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X-Prize Lunar Lander Competition a Go

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the spanked-with-moon-rocks dept.

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."

12 of 124 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Consolation Prize by yincrash · · Score: 3, Insightful

    what if three different finalists all are successful, just some are better than others? just because there is one winner doesn't mean the runners up are failures.

  2. Cost control measures... by Silas+Palmer-Cannon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is probably a good way to gain technology while minimizing cost. How much would it cost for NASA to do this in house? 100 million? 200 million? Too expensive? Here's the solution. Offer college students 2.5 million as a prize for a "competition". Good work guys.

    1. Re:Cost control measures... by l2718 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Note that NASA would be spending the $100M to ensure that things will work, preiod. The private developers are willing to assume a greater level of risk -- which is the main reason for the cost saving.

  3. "Bounty" based development by Null+Nihils · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I wonder if we'll see an increase in "bounty" based development. It certainly seems likely. A large number of smaller F/OSS projects also offer a significant monetary prize or "bounty" for someone who can implement tech to solve a specified need, want or problem. The Google Summer of Code is also, in my mind, a similar deal.

    This stands in contrast to older, beaurocratic methods that are closed and contract-based.

    This new openness is, in my opinion, closer to the ideals of a free market than the latter mentioned system.

    1. Re:"Bounty" based development by supabeast! · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "This stands in contrast to older, beaurocratic methods that are closed and contract-based."

      How do you think those contracts are often won? The government has often, and still does, set up contests like this, where big defense contractors compete for a bounty which comes in the form of a contract to produce the final product. In aerospace the bureaucracy is not so much a problem in the contracting system -- even without corruption and bureaucrats there are still only a tiny handful of people and corporations capable of handling any large aerospace project -- as it is in the implementation and maintenance of projects, where the ongoing costs and wasted productivity weigh down the entire system.

      That said, I think that the bounty system is a gimmick that won't last too long. Smart executives seeing the success of bounties in the software world will be spurred to just start hiring F/OSS developers with some of the money F/OSS saves them in the first place, and the bounties will start fading away as their unnecessary - at least they will if Larry and Sergei at Google are setting an example.

  4. Gravity? by BaronSprite · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Wouldn't the thrust systems need to be significantly different for a 180 second hop on earth when compared to the moon? Not to mention weight of fuel and what not...

    1. Re:Gravity? by grozzie2 · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Figure out the impulse required to do a 3 minute hop at the bottom of a 9.81 m/s^2 gravity well. Now figure out the impulse required to go from a stable low orbit to a soft landing in a 1.635 m/s^2 gravity well. The numbers are going to be amazingly close. For the next step, figure out your stability problem for a 3 minute hop, vertical takeoff, lateral displacement, and then soft landing with a 3 minute flight time, including silly things like wind drift and possibly some random turbulence enroute. Refigure the problem for the orbit to lunar surface in vaccuum.

      Overall, not a bad deal. For 2.5 million, you get propulsion and stability that's on par with that needed for a lunar landing. Add some guidance, and you have the whole package. Of course, this doesn't really touch on the actual expensive part of the project, and that's the ride up to lunar orbit.

      Will have to wait till the final rules are published, but, there's a big ticket item missing from the discussion so far, and that's the subject of mass budget. If this is going to really represent a lunar landing package, there will be an all up mass budget for the lander, and, a specific amount of that mass needs to be reserved for payload.

      The problem for the Apollo program wasn't making a lunar lander, it was making a lunar lander that fit within the mass budget, and still had room left for 2 astronauts. That required compromises and risk management that wouldn't be acceptable in today's climate. If folks think a space shuttle is a 'scary contraption', then they should go take a look at the LEM used by the Apollo program. When the candles were lit for an Apollo mission, there was NOBODY trying to kid around that it was a 'safe' endeavour, and EVERYBODY understood, and accepted, the possibility of a mission ending in fatal failure. the LEM was probably the most fragile contraption ever lofted into space.

      The Apollo program had a 81% success rate, with 1 of the 11 attempts resulting in a fatal outcome even before it was launched. 10 of 11 attempted launches actually went off, and one of those failed it's primary mission, but thru hard work and some ingenuity, mixed in with a lot of good luck, the astronauts actually got home alive. Compared that to the shuttles 98% success rate, the Apollo success rate was atrocious. Shuttle has had 2 failures in well over 100 launches, Apollo had 2 failures in 11 attempts, and 10 launches.

      Here on /. folks like to comment 'well if we could go to the moon 50 years ago, why not today'. Frankly, 'we' didn't go to the moon 50 years ago, it was our parents and grandparent generation that did that. They were willing to accept risk as a fact of life, analyze it, deal with it, and accept the results. The society of america today could not possibly put a man back on the moon, the public doesn't have the tolerance for the cost, either financially, or in human costs. They want a system that's guaranteed to work, and guaranteed to not break on the way. Well folks, with rocket technology, it ain't gonna happen. You have to either accept the risk, or, go develop some new breakthru propulsion system that doesn't rely on strapping people on top of a huge bomb, then doing a controlled explosion to send it into orbit.

      If the shuttle system is being scrapped because it's not 'safe enough', then stop looking to the moon and beyond for rockets. Shuttle is just a baby, meant to go to low orbit. The big boys that are needed to go farther can make big bangs substantially larger than a space shuttle is capable of. If you are going to strap the quantities of lox and h2 together in tanks light enough to carry on up to orbit and beyond, once in a while the whole mess is going to go boom. Accept it, deal with it, or forget it. That's what your grandparents did, and thats how they got to the moon, and they did it using slide rules and will power.

  5. Re:Consolation Prize by Neurotoxic666 · · Score: 2, Insightful
    There is no room for "good enough" in Space.

    Nobody will end up in 2nd or 3rd place with a "good enough" idea either. It is going to be some pretting friggin good ideas, worthy of a prize. Even if some idea does not win the contest, it might very well inspire some genius elsewhere to come up with something better or it could also be improved, tested and used. You never know.

    --
    You are more than the sum of what you consume. Desire is not an occupation.
  6. Re:Hammer, Feather, Freefall on the Moon: Revisite by woolio · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The hammer is first to hit the ground.

    That may be, but the time difference between the hammer hitting the ground and the feather hitting the ground probably won't be observable to us....

  7. Re:Hey, NASA can do cheap, too... by fm6 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Jeez, they spent 30 billion 1969 dollars (about $160 billion in today's money), and they still had to cut corners?

  8. Re:Hammer, Feather, Freefall on the Moon: Revisite by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    It's the principle of the thing. How many times have you heard the lie told that the hammer and feather fall together? How many times have you heard Newton's name invoked in promoting this egregiously lunocentric viewpoint? It's about time someone took a stand for hammer (feather) mechanics. The truth is that according to Newton's law of universal gravitation, the hammer and the feather fall to the ground at different rates.

  9. Re:something isn't quite right about this. by carambola5 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The labor is definitely at issue, but you make one flaw in your argument.

    Aerospace engineers in smaller businesses do not make 120 big ones in a year. That is preposterously high. The cost adds up when you add more engineers to the equation. At a minimum, you need a jack-of-all-trades aerospace engineer (ie: theory, design, drafting, and analysis... a fairly rare combination seeing as drafting is usually "below" an aerospace engineer), an electrical engineer, a software engineer, maybe a propulsion engineer, and a project manager. That's 4-5 salaries at the absolute minimum. Generally, you want at least two of each type of engineer (the second need not be full time on the project) to bounce ideas back and forth. Quality and safety engineers are also nice to have, though they would split time amongst a company's projects.

    Now add your materials, construction, and infrastructure: custom one-off fabrication is NOT CHEAP, especially with the typical requirements put forth by NASA (generally NASA's GIDEP requirements involve extremely high quality, and expensive, commercial off-the-shelf compoents)... though it will probably only add up to $100k, depending. Construction is more labor... a few techs working on it, albeit at lower salaries than the engineers. And in an ideal world, infrastructure doesn't matter much if you have enough projects amongst which to split the costs.

    No, aerospace engineering is not an inexpensive enterprise. But removing NASA's interaction (and obscenely high "support staff" for your project) is a wonderful step.

    I think the first line of my sig should explain where I'm coming from.

    --
    IWARS.
    People, in general, disappoint me. Politicians even more so.