One of the most difficult issues facing every team is funding. No matter how you slice it, this mission is likely to cost more than the prize purse. That's a hard pill to swallow for your average venture capitalist.

Wouldn't it be nice if there was already a built in consumer base that needed to purchase multiple vehicles in the near future?

Perhaps a nine nation consortium that wished to create a constellation of nodes on the surface of the moon to be used to gather scientific data, etc.?

Something, perhaps, like this...
http://www.livescience.com/blogs/2008/07/24/lunar-networking-multi-natio...

Hmmm ... potential sales of multiple craft to several different customers. Now this just might add a bit of candy coating to that pill.

Comments?