Securely creating bitcoin prizes

[Ra1]

Hi all,

Suppose I want to establish a prize to encourage space exploration. I get NASA to agree to create a small compartment on their next Mars rover, which I am allowed to place a few small objects into before launch. I want to somehow create a public/private keypair, and place the private key into the compartment in some way (paper key, USB drive, metal engraved key). After the rover is launched, I announce what I have done, along with the public key. Interested bitcoin users then can fund the Mars Bitcoin prize by sending payments to the public address. The first person or group to get to Mars on their own, find the rover, and open the compartment gets the private key, and thus the prize.

Now obviously, some will suspect that I somehow kept the private key, and will simply steal the prize once the funds accumulate. This suspicion will decrease the number of potential funders of the prize, and create accusations against me, which I don't want either.

So the question is, in exactly this scenario, how can I or a group of people best generate the keypair and place the private key into the compartment while assuring to everyone else we did not retain the private key? I have thought about rolling cameras during the whole process, purchasing a new computer on camera, etc., but there will always be suspicion. I am hoping there might be a smarter way to use cryptography here.

Also note of the key options I have mentioned, I would highly prefer the metal engraving. The USB key may get destroyed by radiation, and the paper may burn if containment systems fail.

[kjj]

There is no way to prove that you have forgotten the private key.

[DannyHamilton]

You wouldn't put the key on the spaceship, but rather would put some sort of process on the space ship that would use some random data source at the destination to generate a private key.  The data source chosen would have to be something that can't be determined from here on earth.  The process would use the extra-terrestrial random data source to generate and record a private key and would then transmit the public address back to earth via radio.

Now, what you need is a way to allow everyone to confirm that the rover actually used a random source and not some pre-configured private key that you built in to it, and that the generated private key wasn't covertly transmitted to you after it was generated.

You could release the source code for everyone to review, but then you'd need a way for everyone to confirm that is the actual source code that is running on the rover, and that there isn't any additional source code designed to capture and transmit the private key.

It is extremely difficult to prove that you don't know something.  Good luck in your endeavor.