Japanese Government to Privatize – Receive Google X-PRIZE?

Posted by Bill Belew on September 14th, 2007 in Japan | No Comments

Japan is racing to privatize its government in hopes of receiving Google's X-PRIZE of $30 million for the first private company to land a robot on the moon.

Japan just launched its JAXA H-2A carrying the country's first lunar orbiter "Kaguya" and is wondering where the reverse button is…

Lead candidate for replacing the Prime Minister, Taro Aso, read in a comic book about a new plan for putting robots on the moon that can:

1. roll for a quarter of a mile

2. send back gigabytes of images of the moonJAXA%20H-2A.jpg

and do it soon…in less than 5 years…gee, that meets Google's 2012 deadline.

Maybe, just maybe, Japan can get that $20 million first prize.

Japan definitely has the

1. engineers

2. math students

3. computer science skills

but not the cool factor that Google would like.

Can't have everything, huh?

Great idea Google…but is $30 million all you can spare? I think not.

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  1. Tori says

    September 17, 2007

    I wonder if China is next?

    The next guy we will interview on Daily J has a neat article on the Sino-Japan space race
    http://www.keepingpaceinjapan.com/2007/09/sino-japanese-space-race.html

    If Japan does it is China sure to follow?

  2. Toad says

    September 19, 2007

    Google is currently sitting on 3.5 Billion dollars in cash. So this is really only a drop of what they actually own.

    It should be pretty interesting.