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NASA Offering $2 Million Prize for Lunar Lander

Posted by samzenpus on from the how-hard-could-it-be dept.

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."

5 of 159 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Significantly different? by MightyYar · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
    --
    W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
  2. Re:China and Japan are already there by RedWizzard · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
  3. That's so 1969... by tinrobot · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  4. America is dying by megaditto · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    I am the only one saddened by this?

    --
    Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
    1. Re:America is dying by Plutonite · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.