What's a moonshot?
During the final State of the Union address of his presidency Tuesday night, President Barack Obama put Biden in charge of an effort to “make America the country that cures cancer once and for all.” President Obama echoed Vice President Joe Biden when he called the search for the cure a “moonshot.”
Watching the address, we thought nothing of the word. Used often in the startup realm, where big ideas are often lofty ambitions earnestly trying to solve big problems, the term is used often. So what’s a moonshot?
A moonshot is an ambitious, exploratory and ground-breaking project undertaken without any expectation of near-term profitability or benefit.
Google adopted the term moonshot for its most innovative projects, many of which come out of the Google X, the company’s semi-secret lab. Google moonshots include Google Glass, Project Loon (a balloon-based Internet service project), the driverless car, augmented reality glasses, a neural network, robots for the manufacturing industry and Project Calico, a life extension project.
Google defines a moonshot as a project or proposal that
- Addresses a huge problem
- Proposes a radical solution
- Uses breakthrough technology
The term “moonshot” derives from the Apollo 11 spaceflight project, which landed the first human on the moon in 1969. “Moonshot” may also reference the earlier phrase “shoot for the moon” meaning aim for a lofty target.
Got it? Good.
Prior to the state of the union address, steps were already being taken to aid scientists in their quest to cure cancer – The National Institutes for Health received a $2 billion budget increase in an omnibus budget deal passed last month. The National Cancer Institute, which is part of the NIH, has a 2016 appropriation of $5.21 billion, an increase of more than $260 million from the prior year. In a brief outline of his plan, Biden said his focus will be on increasing public and private resources as well as breaking down silos that prevent researchers from sharing information – meaning technology, especially cloud-based software, will be instrumental in allowing scientists to communicate and better coordinate their efforts.
https://caremerge.com/blog/whats-a-moonshot/