<3 google

I can picture it now...

The robot gets there, everything goes cleanly, it travels 499 meters, transmits video, images and data... then gets destroyed by an asteroid.

Its kinda odd how human-kind is capable of so many great things, but money is the universal "get-up-off-your-ass" motivator. I don't see why Bill Gates doesn't sponsor things like this? It seems like much more of a worthwhile cause than donating millions to bureaucratic charities that try to get a care-bear in the hands of every impoverished Indonesian child.

This is even motivated by money even more, since it's all for commericalized space travel. They were considering making the project be the creation of a car engine capable of 100mpg. Apparently, spending millions on sending a ship into space (been there, done that, in the 70s) is more important than reducing resource usage for EVERYONE.

Google seems down atm 0o