Google is going to pay $20 million to the first team to land a rover on the moon, drive it around a bit, and return pictures, videos and other data by Dec. 31, 2012. That's just four and a half years from now. Competitors for the Google Lunar X Prize must be privately funded, though costs for such a mission are sure to run well over $20 million. Is the prize worth it?If you're thinking about the $20 million, it sounds like a losing investment to me. The cost of the Apollo program, which ran from 1969 to 1972 and numbered numerous mission, including the manned touch downs, amounted to about $25 billion 1969 dollars (approximately $135 billion in 2005 dollars). That figure includes all the costs for the rockets, modules, landers, and other equipment. Sending a rover will be much less expensive than $135 billion, but it will certainly cost well more than the $20 million in prize money.

The real prize will be the pride and publicity for private citizens to complete what has, to date, only been accomplished by the government. According to CNN, Becky Ramsey, the X Prize Foundation's director of communications, said, "We believe that space should be open to anyone and everyone, especially those people who want to go. The government has accomplished amazing things ... but we think that we can do it less expensively." Let's hope so.

The $20 million prize stands for those that can successfully land a rover, drive it a distance of at least 500 meters, and use it to send back data from the moon's surface. It the Dec. 31, 2012, date is missed, the prize money drops to $15 million, and there will be no prize at all if no one can accomplish this mission by the end of 2014.

As of now, about 13 teams are officially signed up, but Google expects that number to swell to 25. One of the biggest conditions is that government involvement must be kept to a bare minimum.

With only 4.5 years to go, the clock is ticking and teams have their work cut out for them.