X-Prize Lunar Lander Competition a Go

Tiger4 writes "The X-Prize foundation and NASA have signed off on a $2.5 million prize for proof of concept lunar lander vehicles. From the article, 'NASA Deputy Administrator Shana Dale told MSNBC.com that the point of the competition was to "take advantage of new innovative technologies that have been developed" since the last lunar landing, during the Apollo 17 mission in 1972." There are two levels of competition, "In the Level 1 competition, the vehicles must be in the air for at least 90 seconds during each leg of the round trip, and land on a flat, even surface. The Level 2 competition is harder -- requiring 180 seconds of flight each way, with a rocky, lunar-style landing site.' NASA and X-Prize people are still working on the final rules, but they are already signing up teams and expect to see vehicles in time for the X-Prize exhibition in New Mexico, October 18-21, 2006."

Comments

Two top contenders

[chroma]

A couple of the top contenders, who have been working on this type of vehicle even before the prize was announced are: Masten Space Systems and John Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace.

Obligatory

[Life700MB]

Obligatory images from the first prototype.


--
Superb hosting 20GB Storage, 1_TB_ bandwidth, ssh, $7.95

Re:Gravity?

[TemujinKhan]

uh.. yeah. better question is to ask what should the safety margin for over engineering a project of this scope should be. Gravity on the Moon is 1/6 that of Earth, so that implies if the system works here, then you have a built in 6x safety margin there. (never mind that the whole point of the competition is to develop a workable auto-pilot assisted takeoff/landing system)

Re:Just how strict are the rules anyway?

[Davey McDave]

I doubt so, considering the moon has little to no atmosphere. No air resistance = parachutes next to useless.

Re:Back in the day.

[Anonymous Coward]

No. It could stand it's own weight, and they did test it, both the concept on Earth (Lunar Landing Research Vehicle) as well as the actual vehicle in space on Apollo 9.

Re:Moon Tether

[Anonymous Coward]

If you mean like a synchronous skyhook (aka "beanstalk", aka "space elevator"), it won't work. Whereas synchronous orbit of the earth is at the awkwardly high altitute of 22K miles, the equivalent for the moon is roughly 10X as high (as a result of the slower rotation of the moon about its axis).

Plus there's this big planet that happens to be EXACTLY at the required altitude, so until it can be demolished (to make way for a hyperspace bypass) you're going to have a really hard time with this!

they had a test vehicle (picture on wikipedia)

[r00t]

Check this out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Landing_Researc h_Vehicle

There was a jet engine that lifts 5/6 of the weight, leaving lunar-like gravity effects (though not inertial effects) for the rocket engines to deal with.

Re:something isn't quite right about this.

[Iron Condor]

A decent aerospace engineer must cost a business around 120 grand or so for a year of work,

It's a little dangerous to post concrete numbers in a field that you don't actually know anything about. I consider myself "a decent aerospace egineer" and I cost my employer something like 1/4 million per yer. And I have single-digit years of seniority - there's much more expensive folks out there. There's also cheaper people, of course. But when you include things like benefits, $120k p.a. is barely going to buy you an entry level technician.

...to try and get a guy like Paul Allen to dump far more into it then he'll ever get back.

You're making the mistake of underestimating a good businessman. With all the paid lectures and tours and broadcasting rights, Paul Allen definitely made his money back. The couple million X-prize were just the icing -- on the day of the flight and the days right after, a couple seconds of footage commanded six figures. Exact numbers are hard to come by, but it is an open secret in the aerospace community that Allen definitely didn't lose any money in the operation...

Armidillo Aerospace

[iendedi]

Seems that Carmack and company like the bounty idea. I hope they are right, I would really like to see these guys bag one and get a win. From Armidillo's website:

The lunar lander centennial challenge is our top priority this year unless something else pops up. We had a commercial opportunity that was exciting, but it seems to have fallen through. I'm not thrilled about landing on inclined, boulder strewn fields, but the payload and delta-V requirement are easier than we expected. Having two levels and consolation prizes is a good thing.

As soon as we can show that the new engines can make two 90 second burns, the current vehicle should have level one in the bag. We will need software changes and a remote video system, but no other significant modifications. To take the big level two prize we will need a completely different landing gear arrangement, and the total performance may be pushing it a bit. If our new engine Isp is as good as it briefly looked, we may be able to modify this vehicle for level two, but we are expecting to have to use the upcoming 65" diameter vehicle, which will have a better mass ratio.

It is unfortunate that the prizes can only be claimed at the X-Prize Cup, because that will encourage us to sit on the vehicles after they have been proven out, rather than flying them hard and potentially crashing them.

Re:Cost control measures...

[JasonKChapman]

Historically such competitions and prizes tend to breed solutions optimized towards winning the prize or competition - not general technologies.

I guess that depends on how you define "historically." There have been some pretty major technological and societal changes brought about by such competitions. One of them is accurate clocks and, thus, accurate trans-oceanic navigation:

The Board of Longitude was established in England in 1714 and offered 20,000 pounds (12 million dollars in today's currency) to whoever would come up with a method for determining longitude with in a distance of 30- nautical miles during a voyage from England to the West Indies.