X Prize Foundation Announces Lunar Lander Competitors

Raver32 writes to tell us the X Prize Foundation has announced eight of the nine groups planning to compete in this year's Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge. "The ninth team requested to remain confidential, lending an air of controversy to the announcement. Space bloggers have surmised the ninth team is Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, but sources told SPACE.com that information was wrong. Their confidentiality period ends 60 days before the start of the competition at which time the X Prize Foundation will announce the team's name."

Comments

Building a product can be very expensive

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Just because it takes $200k to make a toy can does not mean it will take $200M to build a bigger thing to go to the moon.

Making a product (toy car) is very expensive. Moulds for plastic injection moulding can cost $50k+ each. Processes for making 1 off parts cost a lot less.

What is our limitation?

[xzvf]

Imagine what it would be like today if we kept going to the moon through the last four decades. The costs are minor compared to the social programs and the military budget. Why can't some senator earmark a space program, like they do for bridges and museums? It holds about the same priority in the budget.

Re:What is our limitation?

[Arterion]

What's on the moon that's so great? All the other things you mentioned are useful to society. How does society benefit from trips to the moon?

seriously

[morgan_greywolf]

It's not Blue Origin. They're known to be using hydrogen peroxide as the fuel for their 'mystery project', which isn't going to get anyone to the moon, considering rockets based on H2O2 are barely enough to get you into a suborbital flight.

I'll bet it's Burt Rattan and Scaled Composites, but this time instead of being backed by Paul Allen, they'll be backed by Richard Branson and his Virgin Galactic outfit. They may even be using the Virgin Galactic as the team name. It's just Branson's style to pull something like this.

My other guess, if that doesn't pan out, is Elon Musk and his team at SpaceX. SpaceX may have only barely got a prototype rocket into space, but they have a lot of very smart people on that team. Somehow I doubt it's them, because I don't think hiding the team's name is Musk's style.

Are moonshots easier with ISS in orbit?

[GodfatherofSoul]

I don't have the tools to calculate this, but if you can get a lunar lander/command module unit up to the space station (I'd guess it would fit in the shuttle's payload bay), wouldn't a moon landing be a relatively easy next step? I just watched the Pluto mission special on the Science Channel and it made moon orbit in friggin 9 hours! Of course, it's smaller.

Re:Are moonshots easier with ISS in orbit?

[Anonymous Freak]

As another poster mentioned, yes, it is possible to use the ISS as a 'launching post', but horribly inefficient. The Pluto mission didn't '[make] moon orbit', it made it to lunar SPACE. It was going WAY too fast to actually have a chance of decelerating and actually entering lunar orbit. It also made it to Jupiter significantly faster than dedicated Jupiter probe Galileo, because Galileo had to be going slow enough to enter Jupiter orbit.

And, yes, a lunar landing mission spacecraft would fit in the Shuttle's cargo bay, but that would be a ridiculously expensive way of carrying it to orbit. Better to use a single smaller rocket to get it there, that way you don't have to carry the entire weight of the Shuttle, too.

The only way an Earth-orbit space station would be a decent 'launching post' for a lunar mission would be if they were to find a cheap way to launch fuel into Earth orbit (cheaper per pound than launching the actual spacecraft,) and make the space station a refueling post. You'd launch the lunar lander into Earth orbit with just enough fuel to make it to the space station, then refuel in Earth orbit. Otherwise, you might as well just launch completely ready to go to the moon.

A *MARS* mission, on the other hand, makes a little more sense, because for such a long voyage, you would want a spacecraft that is really too large to launch straight to Mars as one piece. So you launch the individual pieces into Earth orbit, join them in Earth orbit, then leave for Mars. In that case, ISS makes a perfectly logical assembly point. (I am also a fan of the two-stage Mars launch, where you launch the return vehicle to Mars, along with fuel and supplies, unmanned. Then, once those are safely on Mars, you launch a smaller 'outbound-only' ship. This way, you don't have to launch one single large ship.

LOTS of reasons...

[charleste]

Just to name a few:
Kevlar
Teflon
Velcro
TANG!
Astronaut Icecream (love it when I'm backpacking)
Plus loads of other things developed for the space program, that are in common use today. And if you think R&D will come up with stuff like this without the fire under their arses - that is the space program - you're mistaken. Few new ideas and revolutionary materials come about without a reason for application. For the most common example: Einstein didn't try to make a bomb - he came up with the idea... once there was an application, then it got built.

This is cool and all...

[kaizokuace]

I just don't wanna see the X-Prize become some reality tv show or something. Anyway, what I want to see out of this stuff is some sort of jump gate network in orbit. Like they gates are magnetic catapults and you just put your ship or whatever payload or something in it and you get tossed to the moon! Or string them up to mars! It would be cool methinks. It could be the answer to making private owned travel cheaper if it is cheaper energy-wise? I dunno cuz I'm not a physicist or engineer, just a guy with fantasies about space travel.