Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - A New Race to the Moon: The Google Lunar X Prize

Episode Date: September 24, 2007

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A new race to the moon, the Google Lunar X Prize, this week on Planetary Radio. Hi everyone, welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan. We gave you a sample last week, this time, it's the whole enchilada. We'll recap the recent announcement of the biggest engineering and exploration prize in history. The XPRIZE Foundation has $30 million

waiting for the teams that are first to roll a private, commercially developed rover onto the moon. You'll hear from Buzz Aldrin, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Google co-founder Larry Page, Deputy Administrator of NASA Shauna Dale, and the man who

started it all with the Ansari XPRIZE, Chairman and CEO of the XPRIZE Foundation, Peter Diamandis. We'll still have time for Emily Lockdewall's Q&A and Bruce Betts will call in to give away yet another Planetary Radio t-shirt. Here are just a few of the headlines streaming into the Planetary Radio studios from our bureaus around the solar system and beyond.

As we prepare this week's show, Dawn is ready to break over the horizon. Dawn the spacecraft, that is. The probe leaves Wednesday, September 26, on its epic journey to Ceres and Vesta, the largest asteroids in our solar neighborhood. You may remember that this launch was delayed so as not to interfere with the departure of the Phoenix Mars lander. Emily is playing host to Don Mission guest bloggers at planetary.org. Also at planetary.org, a story that started 160

million years ago with the collision of two mammoth asteroids. A newly published paper in Nature says this cataclysm may have had a profound effect on our own planet. So are they cavern skylights or just big holes? This question about the so-called seven sisters on Mars rages on. NASA just announced that the Odyssey orbiter has found that the temperatures in whatever they are vary only about a third as much as on the surface. Too bad they're so high on the mountainside that they're nearly in vacuum. Emily is about to consider whether life on a much more hospitable Mars might once have reached our home planet. I'll be right back with our special coverage of the

Google Lunar X Prize. Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla with questions and answers. A listener asked, I've heard that bacteria in a Mars meteorite could survive a landing on Earth. Could bacteria get from Earth or Mars to Europa on a meteorite? It sounds impossible. An asteroid crashes into Mars so big that some of the ejecta from the collision rockets outward fast enough to escape the pull of gravity. An ejected Mars meteorite floats in space for decades, millennia, or more,

until it happens to cross Earth's path. It streaks toward the ground, its outside getting so hot that it lights up as a fireball in the sky before its energetic crash. It doesn't seem likely that any life could survive all of these events. But some forms of life, especially bacterial spores, are very hard to kill. Simulations and experiments have shown that if there were bacterial life forms living within Mars's rocks, they could have seeded Earth with life. By the way, it's much easier to get meteorites and any stowaways from Mars to Earth than the reverse, because the

escape velocity from Mars is much lower the reverse, because the escape velocity from Mars is much lower, and because Earth's larger gravity and closer position to the Sun helps it scoop up more meteorites than Mars does. So, could any meteorites from Mars or Earth have brought bacteria to Europa? Stay tuned to Planetary Radio to find out. September 13, 2007. Could there have been a better venue for announcement of the biggest engineering prize ever than Wired Magazine's Next Fest? The stage was set in a corner of the gigantic Los Angeles Convention Center exhibit hall. The lights dimmed as a video splashed across the giant screen.

That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. These early missions learned much about the moon. Out the ground! But they were far too expensive and lacked any long-term plan. So in 1972, Moon 1.0 was abandoned. Earth's offshore island, the moon, can become our greatest asset. It could help provide our world with abundant resources and clean, affordable, limitless energy. The Google Lunar XPRIZE is designed to kickstart Moon 2.0, a revolution in space

to benefit all humanity. The X Prize Foundation has joined forces with Google, the world's largest search engine, to create the biggest international prize ever. And it's open to private enterprise from any nation. $30 million in prize money is offered to the first two privately funded teams to land and rove a robotic craft on the lunar surface. Peter Diamandis was the prime mover behind the Ansari XPRIZE program. $10 million went to Bert Rutan and Paul Allen when Spaceship One became the first private vehicle to carry a human into space. That was just three years ago. Peter was already preparing for much more ambitious contests.

His enthusiasm has infected millions around the world, including the founders of Google. And it is Google that has come up with the purse for the Lunar X Prize competition. And that purse is bulging. The $30 million Google Lunar X Prize is the largest prize we've ever launched. And in fact, it's the largest international incentive prize ever. We are offering both a grand prize and a second place prize. The grand prize is $20 million awarded to the first team to soft land on the moon, row for at least 500 meters, send back two sets of high definition video and photographs that we call moon casts.

The second prize is $5 million going to the second team to accomplish these objectives. The competition also includes $5 million in bonuses that can be paid out for the following extraordinary feats. First, finding, photographing hardware of Moon 1.0. Second, finding water ice on the lunar south pole. Third, living through the frigid lunar night. Fourth, maximizing ethnic, age, and gender diversity within the team. Or fifth, roving five kilometers or ten times further than the baseline requirement. Peter Diamandis, chairman and CEO of the XPRIZE Foundation.

The XPRIZE stage at the Wired Magazine Next Fest was crowded. Foundation. The XPRIZE stage at the Wired Magazine NextFest was crowded. Larry Page is co-founder and president of products at that amazing company called Google. His partner, Sergey Brin, participated in the announcement ceremony via video, but Larry was there in person to talk about why the company has put up millions of dollars for the Google Lunar XPRIZE. I gave a speech recently where I said science has a serious marketing problem. And I think this is the best antidote I've seen for that is this event and this prize. And you can see that this organization is very good at marketing. And I think that really matters. It really can make a difference to how people think about these things. Science and engineering, if you ask an

economist, have been the only way that we've increased our economics and productivity. If you look at why we have more food in the world and all those kinds of things, it's really because of advances in science and technology. And we believe that these kind of contests and setting an ambitious goal like going to the moon is really a good way to improve the state of humanity in the world. And that's why we care about this. It's also going to be a great competition, a lot of fun. And I guess we have a number of young people here up in front. How many of you would like to go to the moon? Raise your hand.

Yeah. So that's why we're here. And, you know, we're capable of doing that. Maybe not all of you, but at least some of you will be able to go. Larry Page, co-founder of Google. He wasn't the only successful entrepreneur to lend support to this new XPRIZE. Elon Musk created PayPal. Now he is the CEO and CTO of Space Exploration Technologies, a.k.a. SpaceX. He's also a member of the Planetary Society Board of Directors.

SpaceX continues to work on a line of relatively inexpensive rockets dubbed Falcons. Elon hopes lunar XPRIZE teams will rely on his boosters to put their rovers on the moon. I really believe in the goals of the XPRIZE. I've been supporting it for quite a while. And I think we've done great things with the Ansari XPRIZE, and this is going to be the next step. I think this is going to be incredibly inspiring to the younger generation and to people all around the world.

And as my friend Larry said, this is one of the greatest marketing things we could do for science and engineering and math. In fact, I meet so many people who are inspired by the original Apollo moon landings. It's the reason they got into math and science. And I think this is really going to help hopefully inspire a new generation in that direction. And that's the reason that my company, SpaceX, has decided to give up the profit, essentially, on our launch vehicles. So we're going to essentially partner with the teams and forego any profit that we would earn on our launch vehicles

in order to make it easier for them to accomplish this goal of getting their craft to the surface of the moon. So that's our small contribution to this whole effort. All right. Thank you. Elon Musk of SpaceX offering cheap rides to the moon for Google Lunar XPRIZE rovers. And when those rovers head for the moon, they will be carrying a mandatory payload. Along with personal photos and messages from members of the public, each rover will sport a plaque that is reminiscent of those carried nearly 40 years ago by the Apollo lunar modules.

This time the message is from those Apollo astronauts, so it was appropriate for one of them to present it at the September 13 ceremony. Here is Buzz Aldrin, the Apollo 11 astronaut who, with Neil Armstrong, was one of the first humans to set foot on another world. We Apollo astronauts congratulate the winner of the Google Lunar X Prize. May this plaque placed on the surface of the moon by this intrepid craft and his team serve as a welcoming beacon to future generations of lunar explorers. This spacecraft returns in the spirit of our journeys of the 20th century in peace and with hope for all mankind. Buzz Aldrin at the recent ceremony kicking off the Google Lunar X Prize competition.

Our special coverage will continue in a minute, including a conversation with X Prize founder Peter Diamandis. This is Planetary Radio. I'm Robert Picardo. I traveled across the galaxy as the doctor in Star Trek Voyager. Then I joined the Planetary Society to become part of the real adventure of space exploration. The Society fights for missions that unveil the secrets of the solar system. It searches for other intelligences in the universe, and it built the first solar sail. It also shares the wonder through this radio show, its website, and other exciting projects that reach around the globe.

I'm proud to be part of this greatest of all voyages, and I hope you'll consider joining us. You can learn more about the Planetary Society at our website, planetary.org slash radio, or by calling 1-800-9-WORLDS. Planetary Radio listeners who aren't yet members can join and receive a Planetary Radio t-shirt. Our nearly 100,000 members receive the internationally acclaimed Planetary Report magazine. That's planetary.org slash radio. The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. The Google Lunar X Prize competition began with a bang just a few days ago. The first team to put a successful robotic rover on the Moon will be awarded $20 million. Second place will get you $5 million, and there are $1 million bonuses for related accomplishments.

Teams have to be 90% privately funded so government space agencies are out of the running. Far from being miffed about this, NASA sent Deputy Administrator Shauna Dale to salute the effort and encourage private ventures in space. There are many specific objectives to be accomplished on the surface of the moon, but there's also an objective here on Earth that's critically important, and that's inspiring kids to study math, science, and engineering. It's an incredibly important goal, and it's one that we applaud. The Google Lunar XPRIZE is an opportunity for today's engineers and entrepreneurs to join in the next era of space exploration.

And as we at NASA know, going to the moon requires incredible effort, innovation, and determination. At NASA, we've been given the challenge of going back to the moon and creating a lunar outpost, of sending the first humans to Mars and then going beyond. But the people who will make it happen will not all be at NASA. Individuals in the private sector have an essential role to play in this new era and on the new frontier. The next steps will not happen without them. So at NASA, we've committed to encouraging private efforts and to supporting challenges that channel the creative energies of people wherever they may work.

NASA has set up the Centennial Challenges and cooperates with the XPRIZE Foundation on the Lunar Lander Challenge for the same reason, to drive the innovations and unleash the creative energies so needed on the new frontier. Competitions couple aspirations with actions. They cause us to dig deeper and reach higher than we ever thought that we could. I applaud the spirit of competition, and I wish the participants of this XPRIZE challenge much success. We will see you on the moon. Thank you. With the formal ceremony over, I got a chance to talk with Elon Musk, CEO and CTO of SpaceX.

We heard a bit of his formal presentation before the break as he offered to forego any profit from Google Lunar XPRIZE teams that use one of his Falcon rockets to reach the moon. I wondered which of the SpaceX products might provide the ride and how much that ticket might cost. Well, the vehicle that I think would make the most sense is our small vehicle, the Falcon 1, because that vehicle, the normal price of that vehicle is seven million dollars so um you know sort of somewhere like six million and change for for that launch in in you know in january 2007 so that's that's the natural vehicle to use because if they could then do the rover or the lander for say another six million and the prize is 20 well hey they might be able to make $8 million on the mission.

Or they might be able to make money on the mission, actually have the prize be a net gain. I can't imagine any other way it could be a net gain. So that would really be the way I'd do it if I were one of the teams. It's not a bad return. Yeah, I think it would be pretty cool. Now, I mean, there's obviously a lot of risk associated with that. So on a risk-adjusted basis, I'm not sure it's a great return.

But I think it's worth having something where you can have a positive return. And I think the way to do that is low-cost launch vehicle, low-cost lander and rover. You said some very inspiring things about what this kind of effort represents to science and to youth as well. Sure. Well, I meet so many people who are scientists, engineers, mathematicians, that the reason they got into that was the Apollo program. If you're in the 50s, 60s, 70s, it was a huge draw to get people into the sciences. And today, we don't really have that kind of a huge draw. Or we have it in certain sectors, I mean, like the Internet.

But we don't really have that inspiring Apollo-type thing. Now, this is obviously at a much smaller scale than Apollo. But nonetheless, it's exciting. And perhaps an advantage that it does have over Apollo is that people can participate. They can try to do it and be part of a team in a way that would have been very difficult to necessarily be part of doing that for the Apollo program. It's just going to be an inspiring event. I think it will help address what Larry said, the marketing problem that science has.

Thanks very much, Elon, and good luck with all this. Elon Musk of Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX. The Larry he mentioned is Larry Page, the co-founder of Google we heard from before the break. By the way, SpaceX plans another launch attempt early next year. There's a link to a fascinating and very detailed progress report prepared by Elon himself at planetary.org slash radio. We'll give XPRIZE Foundation creator, chairman, and CEO Peter DeMantis the last word. You've heard Peter several times on Planetary Radio, including our conversation on the morning Spaceship One earned the Ansari XPRIZE three years ago.

I couldn't resist making reference to a book and character created by famed science fiction writer Robert Heinlein many years ago. You really are the man who sold the moon now. Yeah, well, D.D. Harriman is a personal hero, the kinder side of D.D. Harriman, but obviously I'm a big supporter of Heinlein and his work. This is such a big step, not the last one, I suspect, for the XPRIZE Foundation. No, it's the next logical step for us in space. And we are committed to launching between a quarter to half a billion dollars of prizes over the next five years. And with that, we'll be doing it in a multitude of different areas, including exploration, which is space and underwater, life sciences, energy, and the environment.

And so this is the next logical step for us in space. One thing I may have missed during the earlier presentation is the time frame. Have you gotten any feeling from any teams? And by the way, do you have any teams that have already expressed interest? So we are officially opening registration now, and I expect that we'll have teams register very rapidly. I expect that we'll have teams register very rapidly. I imagine that we will have teams making attempts for this prize within four years and a winner within five years.

That's my personal guess. I think it's very feasible. We've studied this. We've gone out and researched what we think teams would do. And so I expect we'll have, you know, six to 12 serious teams out there. And so I expect we'll have 6 to 12 serious teams out there. So in five years, it'll be the equivalent of the edge of the tarmac for Spaceship One. Yeah. We'll have teams on the launch pad with their vehicles integrated, ready to go.

We're very pleased that we'll be working with the Allen Telescope Array of SETI Institute to download the hundreds of megabytes of data coming from the moon and working with Universal Space Network to upload and communicate with the rovers on the moon. It's a great team effort here today. Congratulations, Peter. That's Peter Diamandis, Chairman and CEO of the XPRIZE Foundation, speaking with us immediately after the September 13 ceremony opening the Google Lunar X Prize competition. Want to go for the gold? We've got a link to the X Prize website at planetary.org slash radio. Good luck.

Emily is back. Bruce Betts and What's Up are just a minute or so away. I'm Emily Lakdawalla, back with Q&A. If life could hitch a ride from Mars to Earth on meteorites, could it have gotten to Europa and its oceans? Although it's possible that some meteorites from the inner solar system could hit Europa, it's virtually impossible that life could have survived the ride. The problem is that Europa has no atmosphere.

The atmospheres of Mars and Earth slow down meteorites before they land. The process heats the outside of the meteorite to white-hot temperatures, but it all happens so quickly that the inside of the meteorite never heats up, so any life ensconced within a rock would be insulated from the heat. On Europa, though, with no atmosphere to break the landing, and with the immense gravity of Jupiter accelerating incoming meteorites to high speeds, bugs probably couldn't survive the fiery impact. However, there is a new class of projectiles that could conceivably bring lifeforms to Europa. Any Europa lander that we build is going to have living stowaways,

no matter how carefully we attempt to clean it. On the other hand, the intense radiation environment in Jupiter orbit, which can be such a problem for other aspects of a Jupiter mission, could be a boon in the sterilizing effects it may have on Earth life that rides along. Got a question about the universe? Send it to us at planetaryradio at planetary.org. And now here's Matt with more Planetary Radio. Bruce Betts is on the line. Must mean it's time for What's Up here on Planetary Radio. We're going to take a look at the night sky

again and do a whole bunch of other stuff I'm sure, like give away a t-shirt. Bruce, welcome back. Thank you very much. Let's start with the fun night sky. We've got Jupiter, brightest star-like object in the evening sky. Check it out over in the west after sunset.

And it's going to keep getting lower over the coming weeks, so take it in now. And then we've got in the pre-dawn Venus is up now as the brightest star-like object just dominating the pre-dawn sky will be over in the east. And if you look below Venus, and it'll get easier as time goes on, you'll be able to see Saturn coming up much dimmer but still looking like a bright star. And they're actually going to close and reach their closest in the sky on October 15th, so coming up not too far down the

road. We also have Mars rising in the middle of the night in the east, as planets will have want to do, and looking reddish and by pre-dawn being high overhead, and it's headed for its opposition in December. Let's move on. This week in space history, in 1970, Luna 16 returns lunar samples. Soviet Luna 16 robotically returned their first set of lunar samples the year after Apollo 11 starts returning them for the U.S. And then three years later, the second Skylab crew returns after 59 days in space. That lunar sample return, that's still a pretty outstanding achievement.

It is. It's the, I believe, three lunas that return samples. They're the only sample returns from another planetary surface that have occurred successfully so far. I think I know what's next. Gosh, so predictable. Random space fact! Halloween is still a month away. I know, but I'm trying to warm up.

NASA's current plans for the Ares V launch vehicle, the one designed to take humans off to the moon, will put 55 metric tons into trans-lunar insertion off to the moon. Compare that to 45 tons for the Saturn V. So actually doing significantly better performance according to what they hope they'll be able to design. Very impressive. I thought so. Another big rocket. Can we give away a T-shirt? All right.

We asked you what kind of animal was launched into space by the U.S. on a V-2, and it actually survived impact, and this was on August 31, 1948, following a couple of monkey launches. What was that animal? And I guess there is some date confusion out there. How did we do? What did people tell us? Well, everybody except for one person did come up with the right answer. But there was this question about when it took place, whether it was 1948 or 1950.

In spite of that, everybody except one person who thought it was a rhesus monkey, as opposed to rhesus pieces, I guess, was correct when they said it was a mouse. It was indeed a rugged mouse. And was it 1948 or 1950? I'm going with 1949. Okay, split the difference. I really don't know. There are seemingly credible sources on both sides.

I foolishly thought this was a given using what happened to be a NASA site as a source, but there is conflict, and I'm sorry. I'm trying to get a hold of the original mouse to interview him, but have not succeeded yet, and maybe in one of our future shows we'll be able to. But I'm betting we found the random winner from the correct mouse answers, and who might that have been? We sure did. A lot of entrants, but Random.org picked Sven Weber.

Sven, who is a longtime listener, first-time winner, though, and I think he's entered many times in the past. It's interesting. He got lucky because he said his new job's very demanding, he's on the road a lot, and he'd missed a bunch of shows, but he caught up. He got to hear a lot of the recent episodes of his favorite radio show. Wow. And did he still have time to listen to Planetary Radio? Yeah, yeah, apparently so. Yeah, he saved a little bit for us, too.

Oh, good. You know what? He won. We're going to send him a Planetary Radio t-shirt. Congratulations. And if you'd like your shot at a Planetary Radio t-shirt, answer the following question. Fairly simple one here, but maybe not something people are thinking about. What is the name of NASA's planted... planted... no, let's try that again.

What is the name of NASA's planet... Take three. Take three. Take three. What is the name of NASA's planet hunting mission planned to launch within the next couple years? So this is one in development. It's part of the Discovery Program. What's the name of that? Go to planetary.org slash radio and find out how to enter.

Do so by Monday at 2 p.m. Pacific time. We look forward to hearing from you. That's it. We're out of time. All right, everybody. Go out there, look up at the night sky, and think about bobcats, wolves, and bears. Oh, my. Easy for him to say.

That's Bruce Betts. Oh, I get it. It's all alliterative. Bruce Betts is the director of projects for the Planetary Society, and he does join us every week here for What's Up. By the way, that contest deadline is 2 p.m. on Monday, October 1. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California. Have a great week. Thank you.