Contact: Rachel MacKnight
rmacknight@quantum3ventures.com
Quantum3 Ventures Lifts Off in Race to the Moon Nimble Washington, D.C., Team Pledges an All-American Mission to the Moon
(Mountain View, Calif.) – Quantum3 Ventures, a private enterprise headquartered in Washington, D.C., today became an official contestant in the Google Lunar X PRIZE. The competition will produce the first landing on the lunar surface by private citizens and is the latest in a series of challenges sponsored by the X PRIZE Foundation to foster privately-funded technological innovation.
Leaders of Google and the X PRIZE Foundation welcomed the Quantum3 team into the race today during an announcement event at the headquarters of the Internet search engine giant in Mountain View, California. The Google Lunar X PRIZE is a $30 million competition for the first privately funded team to send a robot to the moon, travel 500 meters, and transmit video, images and data back to Earth.
Quantum3, with its spacecraft Moondancer, is uniquely positioned to be the team that continues America’s tradition of innovation and leadership in space exploration. Three seasoned executives, Paul Carliner, Courtney Stadd and Liam Sarsfield, founded the venture in January 2008. Together, they share more than 50 years of leadership experience in the aerospace industry and government.
The Quantum3 founders believe the X PRIZE presents an opportunity to showcase American ingenuity at its best. Just as Charles Lindbergh’s solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean transformed aviation, the Google Lunar X PRIZE will change the way the world looks at space exploration.
“The original human landing on the Moon was an American-led mission carried out in the best tradition of our nation’s pioneering spirit,” said Paul Carliner, cofounder and president of Quantum3. “As we approach the 40th anniversary of that mission, Quantum3 will field an American-led team using American technology to win this challenge.”
Carliner brings to the Quantum3 team 17 years of experience in the federal government, previously serving as the staff director of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee that managed NASA's $17 billion annual budget. He is currently founder and president of Carliner Strategies, L.L.C., a strategic consulting and government relations firm located in Washington, D.C.
In addition to rising to the challenge of the Google Lunar X PRIZE, Quantum3 is developing a business model designed to sustain a revenue stream throughout the mission and to establish post-mission profits.
“Quantum3 is an independent, handpicked team of entrepreneurs with the ability to respond quickly to new opportunities,” said Courtney Stadd, Quantum3 senior vice president and cofounder. Stadd is a veteran of the aerospace industry with more than 30 years of public and private sector experience. He has twice served as NASA chief of staff and also served on the White House National Space Council. Stadd currently is executive vice president of TerreStar Corporation.
Rounding out the team in his role as a Quantum senior vice president and cofounder is Liam Sarsfield, former NASA deputy chief engineer and one of the nation’s foremost experts in spacecraft design, mission planning and aerospace engineering. Sarsfield brings to the team more than 30 years experience as a space systems engineer. He previously has managed small spacecraft development for Lockheed Martin and authored Cosmos on a Shoestring, a primer on low-cost spacecraft.
“Quantum3’s mission is a demonstration of how low-cost lunar operations can create viable off-world commercial opportunities,” Sarsfield said.
At the heart of Quantum3’s Google Lunar X PRIZE effort is Moondancer, a small spacecraft that will land on the surface of the Moon at the Sea of Tranquility, the historic site of the world’s first manned moon landing. Moondancer will take off on its lunar journey from an East Coast range using a launch-coast-burn trajectory that will culminate in a propulsive soft landing on the Moon.
The Quantum3 team is reaching out to the private sector and to academic communities, including minority-serving institutions, to create partnerships among the nation’s best and brightest minds and resources.
“Quantum3’s goal is to make the most of our nation’s unique intellectual capital and technological capabilities,” Sarsfield said.
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