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WP:MOSTM supports the old title. Since your move was undiscussed I've reverted it, if you disagree please take it to
WP:RM. --W.D.Graham 13:14, 5 September 2013 (UTC)reply
The coalescing plans of a few teams to actually plan 2015 launches is undercovered at present
There seem to have been several announcements recently with a few of the better-funded GXLP teams putting down real money for launch deposits with various launch service providers, but not much in the article to reflect the more substantive launch plans. Here are a couple:
I've seen others. But with real launches being scheduled/deposits-paid, it seems it may be time to take the article out of the speculative unicorns phase and begin to do more encyclopedic coverage of the few teams that are actually making a run for the GXLP prize.
N2e (
talk) 17:25, 11 December 2013 (UTC)reply
I was thinking about the same. I don't find the current state of the article very "unicorny". But there should be a new section with planned launches. And the milestones will hopefully also give a way to track the progress of the teams, or to separate those with an actual chance from those that are "just playing".
Wild8oar (
talk) 18:56, 11 December 2013 (UTC)reply
As of June 2015, it appears (per IEEE Spectrum) that none of the teams currently have a launch reservation, even though only 18 months remain until the prize expires. I have updated the history section and the article lede.
N2e (
talk) 12:59, 12 June 2014 (UTC)reply
Exact deadline?
When exactly is the current deadline? It must be the beginning of 2018-01-01, but is that UTC, GMT, or some arbitrary local time? The article should say, in a manner which allows for the possibility of a Leap Second in the case of UTC.
94.30.84.71 (
talk) 16:31, 31 August 2016 (UTC)reply
I don't think this has to be added to the article, and certainly not down to a second. I also think they would extend the deadline by one day if necessary. --
mfb (
talk) 11:48, 1 September 2016 (UTC)reply
Launch contracts coming in: Part-time scientists
I'll leave this here, and include it in the article in the next days until someone else is faster. --
mfb (
talk) 01:30, 30 November 2016 (UTC)reply
Logo update
The logo to Google and XPRIZE has changed, so the Google Lunar XPRIZE logo has, too.
I'm unable to find a vector for the logo, and on their site there is only white PNG on their site, and I don't know if that is Creative Commons.
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Google Lunar X Prize. Please take a moment to review
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The third paragraph does not list
SpaceIL as one of the four remaining competitors. Elsewhere in the article, it is listed as a still-viable contender. Please resolve this discrepancy.
199.46.249.149 (
talk) 17:13, 12 July 2017 (UTC)reply
External links modified
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X PRIZE foundation will let the prize expire, unclaimed
The X PRIZE foundation will let the prize expire, unclaimed. That is all pretty well explicated in the article now, with sources. None of the five teams will make it by the deadline, as no launches are even scheduled before the deadline.
The teams are, a couple of days later, mostly saying they
will continue some forward work, and sorta kinda might get to the moon with their landers later on. We'll see.
N2e (
talk) 01:41, 26 January 2018 (UTC)reply
It is a bummer for team Hakuto, as their rover is finished and was shipped to India for integration to the PSLV. (Team Indus' rover is 80% finished so they can't complain).
BatteryIncluded (
talk) 02:38, 26 January 2018 (UTC)reply
Cancelled ISRO
This needs updating for the final status before the announcement by Google, when ISRO cancelled the launch contract, and all teams relying on ISRO exited the competition before it died. --
70.52.11.217 (
talk) 20:11, 2 February 2018 (UTC)reply
What I read in the related news is that the TeamIndus asked to dissolve the contract as they could not get a launch soon enough. The cancelation was amicable and left the window open for a future contract. -
BatteryIncluded (
talk) 22:47, 2 February 2018 (UTC)reply
In either case, they didn't have a launch contract, so fell out of competition before the end announced by Google. --
70.52.11.217 (
talk) 01:36, 3 February 2018 (UTC)reply
not sure about Astrobotic
A couple of recent (2018) citations say that Astrobotic's lander is expected to carry rovers belonging to Teams Hakuto and AngelicVM, but Hakuto (ispace) has announced plans which don't include Astrobotic. I suspect the Astrobotic citations are both based on
https://www.astrobotic.com/manifest which hasn't been updated since 2015, and Astrobotic may not be carrying the AngelicVM lander either. We'll see.
Dan Bloch (
talk) 00:40, 19 December 2018 (UTC)reply
List of teams is incorrect
The list of teams shows entries that were not actually registered for the competition. The total should be less than 20. This article explains that "Shortly after the announcement of the complete roster of teams, an X Prize Foundation official noted that a total of thirty one teams entered a partial registration program by filing a "Letter of Intent" to compete; of these, twenty did indeed register or join other registered teams, while eleven ultimately did not register". The reference could be better than a blog, but it needs to be corrected. -
Rowan Forest (
talk) 21:32, 25 February 2019 (UTC)reply
A good and useful updated source
This article by space journalist Jeff Foust takes a good cross-team approach to provide a mid-2019 update on a number of the teams that had been part of the final group competing for the GXLP. Many changing plans: e.g., both SpaceIL and Team Indus, who had stated they would go to the Moon even without GXLP incentive have now announced they will not be doing that. Here is the
link.
N2e (
talk) 11:05, 9 July 2019 (UTC)reply
Scope of the prize included the rocket
My edit, that "bringing a rover to the moon" was now reverted, saying that "the challenge did not include bringing the rover to the moon". Sorry, please have a look at the archives, like this LunarX website version from 2008:
"The Google Lunar X PRIZE is a $30 million competition for the first privately funded team to send a robot to the moon, travel 500 meters and transmit video, images and data back to the Earth."
The rocket developement was clearly part of the competition, and there was no "Taxi service" offered by Google-LunarX.
A friend of mine was affiliated to one of the teams, and offered a workshop about rocket propulsion, including a hint on
escape velocity. Some teams understood that rocket developement was the main challenge, and focused their efforts on it, like the netherland and danish teams, see this wired article:
If that aspect was just lost over time, or later downplayed by the foundation, because it was a little bit naive, is not ours to judge - but to document the original concept. --
Edoe (
talk) 10:29, 10 February 2021 (UTC)reply
It was part of the competition to get the rover there (trivially: you can't drive on the Moon without getting there), but you don't need to develop the rocket(s). None of the teams developed an orbital rocket, they were all aiming at launches with rockets by independent companies. There are teams developing suborbital or orbital rockets, but these don't want to go to the Moon. -
mfb (
talk) 15:12, 10 February 2021 (UTC)reply
There are three vehicles involved, a launch vehicle, a lander, and a rover. Launch technology is extremely difficult and expensive. As Mfb said, none of the teams were doing their own launches. To put this in perspective, the teams typically had a budget on the order of $100 million, more than half of which went directly to a rocket launch company to put them in Earth orbit. The nearly successful Israeli team used SpaceX. The Danish group in the Wired article above wasn't involved in the Lunar X Prize, they're just rocket enthusiasts. Also note, their best efforts only went up a few tens of kilometers, with no payload.
Next there's the lander, which does have rocket propulsion, but is much smaller since it doesn't have to escape Earth's gravity. It goes from Earth orbit to the moon. Finally there's the rover, which travels on wheels or treads. As I mentioned in my edit summary, not all the teams had their own lander--specifically, the Japanese team Hakuto was planning to send their rover on the Indian team TeamIndus's lander.
To avoid confusion about this, and because the
current citation specifically says that the competition is "to land a privately funded rover on the moon, travel 500 meters, and transmit back high definition video and images", I think the current wording is better, but if you want to add your source and change the wording it's not a big deal.
Dan Bloch (
talk) 19:15, 10 February 2021 (UTC)reply
"None of the teams developed an orbital rocket" - that's not right, at least the danish (
Copenhagen Suborbitals) and netherland teams tried, built rocket engines, posted videos of the test runs, published about it. Over time more and more teams learned that rocket developement was too costly and/or not embraced by their governments, and left the competition.
"I think the current wording is better" - The current 'wording' represents the current attitude of Xprize how they would like to describe their canceled project. But at the time when the prize was actually offered, the 'wording' - actually condition - was send a robot to the moon. So, if WP reports about the prize it makes only sense to describe the conditions at the time when it was offered, not the PR talk that is used to overplay them later. --
Edoe (
talk) 00:29, 11 February 2021 (UTC)reply
Again, the Danish and Dutch groups are rocket enthusiasts. There's no evidence that they ever had a connection with the Lunar X Prize competition.
We can only guess why they changed the "original announcement" at the time when the teams actually signed (and paid a starting fee of 10,000 US$ each) to "send a robot to the Moon" - maybe SpaceX clarified that they would not sponsor the rocket? More Sources:
1.
Here is a report of the Lunar X Prize conditions and rules, with several positions clarifying that "launch" was part of the game (published 2008-06-02 accotrding to Meta-tag):
Each team must consult with the competition's administrators six months before attempting a launch.
Teams can launch their respective vehicles from any launch facility. ...
In order to win the full Lunar X Prize, a team must be the first to complete the following tasks: .. Launch a vehicle and make a soft landing on the surface of the moon.
2. And here is an
article by The Verge from Dec 2015: "A second team in the Google Lunar X Prize competition has secured a rocket to take its lunar lander into space. Moon Express ... is now one of only two teams in the X Prize competition to have secured a ride into space for its lunar lander" - "The Google Lunar X Prize competition challenges private companies to build a spacecraft that can land on the Moon ... But just making the lander isn't enough; the companies need to find a rocket that will take their hardware to the lunar surface."
3. This
satmagazine.com article from 2017 reports: "The NEPTUNE rocket test .. that will carry all payloads listed in this article is also being tested on this launch for use as the main structural and propulsion component for SYNERGY MOON’s LUNA Moon Rocket, which it will fly in its bid to win the Google Lunar X PRIZE."
Nothing that you've added changes my view that since none of the teams had the ability to launch their own rockets it makes more sense to focus on the landing. But as I said in my first reply, it's not a big deal. If you add a citation supporting "travel to the moon" wording, you can change the wording.
Dan Bloch (
talk) 18:08, 11 February 2021 (UTC)reply
Right, the teams who actually understood the rules realized that the "launch" part of the deal was way off their abilities. But this article is about the prize, and thus should focus on its terms, not the later conclusions by the teams. What I propose is adding a small chapter "Rules and Conditions", with citations from the howstuffworks.com article. --
Edoe (
talk) 18:24, 11 February 2021 (UTC)reply