Google Lunar X Prize competition feels the heat from Shanghai

Markus Bindhammer heads China's only Google Lunar X Prize team known as Team Selene. He is a German engineer based in Shanghai and he is not shy about sharing his views about the conduct of the competition.

The winning team in this competition could walk away with $20 million or more.

This week Bindhammer let everyone know that his patience is being tried again. He quoted directly from the MTA 3.0 which is the latest version of the so-called Master Team Agreement. Here are a few excerpts from a post on his team blog -

"X PRIZE Foundation employees and their families may neither participate in, nor have a financial interest in the Google Lunar X PRIZE TEAMs or CRAFTs. Officers and Trustees of the X PRIZE Foundation must comply with the Foundation’s Conflict of Interest policy, which requires that they disclose possible conflicts and recuse themselves from any relevant deliberations or decisions regarding the development of PRIZEs under development or offered by the Foundation in which they may have a direct or indirect financial interest."

Bindhammer wrote that, "nobody seems to care about that Naveen Jain serves on the Board of the X PRIZE (Foundation) and is at the same time the primarily backer of Moon Express, one of 28 GLXP competitors."

He continued -

"While the still legal binding MTA 3.0 also states:

"Teams shall publish a minimum of one blog per week to an XPF-designated website. Teams shall post a minimum cumulative duration of forty-five minutes of video per calendar quarter. Teams shall post a minimum of 3 substantively different videos per month.

"and there is a clear procedure in case of non-compliance

"If your team fails to meet one or more of these requirements, we have instituted a 3-stage process in order to help your team get back on track. First, if your team was out of compliance during the past quarter of the calendar year, you will receive a letter stating that your team has 30 days to take corrective action to come into compliance with the requirements of section 6.3.2. If your team remains out of compliance after those 30 days, you will receive a second letter informing you that your team is suspended from the competition. While suspended, your team will not be included in X PRIZE Foundation public relations announcements, events, etc. (though information about your team will remain available on the Google Lunar X PRIZE website during the suspension). Your team will then have 30 days to take corrective action to come into compliance with the requirements of section 6.3.2. Failure to do so will result in expulsion from the competition.

"several teams violating the paragraph over many months without any consequences. One team even tries to circumvent the paragraph by using a blog robot."

He concluded -

"You may now ask if it make sense to carry these things to the public. It makes sense, because the breeding ground for such wheelings and dealings is exactly secrecy and exclusion of publicity."

You can read Bindhammer's entire post - "More rumble in the Google Lunar X Prize jungle" - here

http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/lunar/teams/selene/blog/more-rumble-in-the-google-lunar-x-prize-jungle

Disclaimer - I have assisted Bindhammer in the past in the preparation of his Team Selene posts, but I have not done so lately. I have also assisted other GLXP teams. Team Selenokhod in Russia requests my assistance most frequently.