We at Team FREDNET^® have been keeping pretty quiet, for a number of reasons. We'll talk more about that later, in some upcoming blogs and videos. At the moment, we're having to deal with the whole set of contractual issues invloved with participating in the GLXP. Sad but true, lawyers are interfering somewhat with Open Space Exploration ... another reason to work hard to get off the planet!

Today though, we're going to try to give you a little insight into how we see the competition (which is a Really Good and Cool Thing) as opposed to the other noise (which is Just Plain Sad and Annoying). We have high hopes that the Just Plain Sad and Annoying things will go away sometime tomorrow, and we can get back to the Really Good and Cool Thing.

If you strip away everything, if you boil the GLXP down to its very essence, it really is a simple matter of a work order contract for services. If the organizers, facilitators, and comeptitors were cognizant of this simple reality, life (at least the competitors' lives) could all be so much simpler, and the process could evolve so much more efficiently and effectively. Just think, scientists could work on the science, engineers could design and build things that accomplish tasks, software developers could design and develop programs that work, business people could organize everything and find the funding, and in fairly short order we'd find ourselves (well, our rovers anyway) trundling along over the surface of the Moon while we sit comfortably at home controlling and watching their progress. Sounds idyllic.

A work order contract is a very simple device, simply constructed, brief, and to the point. Customer wants widget. Contractor has ability to provide widget. Customer and Contractor come to a mutual agreement about what shall be done (but not how it shall be done) and what shall be paid for the widget's delivery. Customer understands that Contractor is doing this as a business and expects to earn something above its own costs in the course of providing the widget. Secondary beneifts to the Customer and to the Contractor are of no concern.

For example, let's say that Paul owns a home and would like to add a nice deck to the exterior of his home. John is in the business of designing and building decks, and they meet to discuss what needs to be done. John shows Paul a design, and Paul likes the design. They write a simple contract that says something like this:

1. Paul wants a new deck, and John is in the business of building decks.
2. John has provided Paul with the attached design showing what the deck will look like when completed. Paul has accepted this design as being adequate for his needs.
3. Now therefore, Paul agrees to pay John the sum of $10000 upon John's completion of building the deck in accordance with the attached design, and this work shall be completed no later than June 27, 2011.
4. This contract is entered into as of today's date, is enforceable under the laws of this jurisdiction, etc., etc., etc. No other rights or obligations are hereby created.
5. And of course some escape clause like "Paul reserves the right to fire John if the work isn't going well, paying only a portion," blah, blah, blah, and "John can seize Paul's home if he doesn't pay within 30 days of completion," blah, blah, blah.

Let's say that John plans to make videos and pictures of the deck being built, because this whole social media thing is a great way to find new business. Paul is fine with that at first, but he then finds out that John also received an offer from a reality TV show that wants to pay John $100,000 to be part of their latest series on the Deck Channel. Now Paul wants a piece of the action, and why not? It's his house!

Now let's say that Paul plans to host a big party on that deck on July 10, which is the whole reason for building it in the first place. There are a number of very wealthy friends who will be attending that party, and some of them will be making donations to Paul's favorite charity, the WXYZ Foundation. John finds out about this, and decides that the cost of the deck should be higher. Can John go back to Paul and say "You're making too much money from this deck, I should be paid more"?

On top of that the Deck Channel discovers that W. C. Fields will be attending the party, and want to bring in their network partners from the Ghost Channel to film the event. Now Paul wants to own all of their footage, since it is his deck, but John wants all the media rights too, because he built it!

Where does this end? It doesn't, it can't, and nothing good can come of it. This is no longer a story about one person who wants a deck and another person who wants to build that deck. This has become a story about greed. Neither party is interested anymore in accomplishing the tasks they set upon in the first place, both are interested only in making more than the other, controlling all of the forthcoming rights and privileges, and both have lost their way.

At the very heart of the GLXP competition, at the outset of this remarkable vision was a simply stated goal: Be the first

1. PRIVATELY Funded Entity to
2. LAND a Robotic Vehicle on the
3. SURFACE of the MOON,
4. TRAVEL 500m, and
5. SEND back HD VIDEO.

Somewhere along the way, it has turned into a 67 page contract controlled exclusively by lawyers. The "peer review" process is merely a smoke screen used by those lawyers to mean "tell us every way that you think you could earn a return from this so we can take control of those rights too". Somewhere along the line, someone forgot the essential purpose of this, which was to Incentivize Innovation. Where is the Revolution through Competition, when the competition is all about directing lawyers to find more revenue? Where is the innovation? Where is the incentive?

In January, the Teams all received the "final binding MTA", and we were told that "this document [the MTA] is not a basis for negotiation", and essentially we all must sign or be dropped from the competition. On April 15, with absolutely no warning, the teams received a "signature-ready, binding amendment of the Google Lunar X PRIZE Master Team Agreement (MTA)", which was intended to replace the "legally binding MTA", and again came with an edict saying "if [XPF] does NOT receive signed copies of this amendment by the above-mentioned deadline, we will disqualify [team] from the competition". The initial message was followed with a curt note which stated simply that

X PRIZE does not anticipate issuing any future amendments to the Master Team Agreement (MTA) after this amendment and clarification. Your feedback over the last years has now been fully and finally reviewed and integrated to the extent possible, and additional feedback will not be considered for review.

So this "amended" MTA, is again not open for comment, and will not be amended. At this point, this Team is in danger of needing to spend more money on lawyers to review MTAs than we are spending on advancing our Lunar Mission. Again we ask, where's the innovation?

"Once upon a Time, there were 10,000 lawyers at the bottom of the sea." Is that a pretty good start? We've got a better idea. Would anyone care to invest in sending ten thousand lawyers on a one-way trip to the Moon?

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