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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."
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.
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.
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.
Can I win the contest using my parachute-based landing system?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
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.
Your design to a real part online: Big Blue Saw
$2.5M is NOTHING to them. Nothing.
I hate to play this card, but by the end of 2006, we will have spent a (conservative) estimate of $315 billion in Iraq.
Heck, compare this to non-government entities. If ol' Bill could get college students to write him a completely new OS for 2.5M, he'd probably jump at the chance.
http://www.TheGamerNation.com/Forums
>Do you understand the point to the X-Prize at all?
I don't. It occurs to me that anyone capable of claiming such a prize should be doing it *anyway.*
It would be more impressive if somebody did it without regard for the prize. Didn't even claim the prize, didn't even enter the contest, just fulfilled the requirements ahead of any of the contestants.
That would be hilarious.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
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!
There's a story in "Chariots for Apollo" about the potential problem of hitting the descent stage engine bell on a uncharted rock. They had to consider that landing on a rock could damage the bell, push the bell into the ascent stage, etc... But they had neither the time nor the money to design and execute a test + spare LM to see what would happen. One day as they were moving the LM on a crane, the rig slipped, and the whole thing landed, engine bell down, on a pile of crates. No significant damage. One of the managers turned to the team and said someting like "You just got your million dollar test for free."
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Am I the only one who sort of wants them to say, "Hey! Anyone who goes and builds a moon colony gets all our money."
Enough with this baby-step stuff.
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
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.