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Do you want $20 Million? Do you have a degree in astrophysics, some substantial engineering talent, or a semi-sentient robot lying around? If so, Google wants to hear from you.

X-Prize

Google

Google is sponsoring a prize of $30 Million for the first private firm to make a soft landing on the moon with an autonomous robot. The robot will have to complete several tasks, including traveling a set distance and taking photographs. It will also have to be equipped with a high-definition video camera and be able to transmit images back to earth.

To sweeten the pot, Google plans to throw in an additional $5 Million for any company that can go above and beyond this and complete harder tasks like surviving a lunar night and taking pictures of Apollo equipment.

The second prize will be the still respectable sum of $5 Million, and will go to the second private firm that makes the journey. The contest will be open until 2012 and the prize money will remain on tap until 2014 if it goes unclaimed.

Web 2.0 Roundup

You might be asking yourself, “how much does it cost to go to the moon these days?” The answer is likely, quite a bit more than $20 Million. The prize money is designed to encourage further research into cheap space travel. As likely as not, it will be a consortium of firms or at least a single firm with a slew of backers that will finally make it off planet.

Google has long been extended its reach to include pet projects like this. For the company, it’s a win-win. They get to put their name on a potentially world changing project, and underfunded research projects get an injection of much needed capital. I only wish more companies would join in this experiment.

The next project on the X-Prize’s docket is a $10 Million reward for sequencing 100 human genomes in 10 days or less.

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