Quote:
quote:Originally posted by Dragan
I'm all for advancement of technology, and maybe (hopefully) I'm missing something in this whole concept, but it strikes me that what you're talking about here is a potential global investment of many billions of dollars, including an R&D investment on Segway's part of, at the very least, many millions of dollars on little more than the pure speculation that other firms will
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spend money for space or for earth is an old dispute that will exist forever
I think that spend money for space is NOT a waste, you can agree that space has many usefull applications (weather sat, comm, etc.) but we can't have only good things, final applications is also a result of many mistakes
about moonrovers... they don't need BILLIONS... NASA has a plan to send a few rovers in 2010-2015 to search land sites for new manned missions... well... the total NASA budget for that plan will be around $400 million!
consider that NASA has high prices, high specs, heavy vehicles, army of scientists and engineers to pay, infrastructures, expensive rockets, etc.
a private (single and very litte) moonrover may need a few millions to develop, a few (companies or universities) engineers and a $20 million "commercial" rocket to launch (many countries and space companies sell them including launch support)
about the "unperfect world"... I think that a private moon race may happen JUST because we are in an unperfect world where 90% of money is
not spend for research but for useless things and for "image", prestige, games, advertising, etc. (the money to launch a rover on the moon may be LESS than ONE superbowl TV commercial...)
with my prize I want to demonstrate that launch a rover on the moon may be easy also for privates and at low cost, but the effort will be NOT only for advertising and prestige, in fact, one of the rules will be that winners must share and give FREE rovers' knowlendge, moon images and moon exploration time to the world's scientific community
the final purpose of the prize is NOT only "advertising" and "prestige" but... MORE space, MORE science, MORE exploration, MORE konwlendge
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Moonrovers' Prize Competition
www.gaetanomarano.it/moonprize/moonprize.html