across country.

Or accept the fact they are vague and someone may make decisions you don't like but will have to live with.

Or ... take your toys and go home. Nothing prevents anyone from continuing the task on their own. I'd say if someone was really interested in doing this, they would continue. Imagine taking the wind of of the XPF sails by being able to say "That's nice. Did you see the pictures from our landing 6 months ago???"

Re:"really, really hard" to get to moon

[evangellydonut]

I'm pretty confident in Harold and co's ability to send the payload to the moon, the question is how much would it cost. Being a team in the US, there are also significant issues with ITAR if we were to choose a foreign launcher (ie Russians or Chinese or even the Europeans). As for a US launch, Falcon 1 is too small for any team to use, Falcon 1e could be phantom hardware, or not be ready on-time, and things doesn't get better from there.

Re:Its sad

[Cameroon]

Exactly my thought - risky doesn't mean that it shouldn't be done. Getting out of bed in the morning sure is risky, probably should just stay inside.

I'm all for recognizing the hazards of an activity and weighing the risk/reward, but if we don't have a problem with oil riggers, Alaskan fishermen, etc. then why would we have a problem with risk for scientific and/or economic advancement in space?

Maybe holding off on tourists in space until we can come up with reasonable precautions/reactions for things like solar flares, but manned exploration by people who know and understand the risks? There are plenty of people who accept those risks for a multitude of reasons.