Moon 2.0 - Your Chance to Ride Along

As you may have noticed in the videos and posters you can find on the the Google Lunar X PRIZE website, we are referring to this competition and the missions spurred by the prize as Moon 2.0. This is also a theme that's been used, to a limited sense, in talking about the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge. While I was in India, I had a few people come up to me and ask me about this particular phrase,

Partly, of course, the Moon 2.0 theme references the fact that we hope the Google Lunar X PRIZE will kick off a second era of extensive lunar exploration, similar to the era of Lunar Orbiters, Rangers, Surveyors, Lunas, Lunokhods Zond, and Apollo missions. That rationale for the Moon 2.0 theme is apparent, but there's another reason that perhaps isn't as obvious--or maybe just doesn't translate as easily across generational or language gaps.

These days, a lot of the talk about the Internet--at least among my peers here in the USA--is about Web 2.0. This isn't a new internet protocol or a separate network (like Internet2). Instead, Web 2.0 represents a new way of thinking about the internet. If Web 1.0 was about portals and "push" technology--content produced by a central body and served up for the public--Web 2.0 is about public participation, sharing, and, increasingly often, user generated content. If Web 1.0 was a unprecedented and useful window to an enormous library, Web 2.0 is a new sort of town hall, where all users can participate.

We believe that the second era of lunar exploration will have an incredibly important aspect of public participation, and in a way fundamentally different than the first such era. Moon 1.0, to be sure--especially the Apollo mission--captured the public imagination to an extent rarely seen in any endeavor, regardless of the industry. But the members of the public were, for the most part, passive observers in the program, watching the events unfold from home.

This time around, it will be much more common for ordinary citizens from all around the world to actually play a role in the competition. Not only can any person from any country take part by forming or joining a team, but they will also be able to virtually 'ride along' with the lunar probes in new kind of way. I expect that each of our Google Lunar X PRIZE teams will find a new and unique way to do this, but the X PRIZE Foundation has already launched one: the Lunar Legacy program.

As part of the requirements for the Google Lunar X PRIZE, each team will be required to carry a small amount of payload provided by the X PRIZE Foundation to the surface of the Moon. Part of that payload space (and, more importantly, mass) will be used to carry a memory device that carries photos and messages provided by members of the viewing public through this program. Much as Apollo Astronaut Charlie Duke left a photograph of his family on the lunar surface as a symbol or inspiration and a lasting legacy of mankind's first voyages to the Moon, this program will allow anyone to send, for example, a photo of a loved one, to express their support or any other message. At the announcement of the Google Lunar X PRIZE, we took literally hundreds of photos of students, families, and enthusiasts to be included in part of this program. Then, we opened it up to allow anyone to participate.


Every once in a while, we'll spotlight a particularly interesting entry in the Lunar Legacy gallery. Today, I'd like to point you to a particularly poignant one. It would be hard for me to express it any more eloquently than the poster did herself, so if I may quote:

Robert P. (Bob) Verdier was a Boeing test conductor during the Apollo years. On July 16, 1969, he wrote and posted letters to each of his children. When they arrived a few days later in the mail, he said we could open them right away or put them in a safe place for future reading. I gave mine back to him to keep for me. After he died, my mom had boxes of his work life she wanted us to have. In amongst the old Saturn V firing manuals, badges and flightline passes, was his unopened letter to me.

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Her father ends the letter by imploring the next generation to "use it wisely"--to treasure the ability to reach out to our celestial neighbors. With Moon 2.0, finally--finally--my generation, not yet born during Moon 1.0, gets a chance to do just that.

Update: Funnily, just as I posted this, comedian Stephen Colbert is interviewing Apollo astronaut Jim Lovell on his television show, The Colbert Report. At the beginning of a pretty entertaining (and very complementary, for Colbert) interview, Colbert said, talking about his childhood fascination with the Apollo program and the people who made that possible: "my childhood was better than my children's childhood, because I had these heroes to look up to." I'm hopeful that Moon 2.0 can change that!