Gawker: valleywag, x prize

Startup hires Nasa to build its X Prize vehicle

Paul Boutin — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 19:20:00 EST

Odyssey Moon is an international partnership of guys with space cred on their resumes. They've hacked Google's $30 million Lunar X Prize contest brilliantly: Instead of hiring private contractors to build a lunar rover better and faster than Nasa's risk-averse bureaucracy, Odyssey Moon has hired Nasa to do the job as a contractor. Everybody wins! That is, as long as you think Odyssey Moon's vision of the Moon as an eighth continent paved with solar farms is a win.

23andMe advisor bidding for Google-backed prize with Google's help

Owen Thomas — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 11:40:00 EDT

Genetics researcher George Church is a great believer in openness, according to a profile of him in Wired. So he shouldn't mind a bit if we disclose some facts about his business dealings that we find fascinating. To wit:

He is an advisor to 23andMe, a Google-backed genetic-testing startup. Anne Wojcicki, 23andMe's cofounder, is married to Google cofounder Sergey Brin. Google has backed Church's Personal Genome Project, an effort to tie the human genome with personal health information, with an unrestricted grant. Church is an entrant in the Archon X Prize for Genomics, a $10 million genetics-research competition. Anne Wojcicki has donated money to the Archon X Prize at a Google-hosted gala. She and husband Brin, along with other Google executives, are also members of the X Prize's Vision Circle, a group of high-powered fundraising supporters. Oh, and just to complete things, 23andMe board member Esther Dyson is one of Church's test subjects.

Nothing really amiss here, but it all seems quite cozy. If Church's team wins the X Prize, Brin and Wojcicki can be quite content that their donations didn't end up too far from home. (Photo by Lloyd Ziff/Wired)

Land on moon, collect $30 million

Nick Douglas — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 17:28:29 EDT

One-upping the $10 million non-profit X Prize for commercial space travel, Google is offering $20 million to the first private enterprise that makes it to the moon. Of course, this is a Google venture, so the winner has to compete some secondary tasks to get the prize. Once they're done with the main bit of landing on the freaking moon, prize seekers must take video and walk some specified distances. Google offers bonus prizes for finding ice, spotting Apollo equipment, and surviving the lunar night. Great, the next lunar landing will play like an episode of Survivor.

X Prize goes for VC dollah

Chris Mohney — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 10:20:01 EST

On March 3, the X Prize Foundation — they of the rocket plane — will have a fund-raiser at Google to announce the next phase of their entrepreneurial carnival. The event aims to scare up $50 million to operate the foundation, but it's also designed to seduce venture capitalists into funding future X Prizes. Details are murky as to how this might work, though allusions are made to chances at equity stakes in successful prize-winners in various technological fields. Some VCs and analysts are more than a little skeptical of the show, though there may in fact be an actual TV show involved with some of the categories. Oh reality television, is there nothing you can't do?