Speaking of distances, our team traveled the furthest about 30000 miles in all, to attend this week's Annual GLXP team summit, a few more of those trips and we would have covered most of the distance to the moon, while still preparing for the launch.

Got to meet all of X Prize foundation's GLXP team members and now I agree with FredB - "XPF is for real", and its not just a robot sending out compliance warning letters :)

Dinner time conversation included, the XPF team does take this to be much more than just another job - cool, that's something we can identify with.

The team summit was hosted at SETI's Mountain View facility, and Jill Tartar was one of the speakers in the opening session, for those of you who didnt know she was the inspiration for Jodie Foster's character in the movie "Contact". Jill spoke about the not so great situation with ATA operations and how she is in the process of raising $200k to bring them back to life. Seth Shostak spoke about his work in spreading awareness of SETI's activities and its key challenges - gave everyone lots to think about.

We had a welcome surprise from space. Three of the current ISS crew members sent us an insprirational video message. They congratulated all the GLXP teams for embarking on a new era in space travel exactly 50 years after Yuri Gagarin started this never ending adventure.

An investment panel chaired by Peter @XPF, Larry from ED Financial and Ken from Founders fund - interesting insights by Peter on his experience with raising capital for not-so-conventional projects.

Not sure if Google was represented on any of the previous panels - on this one Google's "Space Commander" Tiffany Montague took questions and accepted several suggestions from GLXP teams, also took everyone for an unscheduled dinner and tour at Google's campus - I don't think anyone was complaining.

Amanda and Chanda from X Prize presented an interesting session on website, social Media and education outreach. Amanda gave us a sneak preview of the new improved GLXP website due for launch in a few weeks time. Looking forward to it. Chanda touched on the Outreach and Education programs and initiatives that all at GLXP can do to involve and inspire the youth across the world.

Robert Kelso from NASA Lunar Science Institute had an eye opening session on visiting the Lunar Historic sites. Did not realise how much heritage was lying on the lunar surface and how easily it could get damaged / destroyed. NLSI's session extended into a workshop on the third day, turned out to be the most informative and interactive session of all. In a nutshell, NLSI is happy to work with anyone going to the moon, subject to certain ground rules. They are open to ideas on possible means of collaboration, which can potentially extend all the way to commercial data buy deals - a welcome surprise, happy for that :)

Rounded off our trip to the Bay Area with a visit to NASA space museum and of course the Golden gate bridge. I thought Team Indus, amongst the new teams, did reasonably well and we look forward to our continued mission to the moon!

That ends the 2011 GLXP summit-logue for Team Indus.

-- Dilip Chabria
Founding Member & Mission Crew, Team Indus