X Prize

The past century has been a blur of progress and development, toppling over the boundaries we had set before us using innovation, technology and creativity. Philosophers, psychologists and sociologists have stood back in awe and flooded our world with new terminology and expressions in an attempt to understand and commemorate this remarkable time in our history. Our progress has been astounding, building on itself with such ease that if you don't pay attention, in 10 years time, you could look around and not recognize your world.

For years I've been waiting for this same push to begin with Space Science and Exploration. I waited for a whisper of it, for a whiff of change that this field would be opened to the consumer and commercial market so that we could build upon our knowledge and exploration of Space as we have with computer sciences.

In 2004 it began and it began with great inspirational leaps. SpaceShip One's identity is not only in it's craft and in it's creators but in what it stands for and for what will follow it. SpaceShip One marked the beginning of consumer/commercial based space exploration and signifies the turning point in the future of Human space travel. We know the pattern well; if you put a field in the consumer/commercial market, it will boom and grow upon itself, daily striving to keep up with itself with new innovations and technology. It's simple; when you have that many people watching and pushing for improvement and pushing to see the future of it, it cannot resist excelling.

Computers evolved upon themselves trying to live up to the standards video games were demanding of them. Each time an individual developed a way to improve graphic design and display, the hardware had to improve with it. I'd have to say that 90% of computer science and technology's progress is due to consumer demand and commercial production.

Human desire is a force to be reckoned with.

Evolution at a visible speed is one that takes place in the mind, in will power, innovation, understanding and discovery. That may not seem like the common definition of evolution, but when it comes to mankind, that is where our next step lies. Our next step in evolution is not a physical one, but rather a mental one, one that lies in the realms and limits of our minds, abilities and discoveries. I have always believed this and have likewise believed that much of the key to our next step is in understanding and exploring our universe.

As long as History knew to record it, humans have been proving that anything is possible as long as enough people are behind it. Religion and faith are case in point; religion is the most successful organization in history and that is due to it's followers and to those who believed in pushing it forward. Without people's need to see is succeed, religion would become an out dated ceremony left to cave drawings and relics. Because of people's demand of it, religion is an intergral part of the common family and even modern government and law. Whether or not this is the way it should be, it is the way it is.

Take a look at successful businesses. Why is image, logo and name so important? So that more people can support it by using the name, logo and image in conversation and belief. "Google is the biggest search engine in the world" This is true, but one has to wonder whether or not it is true because it was said and because it was believed. If not, why care about your name and memorable image?

People are fuel for impossible endeavors and for too long people have been taken out of the equation in the realm of Space Research and Exploration.

Space has been given a restricted seal: For Government Eyes Only. Beyond that, it has been set on a lofty seat above the common people with the warning that dreams that involve space are ones left to the pipes. Space is just as accessible as the air, and the only thing that has kept us from it is the belief that we cannot do it because we are either not allowed or too common to succeed.

The X Prize has changed all that. This is what my dreams are made of, and we salute X prize and Google for their humanitarian efforts. This is the way to our future and finally it is in the hands of the innovative, creative public who have the real ability to push it to it's true potential.

"Google’s giving you 30 million reasons to join the space race.

The online giant is teaming with the X PRIZE Foundation in announcing the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize, a robotic race to the Moon.

The Google Lunar X PRIZE aims to challenge and inspire engineers and entrepreneurs from around the world to develop low-cost methods of robotic space exploration. The X PRIZE Foundation, best known for the $10 million Ansari X PRIZE for private suborbital spaceflight, is an educational nonprofit prize organization whose goal is to bring about radical breakthroughs to solve some of the greatest challenges facing the world today."

“The Google Lunar X PRIZE calls on entrepreneurs, engineers and visionaries from around the world to return us to the lunar surface and explore this environment for the benefit of all humanity,” said Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation. “We are confident that teams from around the world will help develop new robotic and virtual presence technology, which will dramatically reduce the cost of space exploration.”"
- Reporter- Mazen Alkhamis of Science Mode
Interviewing Dr. Peter H. Diamandis
Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation

Quote from the X Prize website:
"We didn't just launch a spaceship, we launched a revolution.

Imagine a future where personal spaceflight is a reality, where super-efficient cars are affordable for everyone and medicines are personalized just for you...

The Foundation's strategy for fostering innovation is unique — we create high-profile competitions that attract and motivate radical breakthroughs for some of the most important challenges facing humanity."

We are joining the race.

Right now, we're going through the different design and launch plans, hashing out the problems and searching for all the best solutions. When we started, we just talked about it, asking questions to each other about each part of the mission and the machine, and when we faced a problem, we thought about it and suddenly, there was a solution, so easily in our grasp. In not long at all, we were looking at a workable plan and realized just how feasible the mission was. I shivered when I realized just how close within our reach it really is. Despite the race, if you decided to go to the moon, you could, with enough time, creativity, research and work; you can do it.

The 20 million dollar prize is fantastic and whoever wins it could use it to start a mission to Mars or a Space Station or a maned mission to the Moon etc. The real win here though is giving the people a win. Whoever wins the race will be winning for the public, proving that great things are within our reach and thus setting a course for our future. More and more people who have always wanted to research and explore space will come forward and lend their ideas to the table. It's the ideas and new perspectives that really get us going and that we really need. There's an unending stream of questions that the universe poses to us and what we need to even begin to understand it and navigate it is more minds on it on a constant basis. A private individual landing a rover on the moon is just what we need to realize just how much we can do.
There are a lot of groups out there right now with the funding, materials and expertise to win this race. Andy and I are two people with some very good ideas and plans. We plan on presenting our launch/rover plans and designs to someone who can fund us just enough to get us there for a cut of the win, and we plan on moving on it fast. Whether or not we make it for the race, and whether or not we win, we're going to try to launch a rocket and land a rover on the moon. This race is all about the future of Space Travel and Exploration, and you can't put a price on that. (Though 20 million would go really far to build a stable space station out there for consumer use, aimed at education to an open market).

I cannot express just how excited we are about this race, and I cannot begin to explain just how much we all need it.

I don't know if I'm allowed to post videos for the X Prize, if not, sorry guys, but I want everyone to know about this.

NEVER WAS A WHERE

I'm writing because if I do anything else, my brain will just continue to nag at me and kill whatever it is I'm trying to distract myself with. I don't know why these things bother me so much.My stomach feels cold and I'm fiddling with my computers trying to distract myself from this sudden unease.

It's ridiculous, but I feel this way because I just watched The Office. I like The Office; it's a funny show. I laugh while I watch it, but each time I finish an episode, my heart sinks and I get this weird depression where I can't stand the thought of seeing another one, while needing to see another one in the hopes that something will change and things will get better somehow. She'll quit and work on being an illustrator. Why is being an illustrator a pipe dream? It's just as possible as any other job. Why is being a therapist a pipe dream and a waste of time?

Sure, it's just another job, but it's something besides the cubicle coffin and corporate ladder that you hang yourself on, because your tie got stuck on a rung a while back and each time you take another step up you pull it a little tighter around your neck, but you don't even notice because the air's getting thinner so slowly that you just fall into it comatose, unaware that you've been killing yourself, eating away at yourself and now it's all gone and you're at the end of your rope and there's nothing but ladder and ceremony left.

It frightens me. You see, the mind is plastic, and allowing yourself to buy into it even for a moment will get you in that place long enough for your mind to bend around it and accept it, validate and defend it until it is you. It is death. There is nothing to be created there, nothing to be gained; you can live an eternity in a place like that and never have existed at all. In all that time you could have affected no one, created nothing, learned nothing and left no mark. You would become a non thing.

Every now and then I question myself and my life, and worry about the way I've done things. At any point when it gets to me too much and I beat on myself too hard, I take a look at the alternative and it all becomes clear to me again. Failing miserably while trying to do something great is worlds better than succeeding at what is expected. People don't really expect much, and if I did do things the usual way, it wouldn't be terribly difficult. Everything is already set up for you to succeed in that manner, but when you're done with it, what have you done?

You haven't tried to do anything really. It's difficult to set a new grain and to strive for things in an unusual way, in ways even your closest family can't comprehend, but it's the only thing worth doing. I'm not interested in having someone else's victory or success. I'm not interested in getting where other people have gone and I'm certainly not interested in doing it the way they have. I respect people who have succeeded and I'm smart enough to take a good look at it and try to understand it, but I don't want to walk in anyones footsteps; I want to make my own. I don't really care if anyone wants to follow in mine, but I'd like to set out and discover something, look at life in a different way, solve problems with my own fledgling mind, fight battles instead of avoiding them and wonder each step of the way if my decisions are right or not because there's no book to look in the back of for the answers and I wouldn't want one.

That makes life worth living. It's like living life for the first time, seeking out answers and wondering about the way of things as though someone else is not going to do it for you, because no one is. Most people don't take the time to wonder and even more fail to try to answer the questions that wondering leaves.

Taking the worlds answers for things is the lazy life; allowing the people before you and around you to navigate a lifetime removes all curiosity and knowledge from you. What can you have if you never look beyond what is given to you? Our minds are so very plastic, our manner so easily set into a comfortable mold where the roads are named and set in stone, but this is not the path to the future or to greatness or even to real life, but to repetition and a muddy death. These habits are the earmarks of failure on the grandest scale: doing so means handing off your life to an unnamed thing outside of you to rule and ruin at whim. There is no great and knowing person who knew to set our lives on a certain course and that we now follow because he was so right; there's the easy path that was made so easy by so many people doing it over and over again for no other reason then that it was laid out for them and therefore easy to follow. If a million people make the same mistake, it's still a mistake and not one others should follow because of it's normalcy.

It's so strange when you actually stop and look at the building blocks of your little world and realize that so many walls and rooms in your world were put up by people you never met. These weren't your decisions, you hardly even thought about it, but suddenly, your reality and life has been mapped out by a general consensus of unknowing, of fear, ease and inconsequence.

When did it become such a difficult task to think? People seem to actually fight against looking at life in any way other than the normal way, and this is in all fields: political, economical, biological, scientific, theological, personal. Why are we so afraid to see that we are wrong when knowing so could lead us in a direction where we could understand so much more and accomplish an unknowable amount?

I wonder how many discoveries and adventures have been sacrificed for comfort. I'm not talking about the comfort of an ikea couch, I'm talking about the comfort that you're a good person, that you're doing well and doing it right. I'm talking about the kind of comfort that means nothing to anyone but that everyone obsesses themselves with. The things that hold us back the most I believe is habitual, not wanting to break away from the common patterns of the every day for fear that you'll lose the floor beneath you and you'll be forced to create your own definitions for the world.

How much have you actually thought about? How much have you questioned? I'm not talking about conspiracy here; I'm talking about actually thinking about the reality you are subscribing to. It's your world now, why not look at it? Why not inspect it and confront it with it's flaws? What will you lose? For a moment, you might be lost, not knowing in which direction to turn, in which direction to believe, but that's the moment of real power and potential, because in that moment when you're not sure you know anything at all, you could know anything, you could understand a whole dimension of your reality you never cared to look at before.


The key, I think, to everything we don't yet know or understand is to be willing to look at it in all the ways that we are most afraid to look, most opposed to question and to give up on all the ways that make us comfortable. There's a universe of unknown and only a sliver we have mapped. How can we think that we are so great and knowing to really believe that our little sliver is true and correct?

That is why little worlds like that terrify me, because it's all part of an organism that pushes you to accept everything as law and as concrete and unchanging, and if you let it grab you in one asspect of your life, it can take down the whole game, and then you're left with nothing but what is given to you.

My world has to be my own. I'm not a genius, I'm not a world leader, but in my world and my reality, I cannot let another decide for me, and though I'm always ready to listen and learn, I cannot accept anything without inspecting and questioning and looking at it, because if I didn't, I could accept anything, and suddenly up is down and anything worth doing is beyond your reach up the path that was never yours that you have to slowly trudge to get anywhere...which in the end never was a where to begin with.

My world is full of questions now, and some make a pit in my stomach because I don't know what they mean, and even some of the theories send a shiver down my spine, but when I look at the alternative, I'm shaken to my core. In that life, I'm am nothing but a corpse waiting for someone to realize they need to get on with the ceremony and put me in the ground and I can't help my instinct to live. I wonder how so many people turn that part of themselves off.

House of Ma....

That last blog was a bit staggering. Sometimes these moments of wondering hits me, but I really shouldn't have let that one sit there for so long without a follow up. I believe a lot has happened since then, but I'm not going to get into a play by play.
Now is a good time to mention that I'm two timing Blogspot. It's true, I have a new blog now that I'm paying more attention to. I started a new job, teaching English to a 13 year old girl from Hong Kong while staying at their home, and I've decided to write about it. It's just that interesting. The new blog is called "In the House of Ma" and if you'd like to see where all my morsels of wisdom are dripping, you can click on the link to see it. houseofma.blogspot.com
That blog is all about my new job, but I'll probably continue to use this blog for theories, essays and ranting, so don't drop this blog like so many wasted rags just because there's two in my life now.

I have nothing to say for now, so I won't until I do.