On Fri, 07 Dec 2007 21:29:26 -0600, cavelamb himself
wrote:

I figure there is enough expertise in this group to successfully tackle
this challenge...

Now all it takes is money!


http://blogs.abcnews.com/scienceands...2/moon-20.html


The latest version of the X Prize is backed by Google: $20 million to
the first private enterprise that can land a robotic rover on the lunar
surface, send back images and data, and travel at least 500 meters--with
more rewards if it can find artifacts from the early days of lunar
exploration, when only the U.S. and Soviet governments could afford to
send probes.

The Apollo landings and the probes that preceded them were, to the X
Prize managers, "Moon 1.0"--done by Cold War powers in an expensive
rush, with no long-term plan to stay and mine the moon for whatever it
had to offer. Now comes Moon 2.0.

"The Google Lunar X PRIZE is an unprecedented international competition
that will challenge and inspire engineers and entrepreneurs from around
the world to develop low-cost methods of robotic space exploration." say
the backers.

They now have their first applicant: an operation called Odyssey Moon,
founded by Robert Richards, an entrepreneur who's also founded the
International Space University in France.

in my local environment it is only I who thinks this a damn
interesting challenge.

I've nutted out some of the technicalities just in the idle moments
today.

navigation to the moon is a piece of cake. launch just before midnight
on a moonlit night and have the robot navigator stay focussed on the
large polarised dot of light in the sky and head for it.

gods I'd get a legit excuse to experiment with godard rockets!

payload could be the size of a radio controlled model car.
launch a whole bundle of them for redundancy.

how do you prove you got there?
find and cut down the american flag and replace it with an australian
one :-)
that'd be sure to see a moon mission just to put back a bigger
american one :-)

damn what an interesting challenge!

Stealth Pilot