Google’s $30m race to the moon is ready for lift-off

[ra7]

http://thenextweb.com/google/2015/10/07/googles-30m-race-to-the-moon-is-ready-for-lift-off/

[melling]

The idea of using a prize to solve a big problem goes back hundreds of years. The British created a prize to solve the Longitude problem:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longitude_Act

Charles Lindbergh won his prize money for crossing the Atlantic:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_of_St._Louis

The Google autonomous car is here because of DARPA prize: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge

Netflix has their contest: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix_Prize

And of course, we have the modern X-Prizes:

http://www.xprize.org

Anyway, the point is that we could solve a 1000 problems if we found the money for it. Prizes like these seem to be a very effective way to invest in R&D.