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" 1. BURT&amp;#039;S BUSY The original X Prize, announced in 1996, would have been a fiasco if not for the freakish outside-the-box design genius and astonishing backyard engineering skills of Burt Rutan, who eventually won it. In eight years, none of the more than two dozen other alleged contenders--pretenders, really--got even remotely close to achieving the man-in-space goal. Without Rutan, the net result of the first X Prize would have been a blizzard of press releases and outlandish artists&amp;#039; renderings, spiced up with the occasional ground explosion and faked test-launch video. With the expiration of the original prize&amp;#039;s 2004 deadline, X Prize founder Peter Diamandis would have quietly folded his tent and given up this prize business. Unfortunately for Diamandis and Google, Rutan is busy for the next few years working for Richard Branson on SpaceShipTwo, the commercial man-in-space launcher based on the X Prize-winning SpaceShipOne. By the time Diamandis&amp;#039;s new deadline sets in, Rutan will be 71 years old and probably more interested in his golf game than sending a rover to the moon--instead of himself. &amp;amp;gt; Not Enough in the PursePLUS: 4 Private Space Industries Google Forgot &amp;amp;gt;  IntroductionEditor&amp;#039;s Letter | Expert Opinions | NASA Chief Q&amp;amp;amp;A | PollThe MoonLiving on the Lunar Base | Inside Orion Spacecraft | Moon&amp;#039;s Astronaut Threat | PodcastMarsSurviving the Red Planet | Buzz Aldrin&amp;#039;s Roadmap to Mars | Minding the Astronaut Brain | PodcastPrivate SpaceHandicapping the Race | Future of Space Business | Burt Rutan Q&amp;amp;amp;A | PodcastSearch for LifeScouting Crucial Spacecraft | U.S. Satellites Targeted | MIT Prof Q&amp;amp;amp;A | PodcastInteractive TimelineEvery Launch Since Sputnik It took Burt Rutan several years to build his X Prize-winning suborbital SpaceShipOne, which he&amp;#039;s following up now. (Photograph by Art Schreiber) 2. NOT ENOUGH IN THE PURSE It&amp;#039;s hard to imagine this project costing less than a few hundred million dollars; PayPal billionaire Elon Musk, so far the most accomplished of the &amp;quot;new space&amp;quot; entrepreneurs, has pumped an estimated $100 million into his Falcon 1 launch vehicle and still hasn&amp;#039;t reached orbit. Against that kind of financial investment, $20 million is a drop in the bucket. A prize winner would have to come up with millions upon millions on his own. Anyone who can come up with that kind of money would probably want to make up his own rules, not follow Google&amp;#039;s. Raising a few hundred million of OPM seems unlikely, since those OP usually like to see a potential for profit somewhere down the line. (Anybody got any ideas on how to make a profit from a moon rover?) Even space ventures with reasonable profit potential can&amp;#039;t raise money these days; NASA recently announced it would cancel a $207 million seed-money deal with a private firm, Rocketplane Kistler, to build a space shuttle replacement to service the International Space Station after 2010. The reason? RK couldn&amp;#039;t convince investors that the deal made sense. What about the possibility of a space-crazy billionaire willing to write the checks himself? Sure, Paul Allen was up for investing a net $10 million of his own money in SpaceShipOne (the effort cost $20 million in all). But would he throw 20 or 30 times that into a space stunt that involved robots and not human beings? Again, very unlikely. &amp;amp;gt; Burt&amp;#039;s BusyNot Enough TimePLUS: 4 Private Space Industries Google Forgot &amp;amp;gt;  IntroductionEditor&amp;#039;s Letter | Expert Opinions | NASA Chief Q&amp;amp;amp;A | PollThe MoonLiving on the Lunar Base | Inside Orion Spacecraft | Moon&amp;#039;s Astronaut Threat | PodcastMarsSurviving the Red Planet | Buzz Aldrin&amp;#039;s Roadmap to Mars | Minding the Astronaut Brain | PodcastPrivate SpaceHandicapping the Race | Future of Space Business | Burt Rutan Q&amp;amp;amp;A | PodcastSearch for LifeScouting Crucial Spacecraft | U.S. Satellites Targeted | MIT Prof Q&amp;amp;amp;A | PodcastInteractive TimelineEvery Launch Since Sputnik NASA will spend years developing the Orion spacecraft to replace the Space Shuttle and reach the moon again by 2020, with plenty of contract cancellations along the way. (Illustration by Transluszent.de) 3. NOT ENOUGH TIME To win the full $20 million grand prize, a new rover must land and do its thing by the end of 2012--barely more than five years away. (A $15 million consolation prize will be available until the end of 2014.) That&amp;#039;s not nearly enough time to design, build and test all of the necessary components--a rover, launch rocket, earth-to-moon propulsion and guidance system and a soft-landing module. Musk, if he decides to go for the prize, would have a huge head start over the field, if for no other reason than he&amp;#039;s got a five-year head start. Falcon 1, expected to have its first successful orbital launch later this year, could theoretically serve as the basis for a moon vehicle. But could even a modified Falcon 1 get a lander/rover to the lunar surface within the next five years? Talk about a moon shot. And for anyone else starting from scratch on a launcher, the 2012 deadline is pure fantasy. &amp;amp;gt; Not Enough in the PurseToo Darn ToughPLUS: 4 Private Space Industries Google Forgot &amp;amp;gt;  IntroductionEditor&amp;#039;s Letter | Expert Opinions | NASA Chief Q&amp;amp;amp;A | PollThe MoonLiving on the Lunar Base | Inside Orion Spacecraft | Moon&amp;#039;s Astronaut Threat | PodcastMarsSurviving the Red Planet | Buzz Aldrin&amp;#039;s Roadmap to Mars | Minding the Astronaut Brain | PodcastPrivate SpaceHandicapping the Race | Future of Space Business | Burt Rutan Q&amp;amp;amp;A | PodcastSearch for LifeScouting Crucial Spacecraft | U.S. Satellites Targeted | MIT Prof Q&amp;amp;amp;A | PodcastInteractive TimelineEvery Launch Since Sputnik Elon Musk has spent some five years developing Falcon 1 (left), with two launch attempts at orbit scheduled for later this year. (Photographs Courtesy of SpaceX) 4. TOO DARN TOUGH It&amp;#039;s a serious technical challenge to soft-land a payload on the moon. (That&amp;#039;s why it hasn&amp;#039;t been done for the last 35 years or so, by NASA or anyone else.) No private firm has even achieved orbit yet, and that&amp;#039;s only the first baby step in an incredibly complex sequence of events. From low Earth orbit, a payload must set out on a precise trajectory to the moon, then brake into lunar orbit. Next comes the hardest part of all: descending to the moon&amp;#039;s surface on rocket power alone. (By contrast, a parachute-borne soft landing through the atmosphere of Mars is a piece of cake.) Overall, the energy required to soft land a pound on the surface of the moon is hundreds of times greater than that required to lift a pound to an altitude of 62 miles, as Rutan was barely able to do. One strategy to minimize the energy requirement is to make the rover as small as possible--every pound saved on the rover would have an exponential weight-saving effect on the entire vehicle. But the rover can&amp;#039;t be too small; otherwise, it wouldn&amp;#039;t be able to negotiate the dusty, rocky 500 meters required to win the prize. &amp;amp;gt; Not Enough TimeIt&amp;#039;s Cooler to Be GreenPLUS: 4 Private Space Industries Google Forgot &amp;amp;gt;  IntroductionEditor&amp;#039;s Letter | Expert Opinions | NASA Chief Q&amp;amp;amp;A | PollThe MoonLiving on the Lunar Base | Inside Orion Spacecraft | Moon&amp;#039;s Astronaut Threat | PodcastMarsSurviving the Red Planet | Buzz Aldrin&amp;#039;s Roadmap to Mars | Minding the Astronaut Brain | PodcastPrivate SpaceHandicapping the Race | Future of Space Business | Burt Rutan Q&amp;amp;amp;A | PodcastSearch for LifeScouting Crucial Spacecraft | U.S. Satellites Targeted | MIT Prof Q&amp;amp;amp;A | PodcastInteractive TimelineEvery Launch Since Sputnik After a three-day journey, circa 2020, NASA&amp;#039;s Apollo-like Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle will orbit the moon unmanned as astronauts descend to the lunar surface in the Artemis lander. (Concept render by Jeremy Cook) 5. IT&amp;#039;S COOLER TO BE GREEN Private space shots just for the hell of it are starting to look a bit tacky. Newly aware of certain inconvenient truths, hip billionaires now have an array of greener, more humanitarian prize-winning alternatives to pursue. The X Prize Foundation itself is offering an Automotive X Prize for a 100-mpg car, as well as a $10 million prize to sequence 100 human genomes in 10 days. Richard Branson, teaming with Al Gore, is offering $25 million for the best project to reduce global warming. By comparison, simply repeating what NASA did three decades ago, without the human drama of a man aboard, seems kind of trivial. &amp;amp;gt; Too Darn Tough PLUS: 4 Private Space Industries Google Forgot &amp;amp;gt;  IntroductionEditor&amp;#039;s Letter | Expert Opinions | NASA Chief Q&amp;amp;amp;A | PollThe MoonLiving on the Lunar Base | Inside Orion Spacecraft | Moon&amp;#039;s Astronaut Threat | PodcastMarsSurviving the Red Planet | Buzz Aldrin&amp;#039;s Roadmap to Mars | Minding the Astronaut Brain | PodcastPrivate SpaceHandicapping the Race | Future of Space Business | Burt Rutan Q&amp;amp;amp;A | PodcastSearch for LifeScouting Crucial Spacecraft | U.S. Satellites Targeted | MIT Prof Q&amp;amp;amp;A | PodcastInteractive TimelineEvery Launch Since Sputnik The Virgin Earth Challenge, spearheaded by Richard Branson (left) and Al Gore, has a $25 million purse waiting upon &amp;quot;the removal of anthropogenic, atmospheric greenhouse gases so as to contribute materially to the stability of Earth&amp;#039;s climate.&amp;quot; (Photograph Courtesy of Virgin)  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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