Many would probably say that launching a rover into space, landing it on the moon, and having it move around with a camera on top might sound cool, but it doesn't really accomplish anything. In the end, the contenders will have wasted a bunch of money to fly some metal to the moon and find out a little bit of information that will have no bearing on life here on Earth. (And Google will have wasted $25 million, though the benefits they reap in publicity will probably soothe their accountants' pain.) The winner (and only the winner) will of course receive the money, but aside from trying to win a lot of money, many might wonder, what is the real point of this contest?
Questions about this contest go hand in hand with those about the purpose of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Every year, NASA flies shuttles back and forth to the International Space Station, launches various satellites, sends deep space exploration rovers to one planet or another and designs future structures capable of space travel. But what does it accomplish? Does a video feed showing the surface of Pluto actually help any of us down here? Although it may seem like NASA isn't really accomplishing anything useful, nothing could be further from the truth. NASA, along with the Lunar X Prize, tests the limits of human ingenuity, creates useful new technology and helps us gain a better understanding of the universe around us.
The Lunar X Prize is not the first of its kind. The same group created a contest in 2004 with a $10-million prize to see who could send a manned craft to the cusp of space. While launching someone miles into the air just so they can fall back down may seem like a waste of money, when a technological experiment happens, it is hard to know whether or not it will actually benefit mankind in the future. It was a prize like this, in fact, that led to the first solo transatlantic flight, by Charles Lindbergh in the Spirit of St. Louis in 1927 (a measly $25,000 for that accomplishment).
While many people back then might have said that there was no way people would be flying regularly across the Atlantic, now thousands of people do it every day. In that same respect, though many people nowadays may say we obviously aren't going to have people flying regularly into space, who really knows. Commercial travel may someday incorporate these technologies into everyday use.
While flying straight up and coming back down may not be useful, it could pave the way to a practical spacecraft that flies high into the atmosphere and around the globe. And any new technology people come up with in trying to win the prize may always stand the chance of being incorporated into any number of things in society. The goal of these competitions is to bring talented and creative people together to use and come up with new technology. Their collective work to solve problems may also find application in other areas of science or society.
Some may also protest that since the government funds NASA with taxpayer dollars, these monies could easily be spent on a variety of more useful things such as healthcare and education. (Space contests generally don't face this criticism because private corporations and individuals fund them.) But I don't think these people actually know how much, or should I say how little, NASA costs the government.
This year's budget for NASA is approximately $17 billion. At first glance, the typical taxpayer will probably be appalled at that number. But these people forget the amounts of money that the government handles. The U.S. population numbers about 300 million people. The government gets taxes from all of these people and then has to spend money in various social and economic areas that benefit these 300 million people. The U.S. federal budget is estimated to be around $2.9 trillion for the 2008 fiscal year. This means NASAs budget constitutes only about 0.6 percent of all federal spending. The Iraq war has cost at least five times as much per year than NASA.
Critics may still say the government should not be wasting $17 billion anyway, even if it isn't that much relatively speaking. But the money doesn't go to waste. Even if NASA did not send deep space probes out, it's a very useful agency. It launches and monitors satellites, which are essential to worldwide communication on Earth. Much of the technology it designs for spacecraft can also be in other sectors of society such as in computers, aircraft and power sources. Experiments conducted on the International Space Station may lead to groundbreaking discoveries.
Thus although deep space satellites aren't the most useful of things to the layman, they still add to our knowledge base-and one of the goals of humanity should be to expand our knowledge to the edges of possibility. And who knows. Maybe we will find something extraordinary out there. And if not, we still may inadvertently invent a new beneficial technology while searching for that something out there.