
The Google Lunar X Prize’s Race to the Moon Is Over. Nobody Won - IntronExon
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/23/science/google-lunar-x-prize-moon.html
======
jk4930
I work with a former GLXP team (PTScientists from Germany). We left the prize
in early 2017 and will launch in 2019. We're actually grateful for the GLXP.
It opened doors, it did spread the word and created a community, it forced us
to push through to meet deadlines. We had to develop business models (the
prize itself wouldn't cover the costs) and adopt a professional mindset while
not losing the hacker approach. And while nobody won the prize, the primary
goal (kickstarting an ambitious private space industry) was accomplished.

That said, we still offer payload capacity to the lunar surface and lunar
orbit. Since there's not much time left, it should be rather small and nice
(think CubeSat format). We provide transportation, energy, communication.
Don't be shy, fellow hackers, ask me. Here or under jk at ptscientists.com

~~~
boltzmannbrain
Seconded. I worked with Astrobotic
([https://www.astrobotic.com](https://www.astrobotic.com)) while at CMU, and
many of us have the GLXP to thank for becoming better engineers and leaders.

~~~
wgolsen
What years? I visited Dr. Whittaker and David Gump in ~2010 to present an
analysis of their business plan. At the time I was thoroughly impressed with
the tech/team and equally unimpressed with the business case Gump had made. I
hope things have progressed since then because I'd love to see (some iteration
of) the lander I touched actually reaching the lunar surface.

My favorite part of this encounter was how convinced I was that my team was
teasing me when they insisted Red would tell 'the gorilla story' within 20
minutes of meeting us. Lo and behold, no more than 10 minutes in he tells us
about the time he wrestled with a gorilla ('way back before animal rights was
a thing'). What a fascinating guy.

------
JumpCrisscross
"Prizes are useful in bringing credibility to an industry, inspiring
entrepreneurs and investors, and attracting new customers to an industry. Both
the aviation and space benefited from the Orteig and Ansari X prizes.

But, by challenging people to perform what are essentially stunts, they do not
always address the fundamental technologies required to truly move a sector
forward. And that can have deadly consequences.

Lindbergh’s flight greatly boosted an accident-prone commercial aviation
industry at a time when efforts to improve its safety had barely begun. The
accident and death rates increased.

Winning the Ansari X Prize left Rutan and his team over confident in
themselves and their technology based on an incomplete flight test program.
The result has been four deaths and more than a decade of frustration and
broken promises."

[http://www.parabolicarc.com/2016/05/20/tale-
prizes/](http://www.parabolicarc.com/2016/05/20/tale-prizes/)

~~~
melling
There are a lot of X Prizes. Many, like the lunar prize, are not dangerous.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Prize_Foundation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Prize_Foundation)

The entire debate about a particular prize being nothing more than a stunt is
a debate that doesn't fit well on HN.

A private group getting to the moon and sending video back, could inspire
others, which could get NASA a larger budget, or lead to more VC funding.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _The entire debate about a particular prize being nothing more than a stunt
> is a debate that doesn 't fit well on HN_

The article compares the Ansari X Prize [1], which Scaled Composites won, to
the Orteig Prize [2], which Charles Lindbergh won. It's a statement on the
efficiency of prizes, generally, in fostering technological change. Not a
complaint abut a specific prize.

The evidence the author collects, across multiple articles and many decades
show prize money is better spent on other things. The "inspire others" and
"get NASA a larger budget" or "more VC funding" bits don't happen, or don't
happen as effectively as if those goals had been directly pursued, _e.g._
paying for PR, lobbying or actually making the VC investments.

The optimizations made to win the prize rarely translate into broader success.
The resulting disappointment(s) and inevitable hype-cycle end can end up doing
more damage in the long run.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansari_X_Prize](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansari_X_Prize)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orteig_Prize](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orteig_Prize)

~~~
melling
There are dozens of "X Prizes". The idea goes back hundreds of years.

[https://longitudeprize.org/about-
us/history](https://longitudeprize.org/about-us/history)

I think you'd have a really hard time raising the money to pay for lobbying to
get more research.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _There are dozens of "X Prizes"_

I don't condemn prizes as a category.

The Longitude Prize and DARPA's self-driving car competitions were successful.
Here's what differentiates them: the people who wanted to buy the product set
the rules of the prize to yield something useful to them. The products of the
X Prizes either have terrible product-market fit ("market" to be read broadly
to include non-commercial users) or pursue the wrong goal ( _e.g._ manned
spaceflight crowding out launch-cost reduction, _et cetera_ ).

------
ChuckMcM
It isn't like $20M is killing the balance sheets at Google. It seems silly
that they wouldn't just leave it out there "indefinitely" until it was
claimed.

~~~
mLuby
These prizes should be left to automatically compound interest/investment
until they're claimed.

~~~
elif
True, that would strengthen the business case for participants in subsequent
competitions.

~~~
ben_w
Disagree. What’s the management cliché? SMART goals — Specific, Measurable,
Attainable/Assignable, Relevant/Realistic, Time-bound.

Without a time constraint, most people[citation needed] keep putting things
off until later.

~~~
wyldfire
In general, you are absolutely correct. But with competitive pressure it might
be different.

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jasonhansel
> "Many now believe [landing on the moon] is no longer the sole purview of a
> few government agencies, but now may be achieved by small teams of
> entrepreneurs, engineers, and innovators from around the world."

It's odd that Google would cite this as the outcome of the Lunar X Prize: if
anything, the failure of the Lunar X Prize is strong evidence _against_ this
very belief.

------
osense
Since there seem to be some people from the industry around, I’d like to ask:
how are we doing with writing software for such safety-critical systems? Do we
still use C and try to have it statically verified by various tools? Write the
software multiple times and have instances of the functionally same systems
running in parallel, Andy see if they agree on which action should be taken?
Can dependent and/or linear types help?

~~~
starik36
I interviewed at SpaceX and asked them what they use to write code that runs
in the rocket. It's all plain C and everything must be declared before hand -
in other words, there are no dynamic allocations anywhere in the code.

~~~
skgoa
This is typical for embedded software in cars, planes etc. Most of that C code
will be generated though.

~~~
osense
What would you be generating the C from? Are there any open-source tools that
generate this kind of C?

~~~
skgoa
Features will almost always be modelled in a tool like Matlab/Simulink, which
has a C generator specifically aimed at automotive software. Similar tools
that are used by EEngs, MechEngs etc. have the same functionality.

The support software underneath (equivalent to the OS kernel, OS libraries,
frameworks etc. you would use to run desktop apps) is typically configured in
one or more AUTOSAR[1] tools. The exchange format for AUTOSAR is .arxml, which
is a horrible adaption of XML. These tools will also take .armxl files as
input and generate the source files that contain the standard components, the
drivers, the glue code for inter-component communication etc.

Only the software components that are not covered by the AUTOSAR standard or
handed down by the car manufacturer as standard components will typically be
written by hand, though even for those we will increasingly often write
generators in e.g. Python. That's because different versions of the same car,
different target plattforms (that is car models) etc. will often use different
subsets of features, different internal networking, different messages etc.
and since everything has to be set statically before compile time, we need to
generate different versions.

TBH I doubt that much of that is open-source. There is a reference
implementation of AUTOSAR and there are some code generators that are FOSS as
part of the genIVI project. But practically all tools you would actually want
to use are closed source and super expensive. That's one of the major reasons
why the push for open-sourcing automotive software is not going to lead to
anything.

[1] AUTOSAR is an international standard for automotive software architectures
and components/APIs/etc. that is aimed at making software modules more or less
plug'n'play between different SW vendors, car manufacturers etc. All of this
is statically "linked" at generation time! The software will not even compile
if things don't match exactly. The first version of a Linux-based Adaptive
AUTOSAR that basically works like Android has been released recently, though.

------
terravion
I think there's still a private race to the moon. Some companies, notably,
Astrobotic and Moon Express still seem set on getting there and have business
models even though they dropped out of the Google contest.

[http://robohub.org/glxp-update-penn-state-lunar-lions-now-
in...](http://robohub.org/glxp-update-penn-state-lunar-lions-now-in-3-spot/)

~~~
drmpeg
There's the NASA CubeQuest challenge. Cubesats on the EM-1 mission.

[https://www.nasa.gov/cubequest/details](https://www.nasa.gov/cubequest/details)

------
jpm_sd
The X Prizes have a fairly lousy track record so far. Disappointing, and
rather damning for the "moonshot" approach to innovation (as opposed to good
old fashioned incremental engineering)

~~~
melling
"...as opposed to good old fashioned incremental engineering"

There was no opportunity cost. You can have both.

~~~
make3
you can hire the people to work in engineering teams, instead of having them
work in weird, not too constructive competition settings

~~~
melling
There are billions of billion. You can have both.

------
taneq
Turns out no-one has $200 million to spend on winning $20 million. Weird.

~~~
fiblye
Seriously, that's a laughably low "prize". If you could make it to the moon
for < $20 million, the US government would have military bases there for
cheaper than it costs to build a single fighter jet.

~~~
apendleton
I agree that this is a low amount, but I don't think the goal of a program
like this is necessarily to fully pay for the cost of the project. After all,
the winner hopefully has a useful asset at the end of it (a spacecraft, or
self-driving car, or whatever else). I think it's more of a subsidy: "if you
were thinking about designing a spaceship, here's a way to get it done for $20
million cheaper."

------
alexnewman
Just in time for the falcon heavy. The first rocket i can remember where I can
go to website and pay for a lunar transfer

~~~
robin_reala
Space Adventures have been advertising a lunar mission for a decade or so on
Soyuz, they just needed two people willing to split the cost.
[http://www.spaceadventures.com/experiences/circumlunar-
missi...](http://www.spaceadventures.com/experiences/circumlunar-mission/)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
The cost given is ~"it depends, contact us" (ie they don't give a cost).

~~~
robin_reala
Presumably anything like this is going to be POA, but originally they were
quoting about 150m: [http://www.businessinsider.com/space-adventures-moon-
launch-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/space-adventures-moon-
launch-2016-1?r=US&IR=T&IR=T/#since-launching-businessman-dennis-tito-up-to-
the-international-space-station-iss-in-2001-space-adventures-has-been-the-
only-company-to-send-private-citizens-to-space-1)

------
dnautics
Well at least no one seems to be sour over it, unlike the cancellation of the
genomics x prize, which really ticked off several of the entrants. Whoever was
running that one should be embarrassed.

------
supervillain
Instead of going to the Moon, why not just create a self-sustaining vehicle
that can allow humans to survive sustainably in any terrain, desert, forests,
mountains, land, sea, lake or water. On soil, above or underwater.

And make it a race prize competition similar to Google Lunar X Prize Race.

------
MichaelMoser123
>The foundation raised the possibility of a new sponsor or continuing the
competition without any cash prizes.

Can that be read as a possible sign that Google has less cash to spend on such
projects nowadays? Are they trying to save the money?

------
knowaveragejoe
From an idealistic standpoint, I'm disappointed. It sucks seeing one of the
few "highly" visible efforts on this front "failing".

From an realistic, utilitarian standpoint, I can understand why this happened.

------
avmich
One of the best approaches, IMO, was Cringely teams' with multiple attempts.

------
z3t4
I think the biggest problem is radio communication !?

~~~
avmich
The biggest problem - maybe 90% of the task - is to get there. Then from the
remainder the biggest problem - in terms of required mass - is radio
communication (if you choose radio). At least that's what my analysis was
giving me.

~~~
z3t4
I think getting there is a question of how many canisters you can fill with
gas and water. I think it would be fairly cheap if you have small enough
payload. A quick calculation: You would need to fill up around 25,000 pipes
and have 160 stages.

------
fouc
Sad.. I always thought that the most innovative method for winning the space X
prize would involve blasting many tiny robots to the moon, perhaps using
balloon assisted launch.

~~~
votepaunchy
The spacecraft was also required to travel 500 meters and transmit high-def
video back to earth.

~~~
CapitalistCartr
I always thought someone would put a tiny rover, perhaps a couple of kg, there
and make it work. Using non-space-rated electronics, and making it up on the
shielding is pretty risky, not NASA style but I figured for sure someone would
roll the dice.

~~~
jostmey
If you were going to spend the enormous amount of money required to send
something to the moon, you'd probably use space-rated electronics. I'm
guessing the electronics make up a minuscule fraction of the cost, so why risk
a super expensive mission to save a relatively small amount of money?

~~~
CapitalistCartr
Not money; weight and time. Working with off-the-shelf components is much
faster, and usually weighs less. Shielding is basically fancy foil; it weighs
precious little. I used to wrap components in the Air Force and the rule was
don't exceed three layers when touching it up.

------
DaniFong
we're just going to have to go ourselves.

