Google Lunar Xprize: The next great race to the moon

In 1919 New York hotel magnate, Ray Orteig, launched a $25,000 prize for the first person who could fly from New York to Paris nonstop. It took eight years for a man to win that prize, Charles Lindberg. And ultimately that kicked off the transatlantic flight system. Ten years ago a company called Scaled Composites won the $10 million Ansari X Prize, being the first company to take us up to the edge of space and back down again, kicking off what will be, ultimately, a very lucrative space tourism market. The latest prize is the Google Lunar X Prize. $30 million worth of prizes to the team that can get us all the way to the moon. It's like a game of cards. Everyone is playing, but there must be a winner. We are going to the Moon. We are very confident on winning X Prize. We're down to 18 teams now, all of whom are gathered here in Budapest for the annual team summit. The teams are kind of helping each other out, but don't forget, they're also competing. It's only the first one that gets to the moon and drives 500 meters and sends back live video that's eligible for the $30 million in prizes. Over the next year you're gonna see a lot of activity from our team. We're gonna be working every day until we launch. Now in addition to the $30 million prizes, there's $6 million worth of cash up for grabs over the course of the summer of 2014. These are called milestone prizes, and five teams are eligible for those prizes. Teams that are part of the X Prize already felt that what they were doing was important. But the fact that teams can earn money while they're doing what they need to do anyway to get to the moon it's substantial. Over this summer we're gonna be visiting all five of those milestone teams in the U.S., Germany, Japan, even in India to see their tests. We're gonna see rovers driving around. We're gonna see rockets firing off. [NOISE]. It's gonna be pretty awesome stuff, and you will not want to miss it. I believe this entire Google X Prize and part time scientist is pretty awesome. You get to learn so much more things that you would have never come in contact with in your normal life. We are participating in something very special, and a very, very great thing. I'm Tim Stevens with CNET, and join us for the rest of the coverage of the milestone tests for the Google Lunar X Prize. [MUSIC]