moonshot

Or moon shot

[moon-shot]

noun

1. the act or procedure of launching a rocket or spacecraft to the moon.

2. a very challenging and innovative project or undertaking.

   Technology companies are investing in moonshots that address the world’s greatest problems.

3. Baseball.,  a high-velocity home run in which the ball reaches an extraordinary height.

   What could be more exciting than a bases-clearing moonshot over the right field wall in the bottom of the eleventh inning?

adjective

1. relating to or noting a very challenging and innovative project or undertaking.

   His department takes moonshot ideas and brings them to reality.

moonshot

/ ˈmuːnˌʃɒt /

noun

1. the launching of a spacecraft, rocket, etc, to the moon

Word History and Origins

Origin of moonshot¹

An Americanism dating back to 1945–50 moonshot for def. 1; moon + shot ¹; the baseball sense, also capitalized as Moon shot, was named after Wallace Wade “Wally” Moon (1930–2018), U.S. baseball player, whose home run helped the Dodgers win the 1959 pennant

Example Sentences

Musk would not get a salary or bonus under the plan, which depends on Tesla's value soaring more than eightfold alongside other moonshot goals.

From BBC

That’s not Silicon Valley moonshot money.

From Los Angeles Times

It’s something he likened to the moonshot — President Kennedy’s goal of landing on the moon by the end of the 1960s.

From Los Angeles Times

Eight large language models from Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, xAI, as well as chinese developers DeepSeek and Moonshot AI, battled against each other during Kaggle's three day tournament.

From BBC

The moment Newberry described — descending into an NBA arena re-imagined as a sand-strewn battleground — was the AVP’s moonshot: to re-imagine the sport in lights, not solely sunlight.

From Los Angeles Times