I believe it's called "sponsorship". Audi is funding Part Time Scientists (http://ptscientists.com/ http://ptscientists.com/), a team headed in part by NASA en

I believe it's called "sponsorship". Audi is funding Part Time Scientists (http://ptscientists.com/ http://ptscientists.com/), a team headed in part by NASA engineer Jack Crenshaw (http://jackcrenshaw.com/work/me-and-nasa/ http://jackcrenshaw.com/work/me-and-nasa/), who worked on lunar trajectory calculations for the Apollo missions. The PT team has already received milestone awards from the X Prize foundation for rover development and optical systems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Lunar_X_Prize#Terrestrial_Milestone_Prizes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Lunar_X_Prize#Terrestri... The hard part of this mission, of course, is getting to the moon. This team is just working on the rover and its mission once it lands. You're probably right that they wont make it to the moon, but the purpose of the X Prize Foundation is to stimulate commercial interest in emerging fields and industries. Sounds to me like it's working.