Just right about the time that I won the grand prize in Jayred’s recently-held blog contest, I have stumbled upon this one-of-a-kind competition while surfing for news, one that’ll boast a 20 Million Dollar top plum and guess what company is behind this thing—-it’s none other than our beloved Google . It happens that Google is now initiating yet another online service that would make available live moon scenarios on the net as well as images of relics of past explorations. The said contest calls for any private group or team to land a rover into the moon and then send live images of the landscapes there towards land-base and that the rover should be able to move and roam within a 5-kilometer radius. The first team to achieve such feat before 2012 would win the huge bonanza and if the rover could find old relics of space equipments from past explorations, like the famed Apollo 11 mission, and catch images of them, then there would be additional 5 million dollar on top of the main prize.
Accordingly, Google is sponsoring this competition not merely to spur its online corporate growth by providing this one-of-a-kind service in the coming years but also to encourage private entities to pursue space experimentation and discovery. As of now, only government-backed agencies undertake such in-depth venture into space, way beyond the orbiting satellites that are often commercial in nature. Today in fact, Japan had just launched its first mission to the moon.
Experts believed that there are about 5 to 6 private entities or group of private entities in the world today that is capable of undertaking such medium-scale exploration into the moon. However 5 or 6 to me is a very minimal number and the competition might merely turn into a race among few selected individuals rather than a wide-open and globally widespread event, as envisioned by its organizers. I do hope that many other private entities or companies from all over the world would find the competition worthwhile enough and join the contest, thus making it a truly historic global occasion.
There is one major difficulty that will be faced by those who would partake in this rover-landing competition and that is economic-wise. My researched had informed me that in most instances, NASA spends just above a billion dollar in order to launch a moon exploration and that’s a whole lot of money—-way, way beyond the financial capacity of any private entity or agency. Except if Bill Gates becomes interested. Yet there aren’t just too many out there with Mr. Gates economic capability.
But fortunately, a California-base company is offering its moon-reaching Falcon Rockets for a sum of 7 Million Dollars each. If the top prize is 20 Million, then the winners would still take home some 13 Million Dollars or so above cost, and that is still pretty huge.
Apparently, the main challenge here lies in the building of the rover, one that would be able to carry high definition cameras towards the moon and utilize them in the most efficient manner while being thousand of miles above ground and then be capable of transmitting images back to Earth. Major advancements in electronics and telephony would for certain make this main endeavor a not-so-difficult task. Let us remember that in the past, a Filipino scientist had been behind the famous Lunar Rover (one with the noticeable umbrella–like instrument attached to it) used by NASA in its early moon explorations in the 70’s. So everything is doable. The only real struggle for each competitor would be where to get the sizable funding needed to launch the rover into space and then land safely on the moon.
Maybe, local scientists can join the fray with the support of some generous private individuals. This would surely propel our nation’s reputation for innovation and ingenuity. Who knows, we might just get lucky. And you know, small miracles do happen.
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