Google Lunar X Prize Is Lowering Its Expectations
Recognizing Giant Leaps: Google Lunar XPRIZE Establishes Milestone Prizes, Alex Hall, Space.com
“Two years ago, XPRIZE began a dialogue with teams to better understand the challenges that they were facing and to determine what steps we might take to better nurture and support this prize ecosystem. As a result, we determined that we needed to find a way to recognize and support the teams that were making substantial technical progress toward the requirements of the competition.”
Keith’s note: All of the Google Lunar X Prize competitors really need money. By creating these smaller prizes that are easier to achieve, the competitors have a chance to get some much-needed funding to keep their doors open. Of course, if Chang’e 3 lands on the Moon and deploys its rover, the Google Lunar X Prize automatically reduces by a significant amount. Add in the fact that none of the GLXP competitors have exhibited actual flight hardware or raised the funds to build and launch their vehicles and the chances for pulling this off by the December 2015 deadline are really starting to fade. This effort tosses some cash their way but also allows GLXP to proclaim “winners”. Whether this will actually improve the odds that the teams launch anything remains to be seen.
Keith’s update: The rules used to say “The competition’s grand prize is worth $20 million. To provide an extra incentive for teams to work quickly, the grand prize value will change to $15 million whenever a government-funded mission successfully explores the lunar surface, currently projected to occur in 2013.” Well, the prize decrease that would have resulted from a government-funded mission (e.g. Chang’e 3) has been removed. You can read the new rules here. Clearly the Google Lunar X Prize is quietly trying to get money to some of their teams much more easily – and sooner – and they are moving (or removing) the older goal posts so as to make it easier for teams to win these smaller prizes.
– Google Lunar X Prize: Changing Rules – and Fewer Entrants?, earlier post
– Dramatic Changes to Google Lunar X Prize Cash Prizes Under Consideration, earlier post
Even if nobody ends up winning any major prizes, this will still have been a very positive program, in terms of both what’s been learned technically by new players and as a proof of concept for stimulating R&D. The original X-Prize was great (I was in the desert the day that SpaceShipOne took the prize), but it was just a one time thing. Now we know for sure that the prize incentive can continue to work.
I’m not sure I agree with that. Sure the teams have had great fun playing “in their garage” but in the end I can’t see any innovative solution to have been designed, nor any new technology to have been developed (apart from maybe the clever cogs, literally, i.e. the gear train for the lander of one of the teams whose name I can’t remember). Has anybody proposed for instance new video streaming techniques to broadcast from space/the Moon? Has anybody invented an ultra low-cost propulsion subsystem? etc…
I am absolutely willing and hoping to be proven wrong, but I think Google misfired with this (and they’re beginning to see that, according the news item). It’s painfully clear to anybody in the field that going to the Moon will take X 100 M$ even with an ultra-integrated team and a cheap or free launch (of which none is forthcoming). It’s also clear no capitalist is willing to put this money in, because there’s no return, and there isn’t even a clear PR gain. The Sace Ship One X-prize was a fairly different context talking about fairly different orders of magnitude and some sort of an identifiable market.
I would have liked to see Google REALLY put up some bank, at least enough to recover the launch costs. Or they could have asked major advertisers to kick into a pot. But like Steve says, for really no cost at all to Google, they did spur some R&D spending.
The Lunar X-Prize is a curious affair. Money is not the prime motivation for any prize like this. These competitors are trying to develop technology that is a stepping stone for doing something more substantial. Some investment could be recouped with advertisements from the Moon and a lot of selfie photos such as Planetary Resources sold.
Moon Express at Moffett Field is one competitor. They keep their details close to the cuff. They had initially considered the Ames Common Bus that is now orbiting the Moon as LADEE. It was too heavy. Their present lander is quite lightweight, on the order of 100 kg. They also announced mergers with X-Prize competitors Rocket City Space Pioneers and Next Giant Leap.
One can now hitch a ride to a GTO or GEO for about $25M but you need a motor to take you the rest of the way. So altogether, you are talking about $50M to reach Lunar orbit. Then you still need a motor to land your vehicle. If you choose off-the-shelf, and considering the related software development, one is talking $20M. One can probably add $30M more for lander and payload development and assume a total cost of $100M as the minimum cost for landing a rover on the surface of the Moon. Not cheap and what do investors get in return, short or long term?
As a source of raw materials, the Moon does not compare well with Near-Earth Asteroids. It takes less energy to reach Mars’ Phobos or Deimos than the surface of our Moon and then you have to escape its gravity field to return something. And asteroids is a richer material than lunar regolith. Its the reason there are NEA mining start-ups with big names backing them and without any X-Prize incentive.
As a source of raw materials, the Moon does not compare well with Near-Earth Asteroids.
As a source of raw materials, the Moon has far more to offer than NEO’s. Take a look at all those circles on the Moon. Those are from NEO’s that have impacted. Thus we have billions of tons of water, metals, and other elements, including Thorium and Uranium for harvesting….
And… Operationally, it is only three days away, allowing for 24/7 telepresence operations from the Earth.
And… It has significant gravity allowing for heavy equipment operation.
And…. It has areas of permanent sunlight, enabling near term industrial operations without nuclear power.
I cannot argue much further. You may be right. I do understand that many or most of the asteroid bodies embed themselves deep under the surface. The deformation that we see as a crater is mostly lunar regolith. But as you point out there have been billions of impacts and there must be some recycling to the surface and enrichment in some local areas. The solar energy can be harvested and stored and a huge surplus could be built up such that material processing and escaping lunar gravity might be relatively insignificant amount of energy.
Devils in the details. Both show potential. Thanks for the counter point.
I think this argument needs some specifics. The worth of “raw materials” depends entirely on which materials you specifically need for a given task and/or at a given point in time.
Accessibility and location on the Moon are also factors that can’t be ignored. If there are countless tons of some element / material on the Moon that you need for your current undertaking but the nearest deposit is 1,000 km away and 20 meters down, that’s a problem. Asteroids being much smaller than the Moon may be an advantage in that case — unless, of course, the materials processing can’t be done in free fall and/or what you’re “building” is on the Moon.
If your “business” is the acquisition, processing and selling of materials for use in space (i.e., a supplier), then the on-going nature of your business, and the fact of various diverse delivery destinations, would likely argue in favor of sending asteroids (and the odd comet perhaps) in system to capture and process — the world’s longest assembly line. (The prizes aren’t affected by your intended final use, as far as I can tell.)
Materials storage, reclaiming, recycling, disposal, etc. all come into the argument as well. Like most things space-related, it all comes down to your specific requirements. Also, I think we need to start looking at everything space-related in repeatable, on-going terms; no more one-shot strategies. And finally, all decisions and processes need to stress factors related to safety and “ecology” (even in space) of the wastes and byproducts. We have an obligation to keep our house clean. I’d like to see the prizes adjusted according to how well they address these other factors.
Time cost of money.
The Moon is a few light seconds away, allowing for telepresence operations. It is also only 178 db away in terms of communications path loss, requiring a much less costly terrestrial infrastructure.
You have neither of these benefits at any NEO.
Also, we already know from the Apollo ground truth that in the highlands up to 1% of the regolith is meteoric metal….without the enhancements of local deposits. Based on a statistical study I did, the odds of a large metallic deposit within 50 km of the poles is quite high. This does not include the native aluminum, magnesium, and other metals that are everywhere.
Dennis,
I have no argument with the Moon being a convenient potential source, and I recognize that its natural proximity is an advantage, but it still comes down to your actual requirements.
Your comment doesn’t say it, but does suggest, that you are thinking of the Moon itself as where these resources are to be used; Yes / no?; and that makes a big difference. It also implies that you’re willing to dump your scrap on the Moon. I know the Moon is a big place, but so was Earth once.
I still think that if one’s goal is long-term ISRU for use on Earth or in space (not on the Moon), then putting asteroids (not necessarily NEOs) into the pipe on a regular basis and bringing them into cis-lunar space to be processed (there’s no hurry to get them here once you’re under way) makes most of the Moon’s advantages go away (but doesn’t preclude the Moon as a user’s destination).
Setting up processing facilities in space, rather than in a gravity well eliminates some big problems but retains the short comm times. Plus, you can potentially move the facility (if designed for it) should that become necessary or desirable. And you have plenty of room to “stock” various material sources by chaining asteroids and/or finished stock together and calling it a store room.
The big difference — your methodologies (it appears to me) are centered around developing the Moon; mine are centered around continuous supply of materials to various destinations over long time periods. Perhaps I’m being far too ambitious, but I strongly believe that, with the exception of planetary science missions, we need to stop being so completely single mission driven and think much more in terms of developing and proving long-term capabilities and facilities — but still integrated into an overall set of clearly defined long-term goals. We need to be doing things more aggressively, not simply bigger, a subtle but important difference.
Working and building in space will never be as quick and simple as Lego, but there’s no reason that I can see why it can’t be Plug and Play, if we think in terms of supply and demand instead of single missions. Shared resources, economies of scale, and the advantages of common components and procedures can be more readily accommodated as well. As a final thought, any scheme we employ should, in my opinion, be amenable to international cooperation (in the name of good old money).
This is just how I see things — one set-up that can accommodate many requirements. For what it’s worth.
Steve
… It also implies that you’re willing to dump your scrap on the Moon. I know the Moon is a big place, but so was Earth once……
There will be no scrap on the Moon. It will be the site of 100% reuse.
The discussion going on here and its relevance to the Lunar X-Prize all hinges on gravity. A primary reason why humans or even rovers have not set foot on the Moon lately is due to the double gravity well – Earth and Moon. Its costly. About $100M for a small rover to win the $15M prize, I think, is the bottom price. So if you aren’t going to piss away the investment of your backers, you have to have a strategy for doing something after winning the prize. For this reason and also the technical challenges, no one has jumped ahead of the pack.
The upfront investments to undertake any extra-terrestrial mining hinges on the gravity fields and thus the delta-V one has to apply to deliver equipment and return materials.
Both have potential and as Whitfield points out, it depends on what you intend to do with the resources. Whether asteroids or lunar surface mining, robotic processing of materials is the only economical approach. The upfront cost of delivering the initial hardware/robotics to the surface of the Moon, because of gravity, is far more than the cost of processing the first Near-Earth Asteroids. What you do with the materials thereafter holds another cost.
With hundreds of thousands of space rocks to choose from, one can pick and choose to minimize delta-V and maximize the choice of raw material. Dr. Lewis (Univ. AZ) pointed out in a recent talk that the smallest iron-nickel asteroid known today has more iron than all the iron smelted in human history. Also, the uniform distribution of essential materials found in common asteroids offer processing advantages over the non-uniform distribution found on the lunar surface. If the lunar highlands as Dennis mentioned is 1% asteroidal in origin, why settle for 1% when you can grab a small asteroid representing 100%. Sure there is more lunar regolith but its low grade and it non-uniformity (in contrast to pick and choosing an NEA) requires more energy and processing methods.
I agree, it depends where the processed material is going – Earth, Moon, interplanetary missions. Present day billionaires are lined up behind NEA mining start-ups. I don’t see the same for lunar mining. Initial investments for asteroid mining is high but once robotic mining becomes self-sustaining, the raw materials available from NEAs far outweigh terrestrial resources and can support the lives of 100s of billions of humans (Lewis, SETI Institute talk, 2013). We are talking the upfront investments but they will pale in comparison to the value of materials derived from space 50 to 100 years hence from autonomous robotic mining and manufacturing.
Another reason that I lean towards asteroid sources is that I don’t see how any single source of materials is actually of much value, unless all you’re after is raw “ore” to send somewhere else.
Iron and nickel are plentiful, presumably from both sources, but to make the steels, for instance, that are actually useful we also need carbon, chromium, manganese, vanadium, and other additives to get useful alloys.
The same goes for aluminum; there’s seemingly lots of it in both places, but without copper and other elements to make aluminum alloys strong enough to use and not be brittle, we have a problem.
And similar considerations for titanium, etc.
These are just obvious metallic examples, but we also have processing materials that will be needed in large quantities, such as hydrochloric acid (not easy to store in large quantities in space) and platinum, which is a catalyst in many processes for the alloys we’ll want.
A real challenge is in the plastics. There are all kinds of polymers — fiberglass, carbon fiber, all the various poly’s, and other plastics — for building materials, packaging and preserving, processing materials, etc.
The processing can be even more involved than the raw material acquisition, especially if we simply try to adopt Earth-based methods (which I’ve argued for a long time that we can’t do) — how do you build a sand mold and pour molten metal into it in free-fall and vacuum?
Then there’s the matter of recycling and scrap management, which must be mastered from day one if we’re not to kill ourselves.
And all of the above will require high-temperature heat sources (solar-based presumably), many of them at once, which will require significant working volume, and is perhaps not something you want to be doing on the Moon’s surface, especially considering that some emergencies are inevitable, particularly during the learning curve.
So, my bottom line is that to make any ISRU / space materials scheme of worthwhile size work, particularly if we’re looking for a profit, we’d have to bring a large number of materials sources (asteroids) to a common facility closer to home, because we’re simply not going to find everything we need close at hand anywhere — on the Moon or from asteroid sources (in the belt or NEOs). On Earth, you can put your processing facilities close to your sources and then transfer the processed materials to wherever they’re needed (via trains and trucks). From an economic standpoint, in space I believe we’ll have to bring all the source material to a common processing facility, probably in cis-lunar space. We may well (hopefully, for competition) end up with multiple such “process-everything” facilities, but I don’t envision any facilities for processing just one or two materials (except maybe for radioactive or very dangerous situations). (The processing engineers and production engineers in these facilities may end up having the toughest jobs in the solar system; but they sure won’t find it boring.)
In general, I believe we need to proceed in manageable steps (no mega-programs), but plan on much larger scales than ever before; otherwise we’ll end up with a large collection of used-once-and-tossed hardware and nothing cumulative to show for it, much like we have now.
Just my opinion.
I believe that the 800 pound gorilla in the room is property rights.
“This is mine therefore I get to add it to the books as an asset. I can sell it, use it as collateral for a loan, lease it, collect royalties from mineral rights, or sell/lease the mineral rights.”
Asteroids are going to be a whole hell of a lot easy to lay claim to as an asset in the ledger versus an acre on the moon.
I say asteroids, so we can start the speculative market. Until there is actual capital flows in speculation on ownership potential … the rest is just all academics.
I agree that this may become a problem, but as things stand now, we have two treaties, covering the Moon and asteroids, which say — as I read them — that no one can claim, own or sell either the materials or the rights to them, but everybody is free to use those materials. So, until the lawyers are brought in to try to change things, the only problem I can see is if you start processing a given resource asset and then I come along and try to grab the same one(s).
Governments are not allowed to claim sovernty. The reason the moon treaty came about was to close the perceived loophole in the outer space treaty, which is kinda vague on individuals and corporations having ownership.
If you take a bag and incase an asteriod and then drive away with it. going to be pretty damn hard to not being able to claim ownership.
NASA or an international consortium needs to find and catalog all NEAs and place that data into the public domain. The first reason for doing this is to safeguard earth from collisions and secondly as the starting point to making asteroids mankind’s natural resource. This second reason will also give everyone an equal footing. Its senseless to allow some private concern to hoard NEA data to support plans to profit from the materials. Also, besides the complete detection of NEAs down to about a 50 or 100 meter size, NASA needs to undertake surveyor missions to assay a distribution of NEAs. There is the scientific reason for the survey but it will also help kick-start asteroid mining. With close in observations of NEAs, the observations can be tied to remote (earth, LEO) observations. The risk of selecting the wrong NEA by prospectors will be minimized and make initial investments more affordable and initial returns sooner. GWU has experts in the field of space law and the UN is working on it. The question of NEA property rights will find answers. Lunar property rights exist but likely will need to be revised once private interests begin landing on the Moon.
Keith,
I believe the original GLXP rule involving future governmental missions would indeed have reduced the prize amount if China is successful, but that rule was removed several months ago, and the prize amount will not now be affected by the Chinese mission.
Derek Webber
RIght you are … they just quietly changed things ….
It’s because of a virus; they caught it from NASA.
Gee, sounds like space exploration is difficult and expensive. Whoda thunk it!