The Google Lunar X PRIZE Team Summit, held May 20-21 at the campus of the International Space University in Strasbourg, France, served many purposes. It was a venue for a wonderful student competition, and for the announcement of 4 newly registered teams. It was a time to bring together experts who shared ideas about how the Google Lunar X PRIZE Teams can increase their chances for success in their prize-winning attempts and beyond. It was also a chance for the X PRIZE Foundation to have a serious, open discussion about the rules for the competition.

With the Ansari X PRIZE for suborbital spaceflight already successfully completed and four more competitions ongoing, the X PRIZE Foundation has a learned a great deal about how to write prize rules. One of our most important lessons is that it is critical to allow the relevant stakeholders a chance to influence of the creation of the rules. Despite the great amount of care and research that goes into writing prize rules, it is inevitable that the creative solutions designed by teams will probe the boundaries established by the rules, eventually leading to areas that are unclear or, occasionally, worthy of revision. Fully registered teams are always able to ask questions and to submit suggested revisions to the X PRIZE Foundation for consideration, but it is also important to give the teams an opportunity from time to time to ask these questions in person.

The Rules Workshop at the May Team Summit was the first such opportunity for our registered teams. For a full day, five representatives from the X PRIZE Foundation interacted with representatives of the teams and a small group of technical advisors. The teams were by no means shy about asking for clarifications or pointing out places where the written wording of the rules had not properly conveyed the X PRIZE Foundationís intentions. Similarly, the Foundation took the opportunity to share some of the context and logic that led to the rules as they are written.

For all parties, the event was an extremely informative one. The X PRIZE Foundation came away with a list of specific questions and concerns that will inform the creation of the third edition of the Guidelines, making them much more specific and robust while lessening--and, in some cases, removing altogether--unintentional limitations imposed by the wording of the rules. The teams, on the other, left Strasbourg with a better understanding of the process of how the rules will be revised, how rulings will be given, and how their interactions with the X PRIZE Foundation will take place in the future.

For most of the attendees, the rules workshop was a very pleasant and productive experience. However, one team did not share that opinion. As they have stated on their blog, the Rules Workshop led a registered team, the Southern California Selene Group (SCSG), to a series of realizations that has resulted in their withdrawal from the competition. Their reasons for withdrawing are worthy of review, so that any valuable lessons from the experience are learned.

From their blog posts and from follow-on conversations, it is clear that SCSG had several reasons for withdrawing. After months of work and research, the team discovered that winning the prize would be more difficult and expensive than they had expected, thanks to the current realities both of the investment community and of the commercial launch market. Secondly, some conversations at the Team Summit and at prior events helped the team to realize that they did not agree with some of the longer term visions behind the Google Lunar X PRIZE, including the commercialization of space and human exploration. Some of these elements are presented in the Google Lunar X PRIZE introductory video, Moon 2.0: Join the Revolution.

Team SCSG also had two negative reactions after the Rules Summit that merit some elaboration. The first, as raised by the team in their "Farewell" blog post, was a negative reaction to the X PRIZE Foundation's response to some team queries that more thought and discussion would be needed and that a team might need to get a specific ruling. SCSG blogs, "for example, we were very proud of the fact that our team had managed to get some surplus company fuel tanks; when I asked about it, without much thought I was told 'we'll have to get a ruling on that.'" Team SCSG, it seems, took this response as dismissive. However, we can state unequivocally that this was by no means the intention behind those words. In fact, the intention of the words was quite different from SCSG's initial assumption. When this response was given, it was an indication the X PRIZE Foundation personnel took the issue in question so seriously as to acknowledge the need for detailed research and for exact wording of the response. The desire for a later ruling was not a dismissal, but rather a promise of illumination of the issue and resolution.

Secondly, team SCSG notes in their blog post that they raised a question during the Rules Workshop about some specific details of their camera design. They posed an excellent question about whether the requirement in the Guidelines that calls for zoom capability carried any specific implications for teams looking to use digitally simulated zooming technologies, rather than optical zoom. The team's question led to an interesting discussion in which representatives of several teams and members of the X PRIZE Foundation expressed opinions about digital versus optical zoom. However, when SCSG notes on their blog that their camera design was ruled ineligible, they are mistaken. In fact, what was declared by the X PRIZE Foundation was that the situation was worthy of further review, and that a ruling would be provided to clarify the issue for all teams.

SCSG brought some wonderful ideas, individuals, and talent to the Google Lunar X PRIZE. Therefore, it is with some sadness that we bid team SCSG farewell. We truly hope that the team and all of its team members will have great success in their future endeavors.