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Armadillo Aerospace Claims Level 2 Lunar Lander Prize
Dagondanum writes "Armadillo Aerospace has officially won the 2009 Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge Level 2, on a rainy day at Caddo Mills, Texas. Reports came in from various locations during the day and spectators posted videos and images using social networking tools such as Twitter. The Level 2 prize requires the rocket to fly for 180 seconds before landing precisely on a simulated lunar surface constructed with craters and boulders. The minimum flight times are calculated so that the Level 2 mission closely simulates the power needed to perform a real descent from lunar orbit down to the surface of the Moon. First place is a prize of $1 million while second is $500,000."
I should have watched the end of the video first: around the three minutes mark you can clearly see the plume moving from side to side while the machine stays almost still relative to the ground.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
It may be standard practise to put it out with an extinguisher. I was reading about a recent test of a much larger rocket (I forget the details), and it was suggested that it was doused with CO2 at the end not because it wouldn't burn out on its own, but to preserve the engine in whatever state it was at the end of the burn to allow more information to be extracted from it.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
Wow...so many things wrong in so few sentences.
1) They landed on the X (well, with the X within the space defined by the legs of the craft). In fact, the craft didn't move much horizontally in the last 30 seconds or so...it pretty much hovered over the X for long enough to meet the 180 sec limit.
2) The flames were from the simulated lunar surface that it lit on fire, not the craft itself. If I were them, I wouldn't be too concerned with lighting the surface of the moon on fire...it seems unlikely.
3) The contest is run in stages, and there are prizes for being the first (and second) team to finish each stage, so they did in fact claim a prize for being the first to finish stage 2 of the contest. Yes, there is still a stage 3, and there is a separate prize for being the first to finish stage 3.
Yep, the main engine is thrust vectoring. Roll control is handled by small cold-gas thrusters that use the same helium supply that pressurizes the main propellant tanks.
Note also that "it most certainly looks top-heavy" is actually an example of the pendulum fallacy. It doesn't matter whether the center of mass is far above, a little above, or below the rocket engine, you need active stabilization on a hovering rocket. (On a rocket flying a vertical trajectory, passive stabilization via fins will suffice to hold it basically straight.)
That's not correct. First, they already won Level 1 last year, so there's only 2nd place of Level 1 available for grabs. This year the rules were changed a bit so that each team can try for the challenge at their home bases, and only Armadillo has so far. There are 2 other competitors that have yet to fly. If they succeed at the Level 2 then they will determine who gets first place by looking at who landed the closest to the center of the pad. So even though Armadillo succeeded, the other teams can still do better in theory and claim first place.
Mada mada dane.