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Google: We Would Invest In A Space Elevator, But Only If It Worked

darnell — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 17:44:00 +0000

Last week, the search engine giant known as Google launched a venture fund creatively known as Google Ventures, which the company will use to invest in startups in and outside of its main industry (example: cleantech, healthcare, bio-tech, etc.).

Erick Schonfeld from TechCrunch had a chance to interview both Google execs running the fund, Bill Maris and Rich Miner (the latter known for helping create the Android OS running on T-Mobile’s G1 and other phones), and here is what they had to say regarding a potential investment regarding space elevators.

(TechCrunch) The day of the announcement, I chatted on the phone with Bill Maris and Rich Miner, the two Google executives who are managing the fund to get a sense of what they are interested in and how the fund will work.

It turns out they are open to investing in pretty much anything from the Internet and cloud computing to healthcare and mobile. “We don’t want to artificially limit ourselves,” says Miner. What about space elevators? “Show me one that works,” retorts Maris, “and I will invest in it.” The two of them will run the entire fund pretty much by themselves, bringing in other Googlers as needed for expertise and to help evaluate startups.

Note: Emphasis mine.

While Google is not shy about investing in space related projects (after all the founders helped launch the Google Lunar X-Prize a little over a year ago), there seems to be a high amount of skepticism regarding space elevators as a whole–at least among Googler engineers.

Perhaps the newly founded International Space Elevator Consortium could help convince Google that a space elevator is something worth investing in, as gaining the support from a public company could go a long ways towards convincing the masses that this long term project is indeed viable.

Google Celebrates NASA At 50

darnell — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 00:06:00 +0000

For those of you who daily use the search engine giant, Google has decided to join in the “festivities” by temporarily redesigning their logo in order to honor the space program.

On July 29^th, 1958, NASA came into being in a direct response to the USSR’s launch of Sputnik. Eleven years later NASA was able to land a man on the Moon, which helped spark our young species quest to ultimately colonize our solar system (and beyond).

While the agency has had its ups and downs, its successes and failures, one thing still holds true regarding NASA–no one has come even close to achieving what this agency has (as far as sending humans and robots to scour our solar system goes).

So happy birthday NASA! Here’s to 50 more years of success, and hopefully you will be celebrating your 100^th birthday on another world.

Will ARCA Become The Lunar FedEx Of The Future? (GLXP)

darnell — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 02:32:00 +0000

Last year, FedEx launched a humerous Superbowl commercial, joking about how the company was willing to service businesses located anywhere–even on the Moon.

Even though FedEx currently has no plans to service companies located off world, about 14 teams are determined to send their little robots across the lunar surface in order to claim the multimillion dollar prize offered by Google.

While many of the teams hope to secure the “purse prize,” in the hopes of attracting future investments (not to mention media attention), one contestant from Romania may find itself in a lucrative position of helping to send small packages inexpensively towards the lunar surface.

Although the Aeronautics and Cosmonautics Romanian Association’s (or ARCA) unique balloon-rocket-lander system will give them an advantage over the other teams competing in the Google Lunar X-Prize, it may also provide them with an opportunity to license their technology to packaging transportation services such as UPS, DHL and even FedEx.

After all, if NASA is going to establish lunar bases (not to mention China and Japan), then these companies may be interested in positioning themselves as the primary carrier for delivering Lunar packages.

(Image Credit: ARCA)

Google Lunar X-Prize: More Teams To Join?

darnell — Wed, 21 May 2008 02:50:00 +0000

Last year in an effort to motivate humanity to revisit the Moon, Google announced an X-Prize competition (aka GLXP) aimed at spurring the international community to land a rover on Earth’s nearest neighbor.

Thus far only 10 teams have accepted Google’s challenge, with sizes ranging from one (fairly wealthy) person to a little over a dozen.

But starting tomorrow (May 21^st) it looks as if more teams may be “entering the ring.”

(Chandah GLXP Blog) [A]t the Google headquarters [...] 10 teams presented themselves to the world. This is about to change. Tomorrow, more teams shall be announced, expanding the universe of explorers who aspire to go to moon!

It will be interesting to see who the new comers are, not to mention how they plan to launch, land and roam the lunar surface in order to claim the $20 million prize (not to mention fund their operations).

Thus far only one team has really demonstrated an innovative (and inexpensive) way at launching their “rover,” which could spell bad news for anyone rooting for the United States.

Note: Hopefully Interplanetary Ventures made the list, as they were seeking sponsors to pay the remaining fees.

Google X-Prize: LunaTrex "Secures" Creative Funding

darnell — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 01:10:00 +0000

It looks as if one of the contestants in the Google Lunar X-Prize has found a unique way of securing funding in order to win the $30 million prize.

(LunaTrex X-Prize Blog) Team LunaTrex has a few companies in its membership that are profitable and that also have profit-generating products that relate to aerospace. One such company, AirBuoyant, is coming out with what could be considered a precursor to the “flying car”, called VertiPod. VertiPod will have 2 models, the VP1 ultralight one-person craft, and the VP-2, two-person craft. Both will be in production this summer, and will be featured at Oshkosh AirVenture in Wisconsin.

AirBuoyant has made the commitment to direct all profits from the sales of VertiPods to Team LunaTrex’s GLXP pursuit, until that effort is fully funded. This could represent millions of dollars per year, and additionally, provides a bridge to the aerospace industry for many with an experiential product like VertiPod. While the site is still under construction, you can keep tabs on VertiPod’s progress at http://VertiPod.com.

While flying cars may be a more speculative industry, it is good to see more established players in the market backing smaller space firms whose goals may not yield a profit financially (at least immediately).

After all, if companies like Microsoft backed projects such as solar sails and space elevators, they would probably find themselves with a more favorable spotlight in the public (especially if one of these space firms actually succeeded).

Video: Google And Virgin Partner For Martian Colony

darnell — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 11:57:00 +0000

After realizing that going to the Moon was not their cup of tea, the Mountain View giant has decided to partner up with Virgin Galactic to launch the first Martian colony funded by corporate dollars instead of governmental taxes.

(Google Press Release) “Some people are calling Virgle an ‘interplanetary Noah’s Ark,’” said Virgin Group President and Founder Sir Richard Branson, who conceived the new venture. “I’m one of them. It’s a potentially remarkable business, but more than that, it’s a glorious adventure. For me, Virgle evokes the spirit of explorers such as Christopher Columbus and Marco Polo, who set sail looking for the New World. I do hope we’ll be a bit more efficient about actually finding it, though.” [...]

“Virgle is the ultimate application of a principle we’ve always believed at Google: that you can do well by doing good,” said Google co-founder Larry Page, who plans to share leadership of the new Martian civilization with Branson and Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

“We feel that ensuring the survival of the human race by helping it colonize a new planet is both a moral good in and of itself and also the most likely method of ensuring the survival of our best – okay, fine, only — base of web search volume and advertising inventory,” Page added. “So, you know, it’s, like, win-win.”

The plan calls for terraforming the planet within a 100 years, using the newly improved Virgle One spaceship to transport citizens willing to brave the dangers of Martian weather, radiation and wildlife in order to settle the red planet (via the Open Source Planet).

Despite the fact that experts have pointed out that terraforming Mars may be a bad idea, Sergey Brin has decided to lead the charge and is asking humans with Earthen citizenship to join him in his quest to conquer the crimson planet.

Sergey Brin is asking interested users to not only fill out the necessary forms online, but to also submit a video proving why they should be one of the lucky few to join him and several hundred pigs on the surface of another world.

Note: While Brin works out getting the permits for establishing a Martian colony, Larry Page is working on the Jupiter mission which involves settling the moons Ganymede and Callisto in the hopes of expanding Virgle’s empire across the solar system.

In other related news, Microsoft has decided to partner with the Saturn Corporation (a division of General Motors) to colonize Titan in the hopes that its methane lakes will help ease the energy crisis on our home world.

Microsoft hopes this initiative will help ease public tension after the software giant imprisoned Yahoo! employees on Mercury after they resisted its attempts at taking over the company.

Note: Microsoft and Google are still suing each other in court over the right to colonize the dwarf planet Ceres, which they believe holds the key towards settling Mars.

Video: Why Romania May Win The Google Lunar X-Prize

darnell — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 16:50:00 +0000

With almost a dozen teams competing for Google’s Lunar X-Prize, one would probably expect a team located within a major space power to dominate this international space race.

While a few teams are presenting innovative ways of landing on the Moon, most have yet to figure out how to leave their home planet without going broke.

Ironically their seems to be only one team that has created an inexpensive way of sending their “little rover” beyond our sky–and the fact that this team is located in Romania may humble competing teams in both the US and Canada.

(Arca Space) HAAS is an innovative air-launched, 3 stages orbital rocket, preliminary designed in 2006 using the technology developed at ARCA during The Ansari X Prize Competition and The European Private Manned Space Program. The rocket was named after Conrad Haas* (1509-1579) Austrian-Romanian medieval rocket pioneer, the first creator of multiple stages rockets. [...]

The HAAS rocket will be lifted at 18.000m altitude with the help of a 2.000.000 m3 Solar Montgolfier balloon.

While this “balloon rocket launch” may not be fit for humans, it may enable colonists to cheaply send supplies to the surface of the Moon, ensuring that our future lunar citizens do not starve to death.

Note: Even though the “solar volley ball” may not be suitable for lunar colonists in the future, it will probably have enough fuel to win the $30 million prize from Google, not to mention securing Romania’s place in the history books.

Poll Results: Is Google's Lunar X-Prize Good For Humanity?

darnell — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 00:34:00 +0000

Over on the sidebar of Colony Worlds, this author ran a mini poll asking readers whether or not Google’s X-Prize was of any benefit to humanity.

The poll closed four days ago with a grand total of 26 votes. Here are the results below:

Question: Is Google’s Lunar X-Prize Good For Humanity?

Choice 1:

(17 votes or 65%)

Choice 2: No, as it won’t reduce the cost of rocket launches (3 votes or 11%)

Choice 3: Maybe, if they provide more money (1 vote or 3%)

Choice 4: No, as going to Mars is more important (1 vote or 3%)

Choice 5: Yes, as we can finally discover what moonbats are (4 votes or 15%)

The next poll will deal with who will colonize the Moon first, which was inspired by Mike Griffin’s comments regarding China.

Thanks to everyone who participated in the poll, and I am looking forward to the results of the next! (and no, moonbats will not be apart of this unscientific survey).

Video: Can Google Really Take Us To The Moon?

darnell — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 22:16:00 +0000

(Hat Tip: Official Google Blog)

Google has recently teamed up with the X-Prize Foundation in order to launch the Google Lunar X-Prize challenge.

In order to help motivate the private sector, Google is offering a $20 million purse to anyone who soft lands a rover on the Moon, with five million dollars to any team coming in second place.

The X-Prize foundation has also provided a video to help inspire future engineers to join in the second great race towards the moon.

What makes this competition really worthwhile is the fact that the Google X-Prize Lunar challenge will be awarding an extra $5 million to the team that is able to find either ice water, a previous lunar landing or survive a “lunar night” (which is approximately 14.5 Earth days long).

Whether or not teams will actually be able to accomplish a soft landing for under $20 million is subject to debate (as launching rockets can be quite expensive).

However, if a team is able to actually land a rover upon the Moon’s surface and locate valuable resources, they may be able to not only secure future profits, but their place in history as well.

Google And NASA To Send A Satellite To Mars?

darnell — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 21:39:00 +0000

It looks like the search engine king and NASA are in discussions of exploring the red planet together. Although these are nothing more than conversations at best, doing so may be in both organizations best interests, if not humanities.

(Red Orbit) Among the companies with technical partnerships with NASA is search-engine operator Google. Google declined to send a representative to the event, but according to Terry Fong, a NASA group leader, the two organizations are busy on several projects and have even discussed the possibility of a satellite venture that Fong described as “really far” off. [...]

According to Fong, Google and NASA will begin in five weeks to unveil technology that will bring NASA data, such as atmospheric observations and sea temperatures, to the satellite navigation service Google Earth. The two organizations are working as well on a disaster-response project that will place real-time disaster data on Google Earth. That data could include the plume of a wild fire, the condition of a damaged bridge, or even the position of monitoring aircraft.

“At some point in time, they might become involved in missions” in space, said Fong, referring to the satellite venture.

Google is already partnering with NASA regarding its application program, Google Earth and their are rumors on a Martian collaboration as well.

If Google were able to actually finance a mission towards the red planet one could easily see them incorporating that information within a future Google Mars. Ironically while the search engine king’s competitors worry about conquering cyberspace on Earth, Google seems to be expanding its empire to other worlds.