Being a fan of motion pictures has its pluses and minuses. You can safely indulge your fantasies. You can watch anything happen. Make anything real. The collective fantasies of a culture roll across the screen. But in a larger sense motion pictures are more than that.

            Hollywood certainly is that great maker of myths, but in fulfilling that role, it is also a mirror. A mirror that reflects not simply what is, but what we as a culture hope can be. The success of the science fiction genre is testament to that fact. Long before we set foot on the moon, Captain Kirk had already been to Rigel.

            In the film, “Apollo 13”, we see a character study of how the flawed and fallible people who made up that historic team came together for a larger goal. The characters were believable. The scenes struck a chord. That crew and that mission are more remembered for what they did not achieve than for what they did. Or perhaps a better way of putting it is that the Apollo 13 team is remembered for its achievements within the human spirit and not for the number of stated mission objectives that they set out to accomplish.

            When what would become the Quantum3 team sat down around a conference table in Sterling, Virginia to discuss this venture, one of the first questions asked was, “Can we do this?” I remember leaning back in my chair and recalling those words from the mini-series “From the Earth to the Moon”. When America first set its sights on the moon, the first question NASA asked itself was “Can we do this?” If you don’t have to ask yourself that question, then your endeavor does not involve exploration.

            The Google Lunar X PRIZE does not break new ground for where we are going, but rather for how we are going to get there. The X PRIZE doesn’t ask us to explore the limits of mankind’s technology. Instead, it inquires about the collective state of our human spirit. How we ultimately answer that question will speak volumes about the spirit and resourcefulness of our generation.

-- posted by Dorrance Dickens, Quantum3 general counsel and a partner in Luxenberg, Johnson & Dickens