One of the cool things about working on the Google Lunar X PRIZE is the opportunity to work with Google. I've been a user of the search engine and a fan of the company for a long time now, and the company has always carried with it a certain aura of coolness. Perhaps it's the "Don't be evil" corporate mantra; maybe it's the cool employee perks; or perhaps it's the 20% Google time concept, where engineers can work on a project of their choosing for up to 20% of their time.

We at the Foundation are extremely fortunate that Google stepped forward to sponsor this prize for us--in fact, I'd like to think that the whole space industry and a large chunk of humanity as a whole are very fortunate, too. At one level, it makes perfect sense: Google's long been thought of both as a very innovative company and as a very space-savvy company. But at another level, it's still pretty shocking. After all, prior to the Google Lunar X PRIZE, Google had never sponsored anything. It's astounding to think that a company of that size had never attached its name to anything they didn't run... but somehow, that's actually true.

Since Google came on board, I've gotten the chance to spend some good time with some Googlers. The Mountain View campus is as cool as people say, and the people are disarmingly smart, incredibly creative, and hard-working to boot.

But today, I got to meet many more Googlers.

At lunch today, we joined one of our primary points of contact at Google to a lunch-time lecture being given as part of a special NASA 50th Anniversary lecture series. Today's featured speaker was Dr. Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO. The venue was the Newseum--a new venue for that museum that won't fully open for a few more months. The room we were in looked out over a scenic Washington cityscape, looking straight down Pennsylvania Avenue towards the Capitol. Over the lunch hour, Washington was white with snow, falling in thick flakes that floated on the wind, making a picturesque scene just over Schmidt's shoulder, with the US Capitol building at times just barely visible through the fog. (More below the photo).

Google CEO Eric Schmidt talks at a NASA 50th Anniversary Event. Photo Credit: W. Pomerantz, X PRIZE Foundation.

Dr. Schmidt's talk was, I thought, a very good one. He and an assistant breezed through some impressive demostrations of Google software, especially Google Earth and that program's Google Sky, Google Moon, and flight simulator features, all of which were very cool. But really, what he was doing was showing how Google has taken information that has been available for a long time, much of it for free, and put it together in a way that makes it much more accessible to people around the world. He told a story that shows directly how that can be used to allow truly participatory exploration:

"I've always wanted to climb Mount Everest. Now if you look at me, that clearly that's not going to happen. ...so, what we decided was So I was sitting in my just sitting in my office one day and thought, we'll, we'll just climb Mt. Everest on Google Earth. [Video display shows a virtual flyover of Mt. Everest] So, here we are. .... This is the vision, and I’ve achieved my objective [of climbing Mt. Everest]. ... I have a sense of what's it's like on the highest peak on earth ... I can participate in this new and interesting way."

Shortly after that, he showed another video that helped make that story real even for those of us who don't have the luxury of telling Google engineers what software to code! Showing video taken by a Swiss fighter pilot side-by-side with a re-creation of that exact video made by a blogger in Google Earth's flight simulator, he said, "this is available to all of us, through the work NASA and others have done, to make it possible to see topography and pictures... Someone else—just like me climbing Mt. Everest, this is perhaps a person who is unlikely to be flying a real F-18 in the real Swiss Alps--can really recreate this."

It's that kind of stuff that gets me so excited not only that we are offering this prize, but that we are offering it with a company like Google out there to really help us poor Earth-bound humans really enjoy the experience almost as though we were there. Watching that Swiss-Alps flyby, I thought of someday doing a lunar "drive" in a similar fashion, and literally got chills.

Towards the end of the speech, Dr. Schmidt had some very kind things to say about prizes--both about the Google Lunar X PRIZE and about Centennial Challenges. I know that there were some Hill staffers in attendance, and I hope that they got the message and will reconsider their unforunate decision to cut Centennial Challenges' funding down to zero yet again in the current appropriations cycle. To let the man speak for himself:

"When you build an innovation model, you want to build it in a way that's collaborative. … If you solve a new problem, solve it by opening it up to the public. Assume that you don't have all the answers (because I can assure you that we don't, and I suspect nobody does--everything's too connected). You're not getting the benefit of everyone unless you figure out a way to do it an open way. there's a couple of really good ones: NASA did something called the Centennial Challenge program. ... [Schmidt tells the story of the Astronaut Glove Challenge] … There's example after example of that, where you bring in new creativity of people who--maybe he didn't have a whole lot else going on in his life, maybe he needed something to work on. You know, you just made his day, and you saved yourself a million dollars; and more important, you served the mission very well. The Lunar X PRIZE that Google has announced. [He describes the rules] Why would we do this? Because it's fun! Right? It's just so much fun. Now, the people who are going to attempt the Google Lunar X PRIZE—and we think there's a whole bunch of folks—are probably going to spend more than the value of the prize. But what's nice about the prize is that it brings everybody together, it gets everyone's competitive juices, and you get the multiplicative effect, not just of the money that we're putting in, the money that NASA's putting in, but the money that all the other people--all of the other universities, and all of the other programs that really want to be part of this historic opportunity to change science in a big way."

Finally, Dr. Schmidt ended his presentation by sharing the wisdom of some NASA astronauts. He talked first of a story about something Apollo Astronaut Alan Bean said. “There’s a benefit to being an astronaut … you can get the attention of any kid for five minutes. Rapt attention. If we can’t use that observation to further the mission of NASA and things that we care about, we’re not doing our jobs right." He then recounted a conversation with Astronaut and now-Google employee Ed Lu, who was in attendance. Lu had told Schmidt that, while in space, he spent all of his time looking at the Earth, just as attentive as those children are when talking to Bean or other astronauts. Schmidt spoke of how Google wants to help convey that passion to everyone: "Every person that I know of basically looks at the world on their cell phone now. How can we get that same passion that Ed had, that same feeling about the world, the world around them, that sense of wonderment? ... How can we get this amazing amount of information ... so that it as that same level of rapt attention as Ed had?"

Great stuff, and I really enjoyed it.

Later in the evening, Google threw a little party to officially open their office in DC. It's a very cool center, and very environmentally friendly. Excellent times! Perhaps I can post more pictures later. But for now, just some final notes:

• Dr. Bob Richards, the CEO of Odyssey Moon, was on The Hour tonight. Worth watching!
• Tomorrow--Friday, January 18th--we'll be presenting the Conrad Award at NASA HQ. It should be broadcast live on NASA TV. I'll post more about this on Tuesday
• Also on Tuesday, I'll be speaking at a Congressional Nanotechnology Caucus briefing entitled: "Nanotechnology and Innovation, Commercialization, and Prize Competitions" over in the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Should be fun--hopefully I'll blog about that next Tuesday!