NASA Offering $2 Million Prize for Lunar Lander

coondoggie writes "If you build it, NASA will not only come, it'll give you $2 million dollars for your troubles. The space agency today said it will offer $2 million in prizes if competing teams can successfully build a lunar lander at the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge at Holloman Air Force Base, in Alamogordo, N.M. Oct. 27 and 28th. To win the prize, teams must demonstrate a rocket-propelled vehicle and payload that takes off vertically, climbs to a defined altitude, flies for a pre-determined amount of time, and then lands vertically on a target that is a fixed distance from the launch pad. After landing, the vehicle must take off again within a predetermined time, fly for a certain amount of time and then land back on its original launch pad."

Comments

Re:Economics?

[shaneFalco]

Call it a labor of love.... the guys that go for it are not so much interested in making it rich but in contributing to the next space landing...... Super Geeks... with a capital S

Re:Significantly different?

[MightyYar]

Any rocket scientists out there have any idea what the real benefit of the challenge is? IINARS. But, I can think of why this would be beneficial. If you can meet the challenge here on Earth, and you can do it for round-bouts $2 million, then you have figured out how to do a complex task very cheaply. NASA won't be sending a slightly-modified version of your lander to the moon, but they may well come away with some cost-saving ideas.

And then there's the whole fun of it.

Re:China and Japan are already there

[RedWizzard]

Will they let the chinese show up? Or maybe the Japanese? Those are orbiters, not landing modules, so no. Anyway the Lunar Lander Challenge has nothing to do with sending anything to the moon. Rather it requires the ability to fly a particular (VTOL) flight profile and quick turnaround times. It's aimed at getting private developers to develop technology that none of the world's governments seem to be working on (i.e. quick turnaround).

I'm so tired of my tax dollars being wasted on international dick-waving contests like this. I wish NASA et al would just whip out the rulers- it'd be cheaper. Then again, it wouldn't feed the defense contractors, now would it? I'm tired of people making uninformed comments about stories they clearly haven't even read and still getting modded up for it. We don't always get what we want.

That's so 1969...

[tinrobot]

It makes me sad that almost 40 years later, they have to reinvent the technology from scratch.

We should be competing for a Mars lander by now.

America is dying

[megaditto]

$2M for a working rocket spaceship
$2B for a half-assed video hosting site Youtube

I am the only one saddened by this?

Re:America is dying

[Plutonite]

No, you missed the big news:

15B for a "social-networking" website where people can "poke" each other and buy each other little gifts that are pictures of teddy bears and ducks.

Re:China and Japan are already there

[Uberminky]

We're all entitled to our opinions about how NASA is running their show, but even still, I have to disagree with your post.

From what I saw on those links you pointed out, those projects have very different goals from the lunar lander challenge. In both cases (as far as the articles made clear) the respective countries were running state-sponsored (not privately funded) programs to get their gadgets into orbit around the moon to take measurements, test out equipment, etc, without ever touching down. The lunar lander challenge, on the other hand, isn't really about the moon part, so much as the lander part (hell, the challenge takes place on earth). My understanding is that it is geared towards developing privately funded solutions capable of performing a task roughly equivalent to what a helicopter can do (vertical takeoff, controlled flight, vertical landing), but without an atmosphere. It's not nearly as much of a marvel as putting a probe in orbit and mapping out a planet (or moon), as NASA has already done (though maybe not to the degree that these new projects plan to), but it's privately funded, and I believe it is done in the name of making future trips to other planets cheaper. NASA's $2M prize is nothing compared to what the various companies could (and probably already have) shell out, so in fact this is actually a money-saver for NASA. If/when we have any sort of permanent setup on the moon, whether it is a colony of humans or an automated ore-extracting plant, or whatever, we will need this capability. Sure, we have it (NASA has done it, and with people onboard to boot), but the basement designers will, out of necessity, find ways to do it that are cheaper, requiring less-exotic materials, less human interaction, etc. These groups will explore the problem space in a way more akin to how the Russians developed much of their space technology (fly it until it breaks, redesign until it flies again, rinse, repeat... which resulted in some pretty bulletproof systems).

Opinions about NASA aside, I would personally like to see us build colonies off of this planet. Maybe we've got plenty of time left on this one, maybe not, but we don't really know, and I would love to visit the moon one day. And if I can develop something in my basement that makes that more affordable for the next generation, I'm gonna give it a try.