Google 'Mystery Team' Evidence Decoded - Can You Name This Man?

December 11, 2008

UPDATE: It's official -- this mystery man is Mike Joyce! Via Twitter, users Snibble, QuarkSpin, cariann and myself (Disco_Dave) put the pieces together a day before the official announcement. The "Mystery Team" is now known as "Next Giant Leap" and you can visit their site here.

The official Google Lunar X PRIZE blog, aka the Launch Pad, highlighted this mysterious video today:

Mysterious, indeed! (Personally, I enjoyed the part where GLXP asks "what is your name?" and the mystery man says "If I told you, I'd have to kill you." A required line in such a situation.)

Anywho, this is the first second visual, physical evidence for the "Mystery Team" competing for Google's $20-30 million to send a video camera-packed spacecraft to the moon on private money (see here for first piece).

I interviewed the leader recently -- click here for our chat -- and asked why the team has been maintaining anonymity. It's for several reasons, but mainly so they could build a crack team amid disbelief and bureaucracy. In other words, the mystery protects perfectly great scientists and engineers from being warded off by their colleagues before the "super team" is assembled.

Apparently the team is now fully assembled, however, and they're set to reveal themselves soon. Check out this chunk of a press release I just received:

Wednesday, Dec. 17th: The stealth team (AKA "The Mystery Team") whose members' identities have thus far remained a secret, will reveal their true identities in person, at NASA Ames.

I have a hunch. I think the person in the video is the same one I interviewed. I happen to know a thing or two about Photoshop, so let's work some magic on this bad boy...