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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."

2 of 159 comments (clear)

  1. Now we all know by SamP2 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    That Facebook is worth 750 lunar landers.

  2. Re:America is dying by FallOfDay · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    You're not the only one saddened by this; I am too, & I'm not even an American.

    I'm wondering how many punches America will have to take before the country stands up, contains itself (instead of lashing out with another war), & reminds the world that twelve moonwalkers, a load of test pilots & guys like Art Arfons & Joe Kittinger are where the real business-end of that Big Frontier is. This is still a part of the American heritage & mindset, & doesn't deserve to go under.

    $2m is a good prize, for a backyard fellow of the Arfons mindset, if such a guy would decide to give it a shot. After all, a lander is old tech, now, & should be reverse engineerable, to some degree, quite cheaply. Remember that they're not after a full LEM, but just the technology for testing the lander on planet Earth. NASA would possibly be interested in giving such a person, who comes up with the goods, a pretty solid engineering job/contract, also; for the duration of the Constellation Program (i.e. A long time). After all, the winner would know exactly how to build & rebuild it, & probably even to land the thing.

    Step one: Reverse engineer everything that can be found out about the 'Flying Bedstead'. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LLRV