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Lunar Spacecraft Compete For $2 Million NASA Prize
coondoggie writes "Nine rocket-powered vehicles will compete for NASA's $2 million, 2008 Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, Oct. 24-25. The goal is to accelerate development of commercial Lunar Landers capable of bringing payloads or humans back and forth between lunar orbit and the lunar surface. NASA of course would expect to use some of the technology developed at the Challenge. 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 land vertically on a target that is a fixed distance from the launch pad. After landing, the vehicle must take off again within a pre-determined time, fly for a certain amount of time and then land back on its original launch pad."
Details about the teams involved with the competition are available at the X-Prize website. The event will be broadcast live via webcast next weekend.
First comment, desu desu
A couple weeks ago, while browsing around the library downtown, I had to take a piss. As I entered the john, Barack Obama -- the messiah himself -- came out of one of the booths. I stood at the urinal looking at him out of the corner of my eye as he washed his hands. He didn't once look at me. He was busy and in any case I was sure the secret service wouldn't even let me shake his hand.
As soon as he left I darted into the booth he'd vacated, hoping there might be a lingering smell of shit and even a seat still warm from his sturdy ass. I found not only the smell but the shit itself. He'd forgotten to flush. And what a treasure he had left behind. Three or four beautiful specimens floated in the bowl. It apparently had been a fairly dry, constipated shit, for all were fat, stiff, and ruggedly textured. The real prize was a great feast of turd -- a nine inch gastrointestinal triumph as thick as his cock -- or at least as I imagined it!
I knelt before the bowl, inhaling the rich brown fragrance and wondered if I should obey the impulse building up inside me. I'd always been a liberal democrat and had been on the Obama train since last year. Of course I'd had fantasies of meeting him, sucking his cock and balls, not to mention sucking his asshole clean, but I never imagined I would have the chance. Now, here I was, confronted with the most beautiful five-pound turd I'd ever feasted my eyes on, a sausage fit to star in any fantasy and one I knew to have been hatched from the asshole of Barack Obama, the chosen one.
Why not? I plucked it from the bowl, holding it with both hands to keep it from breaking. I lifted it to my nose. It smelled like rich, ripe limburger (horrid, but thrilling), yet had the consistency of cheddar. What is cheese anyway but milk turning to shit without the benefit of a digestive tract?
I gave it a lick and found that it tasted better then it smelled.
I hesitated no longer. I shoved the fucking thing as far into my mouth as I could get it and sucked on it like a big half nigger cock, beating my meat like a madman. I wanted to completely engulf it and bit off a large chunk, flooding my mouth with the intense, bittersweet flavor. To my delight I found that while the water in the bowl had chilled the outside of the turd, it was still warm inside. As I chewed I discovered that it was filled with hard little bits of something I soon identified as peanuts. He hadn't chewed them carefully and they'd passed through his body virtually unchanged. I ate it greedily, sending lump after peanutty lump sliding scratchily down my throat. My only regret was that Barack Obama wasn't there to see my loyalty and wash it down with his piss.
I soon reached a terrific climax. I caught my cum in the cupped palm of my hand and drank it down. Believe me, there is no more delightful combination of flavors than the hot sweetness of cum with the rich bitterness of shit. It's even better than listening to an Obama speech!
Afterwards I was sorry that I hadn't made it last longer. But then I realized that I still had a lot of fun in store for me. There was still a clutch of virile turds left in the bowl. I tenderly fished them out, rolled them into my handkerchief, and stashed them in my briefcase. In the week to come I found all kinds of ways to eat the shit without bolting it right down. Once eaten it's gone forever unless you want to filch it third hand out of your own asshole. Not an unreasonable recourse in moments of desperation or simple boredom.
I stored the turds in the refrigerator when I was not using them but within a week they were all gone. The last one I held in my mouth without chewing, letting it slowly dissolve. I had liquid shit trickling down my throat for nearly four hours. I must have had six orgasms in the process.
I often think of Barack Obama dropping solid gold out of his sweet, pink asshole every day, never knowing what joy it could, and at least once did, bring to a grateful democrat.
Damn, trolling Slashdot is easy today.
I would have competed but I had an error in the firmware for the lander, meters converted to feet. Now I just have a crater in my back yard. Perhaps NASA doesn't need the help.
I think I just cashed out all my cool points.
For some reason one of the higher profile high school and college robotics competitions (whose name escapes me) would seem to lead toward this goal, at least as far as the frame and payload of a lander/takeoff vehicle is concerned. Of course, in this they'd have to switch from propellers to rockets, and they'd have to massively scale up both in size and in payload, but if the contest only covers the scope of the mechanics of flight and not the part about keeping occupants alive and comfortable then this could be interesting.
I'd be perversely pleased if some high school club somewhere managed to make a design that passed the tests...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I'm impressed that Armadillo Aerospace has claimed that they are making a profit. The big question of course is *how*? Are they selling a lot of t-shirts? Or are they raking in the cash from rocket racing investors?
I actually think they'll be able to pull it off this year. The big question is whether they can beat Paragon Labs. I'm hoping that there will be more than one successful run this year.
I am not ready to be landing spacecraft on the moon IRL. I can't even do it in the simulator
It won't be a Negro who wins the prize.
It is now official. Netcraft confirms: *BSD is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be the Amazing Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
According to what the NASA statement wants from the vehicle, this sounds exactly like what the DC-X already was capable of doing and that technology is already available and tested. Why re-invent the wheel here?
I mean, am I crazy, or does it seem that NASA just likes doing the exact same thing over and over again, except using a whole new technology each time just to make everything more expensive than it needs to be?
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Just asking... It seems like it would fit the definition:
"Rocket-propelled vehicle and payload (the frog is its own vehicle and payload, and can be rocket-propelled via bottle rocket) that takes off vertically (frogs jump), climbs to a defined altitude (frogs can jump consistently to a defined height), flies for a pre-determined amount of time (frog stays in the air a while), and then land vertically on a target (a lilypad) that is a fixed distance from the launch pad (1.5 feet away). After landing, the vehicle must take off again within a pre-determined time, fly for a certain amount of time and then land back on its original launch pad (frogs do this)."
I couldn't help but notice that 7 of the 10 teams were from California with the other 3 teams being from Texas, Idaho and Colorado. I have a hard time believing nobody on the east coast is capable of competing in this competition, so the question is then why is there so much apathy outside California? Perhaps it is exorbitant transportation costs and most of these teams appear to be amateurish, but I just can't help but think the competition isn't as fierce as it could have been.
Has already done something like this, check out their videos.
climbs to a defined altitude, flies for a pre-determined amount of time
Why not be specfic, since the details are available ?
There are two levels of difficulty. FTFA :
Level 1 requires a vehicle to take off vertically from a designated launch area, climb to an altitude of at least 150 feet, remain aloft for at least 90 seconds while traveling horizontally to a landing pad 300 feet away, then land vertically.
The much more difficult Level 2 requires a vehicle to take off from a designated launch area, ascend to an altitude of 150 feet, hover for 180 seconds, then land precisely on a simulated, rocky, lunar surface 300 feet away.
You get to refuel, then you have to come back in the same fashion.
@@@Re:No the balloons wont burn because they can be placed under the hovering launch platform. @@@Also, the hydrogen can be compressed using solar panels for energy to reduce buoyancy for coming down and not loosing the gas.. @@@If the whole platform is designed like a gigantic glider shape then we can also maneuver it when it comes down. @@@The only question is, what are the size limits for building such a launch platform for taking max heavy rockets.