In dreams and in love there are no impossibilities.
~ Janus Arony ~
Monthly Archive for May, 2008
45For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~
22 When you walk, they will guide you;
when you sleep, they will watch over you;
when you awake, they will speak to you.
23 For these commands are a lamp,
this teaching is a light,
and the corrections of discipline
are the way to life,
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIF. - First it conquered cyberspace. Now, Google is setting its sights on outer space.
The company on Thursday announced the first 10 teams of competitors in its $30 million contest to send a spacecraft back to the moon to gain greater insights into the solar system and to find new sources of clean energy.
The Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) Lunar X Prize contest requires each team–largely composed of scientists and businesspeople–to build a robotic craft that can roam across the moon’s surface, beam video, images and data back to Earth and even tap into natural resources.
One bold ambition of the project: using lunar materials to make solar power collectors that can generate carbon-free energy, which is then transmitted to the Earth. This, of course, would fit in nicely with the Mountain View, Calif., company’s plan to develop alternative energy sources that are cheaper than coal and far less polluting. (See: ” Google Goes Green“) At least no one can accuse Google of thinking small.
Google isn’t paying the costs for the teams to develop the rockets; it’s simply holding out the carrot of a top prize of $20 million to the team that builds a vessel that can land on the moon and accomplish its mission. Each team has to raise the money to construct a spacecraft on its own.
The 10 teams vying to win Google’s top prize come from diverse industries and parts of the world. The teams include Astrobotic, a collaboration between Carnegie Mellon University and Raytheon (nyse: RTN - news - people ); Chandah, spearheaded by an energy industry entrepreneur from Texas; Romania’s Aeronautics and Cosmonautics Romanian Association; and Team Italia, a consortium of universities in Italy. Each team is using private funds to develop their robotic spacecrafts.
The contest, announced last fall, is being co-sponsored by the X Prize Foundation, a nonprofit organization that administers competitions to spur the development of technologies that aspire to solve dire problems around the world.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin came up with the idea for the contest after chatting with X Prize Foundation Chief Executive Peter Diamandis and PayPal founder Elon Musk. “It occurred to me that [Google] should be doing new kinds of things in ambitious and unexpected ways,” Brin told a group of reporters at Google’s headquarters Thursday.
He speculated that Google’s contest might get a spacecraft on the moon before the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration does. The company said it will award a cash prize of $20 million by the end of 2012 to the contestant that lands a privately funded craft on the moon, roams the lunar surface for at least 50 meters (164 feet) and transmits a specified set of images and data back to Earth. By contrast, NASA has a deadline of 2020 to get another craft to the moon.
Although Google said the contest has received more than 567 “expressions of interest” from scientists and businesspeople around the world, 10 teams have thus far paid the $10,000 registration fee and have proved that their space vehicles could be functional. Diamandis expects another 10 to 20 teams to register.
In addition to the first-place prize, Google will award $5 million to a runner-up. The company also plans to dole out another $5 million in “bonus prizes,” likely spread among several entrants.
The last spacecraft to land on the Moon was NASA’s Apollo 12 mission, nearly 40 years ago. Nancy Conrad, the widow of Apollo 12 commander Charles “Pete” Conrad, attended the Google media briefing. “I’m stoked we’re going back,” she said.
Wendy Tanaka 02.22.08, 6:00 AM ET, Forbes.com
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet, if Hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it, therefore, the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
~ Edgar Allan Poe ~
2His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
3“Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.
CARLSBAD, Calif. -(Dow Jones)- News Corp. (NWS) Chairman Rupert Murdoch predicted Wednesday that activist investor Carl Icahn’s proxy fight to control Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) will fail, but it will “make him a few hundred million dollars.”
Icahn recently proposed a slate of directors to run against Yahoo’s current board after the Internet company rejected Microsoft Corp.’s (MSFT) $44 billion bid to buy Yahoo.
“Icahn? That’s not serious. It’s just a lot of helpful noise,” Murdoch said during an onstage question and answer session Wednesday at the All Things D conference. “If I were a director of Yahoo I wouldn’t be worried.”
Murdoch also said that at one point, Yahoo and his company tried to work out their own deal. He said the two companies talked about adding MySpace, News Corp.’s social network, to Yahoo’s portal. But it never came to fruition, he said.
Even without the Yahoo deal, Murdoch said News Corp.’s Internet advertising revenues haven’t suffered. He said News Corp. is likely to pass $1 billion in revenues within the next three to four years. What gives him optimism is “we have some big advertisers come in over the last few months,” among other developments, he said.
Murdoch also heaped praise on Google Inc. (GOOG), whose dominance of the Internet ad revenues was the impetus behind Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo.
He called Google “the greatest company in the world,” and the reason why Microsoft is worried. “They see the danger of Google turning on them,” he said. “Yahoo has a hard job ahead to just holding onto their” search market share.
Turning to newspapers, Murdoch predicted that many have a limited future, perhaps as little as 30 years given how their readers and advertisers are turning to the Internet.
What will be left are major national papers, like The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times, while the traditional local daily will become Internet-only, he said.
News Corp. owns Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal and this newswire.
By Ben Charny
Dow Jones Newswires
415-765-8230
ben.charny@dowjones.com
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