By Michael Potter

On February 21st nine new Google Lunar X PRIZE teams were introduced to the world, joining team Odyssey Moon (we were the first team that officially announced in 2007). Google Headquarters was a fitting place to kick off the greatest commercial race of this century. Imagine when Google was founded a decade ago that the many people who heard of the plan could not humanly imagine the value and the utility that would be created. Even today if you were to talk to 99% of executives and managers, and explain that you have a working vision that includes free gourmet dinning facilities for employees, pool tables, extensive informal lounges, high end snacks, coffee, available at all times, they would respond that such an idea would never work, that the employees would lose all productivity and become perpetual slackers. Well folks this is the juggernaut called Google. Google is leading by example. Through shear force of leadership Google is challenging all of us to rethink conventional wisdom. And breaking the bonds of conventional wisdom is exactly what the Google Lunar X PRIZE is all about. Just because the superpower governments at the time surrendered the Moon when they shut down their Moon programs, this does not mean that humankind has to surrender our presence on our planet's great offshore island, Earth’s eighth continent, the Moon!

Odyssey Moon welcomes our new formidable and diverse competitive teams. As a global team, we embrace the geographic, cultural, technical, and financial diversity of the new 9 entrants. While many of the teams are focused on going specifically after the Google Lunar X PRIZE, we feel that Odyssey Moon, not only needs to capture the prize, but also needs to establish a viable class of lunar technology innovations that will enable widespread and permanent commercial solutions for space exploration.  

As a first time film director, I am finishing a film entitled “Orphans of Apollo: the Battle of the Mir & the New Space Revolution,” (www.orphansofapollo.com) which describes how an entire generation of people were promised that they would be living and working in space. Now orphaned by our governments, we have decided to go to space as entrepreneurs and private citizens….and this time to stay for good!