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

Fine

[zdude255]

Fine, I'll make my own Lunar Lander, with Blackjack and hookers!

Lunar Lander? Excellent!

[Applekid]

I logged many many hours simulating a Lunar Lander. Hopefully they kept the controls the same.

Not on the Moon....

[frakir]

Competition summary:

The Competition is divided into two levels. Level 1 requires a rocket to take off from a designated launch area, rocket up to 150 feet (50 meters) altitude, then hover for 90 seconds while landing precisely on a landing pad 100 meters away. The flight must then be repeated in reverse--and both flights, along with all of the necessary preparation for each, must take place within a two and a half hour period.

The more difficult course, Level 2, requires the rocket to hover for twice as long before landing precisely on a simulated lunar surface, packed with craters and boulders to mimic actual lunar terrain. The hover times are calculated so that the Level 2 mission closely simulates the power needed to perform the real lunar mission.

Already been done...

[Froze]

Just not officially, from their latest news;
"Full LLC1 flight
One June 2, we conducted a complete LLC 1 operational profile at the Oklahoma Spaceport. Everything went great. Representatives from AST and the X-Prize Cup were present. This was the first flight under experimental permit rules from a licensed spaceport. Both legs of the flight landed within a meter of the pad center, and our operation time was only an hour and a half."

Read the whole description here. It is full of all manner of technical goodies. In fact I can't wait for their next monthly update.

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.

Re:Are moonshots easier with ISS in orbit?

[Manhigh]

The ISS is inclined at 51.6 degrees relative to the equator (this was the lowest inclinations the Russians can get to from Balkanor without a costly plane-change maneuver)

For us, going to ISS is somewhat less efficient because we have to launch on a northerly azimuth out of the Cape instead of due east, which would maximize the 'boost' from the earth's rotation.

In short, the ISS is a research lab, not really a truck stop. Going there wastes propellant.

And while the CM and lander might be able to be designed to fit in the shuttle bay, the earth departure stage to push them to the moon is very large. Getting to lunar orbit in 9 hours is impressive for such a small vehicle, but it didn't have to enter lunar orbit, it just flew by. Slowing down to enter orbit takes a lot of propellant if you want to get there fast (have a high relative velocity)