These are fascinating and very appreciated conversations, and thank you for the depth of thought behind them.

I think my concern about sharing too much is two-fold. First of all, I don't want to give ideas that we spend time and money developing away to help another team that has no interest in allying with LunaTrex, beat us. At the end of the day, this is, after all, a Competition.

However, the point about sponsorships is well taken. The real question then, is: how many potential, real sponsors actually visit this site? Other than the teams, and the loyal fans, what is the real impact of this site and the benefit to the teams as a whole?

I would say that if we disclose concepts, approaches, ideas, or even technology, which puts us at a disadvantage in a competition, then there is certainly no point. All can be revealed AFTER the PRIZE is won, and humanity benefits just the same. What's the rush in putting things out as you develop them? Especially when there are no cool pictures of equipment just yet...

Still, the flip side is that there probably isn't a lot of harm in revealing several things, and so we are trying to figure out what we want to reveal, and when the best timing is. Sponsors we are meeting with will have all the information anyway, so unless the site proves to be a fully-stocked pond of potential investors/sponsors, there is no sponsorship motivation to share things of any consequence...

Also, the second reason we don't often want to share is that we may change our minds about critical things, and we may not want to appear, or be perceived as "wishy-washy" or directionless... That is a minor concern, but one that could only affect our efforts negatively... There is nothing wrong with evolutionary development of a concept, but I'm talking about major shifts in approach. Not that this is planned, but if we made that decision, it would make us appear inconsistent with previous statements, which could be a negative. Again, not a big deal...

Thanks again for your comments. Keep 'em coming. We're happy to blog and will continue. As we have pics to share, we will.

Pete

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I think blogging is great! While I totally understand that some information has to be kept confidential, I am confident that there are plenty of cool stuff any team could blog about!
For example introducing some team members, shooting a small video of your facilities, taking pictures of your hardware if any...Or just saying why you think the Google Lunar X PRIZE is also a great human adventure!

As has been said so many times in the forums, how to get to the moon and win the prize is not a big secret - the general consensus is that it's mostly the money to hire the right engineers, buy the right parts, and talk to the right experienced people. In that sense I don't think there are many secrets that any team could be containing that are essential to their own mission success. Showing that your team is capable of winning the prize might be a tactic for rallying interest from potential investors. Depending on what your team's company goals are, the secrets worth keeping are probably the rights over data transmitted after placing some craft on the moon. Perhaps not even from a winning X PRIZE mission, but from a future mission.

The idea of keeping things underwraps until it's "the right time to release it" implies that a team thinks in terms of critical times of information distribution. Certainly, this comes from the fundamental aspect of how a team views the X PRIZE itself. The hold back and release aspect might be attributed to how a governmental program is run, yet some teams see the X PRIZE perhaps the way it was intended - as a catalyst to Commercial and Public engagement of moon exploration - and are willing to use their progress on their own mission to promote and further that public interest.

Informing other teams and the public about the challenges you face as you progress would probably be in line with the goals of this open international competition. This sharing is perhaps what separates space exploration in this fashion from the secretive nature of the Cold War era space programs that cost lives at the expense of keeping testing and engineering secrets. Perhaps the more practical argument could be that keeping a team blog going keeps the momentum of the team up, with everyone knowing what pace they have to consistently deliver to the world at.

If a team wished to show how far along they were within that process, and wished to educate the public on the problems they face and the solutions they've found, such a team could show what they were doing in their blogposts. However, if a team is just starting to wade into the shallow waters of this open space exploration enterprise, they may understandably wish to only be on the receiving end of the information pipeline. Consistently phrasing their blogposts as directed questions to the other teams or trying to lend some educated opinions on specific space engineering subjects would seem to be a preferred method of operation.

To some, this opinionated response itself might constitute a reasonable blogpost in their eyes, but will talking "at people" really get the same kind of broad enthusiasm as showing people something new or exciting? Thats up to each team to decide. After the prize is won, if the cheap and solid methods of getting to and traversing the moon are just as sealed off as before, then what was really achieved on the human scale? Just a single new space company? Perhaps, we all need to think bigger.