Fly me to the moon

Having searched the planet to exhaustion, Google is aiming higher. It is sponsoring a $30 million Ansari X-Prize to the first privateer to land a robotic explorer on the moon. The goal is to prove that private space exploration is not only possible, but can be done cheaper and more efficiently than the government can do it. Recalling how proud I was to be human on that day in 2004 when SpaceShipOne won the first X-Prize for suborbital space flight, I’ll be following this attempt with a great deal of interest.

You’ll probably also be allowed onto Sergey Brin and Larry Page’s exclusive private aeroplane runway at NASA’s Moffett Field if you manage to get to the moon before the US government does, in six or more years, at a cost to the taxpayer of billions of dollars.

So hurry. And while you’re there, please take new photographs of the weird section (pictured here), which was last photographed by the Lunar Obiter back in the 1960s. Just to make sure that it really is Swiss cheese.