Joel Orr's World

Editor's Note: Google will award $20 million to the first private team to put a robot on the moon, the company and the X Prize Foundation announced at Wired NextFest in Los Angeles Thursday. Members of the public will also get the chance to send digital mementos to the moon. In this advance from the October issue of Wired magazine, contributing editor Spencer Reiss explains what's behind the Google Lunar X Prize, and what it will take to win it.

Maybe it was the edible wafer-paper-and-soy-ink menus or the "sustainable" blue-cheese mousse whipped up by Google's chefs. Maybe it was the full-size replica of the indie commercial spacecraft SpaceShipOne suspended overhead. Or Robin Williams' jokes. Whatever the reason, the hundreds of Silicon Valley grandees who packed the Googleplex one Saturday evening last March were in an expansive mood. They had dropped $1,250 or more a head to benefit the X Prize Foundation, the nonprofit dedicated to spurring innovation through public competitions that promise big payouts to the winners. Supersize possibilities hung in the air.

More