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."

Comments

Woohooo

[arikol]

Cool.
The flight looked amazingly stable.

GO Armadillo Aerospace. I'm just impressed and pleased that they made it.

Re:Woohooo

[bcmm]

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.

Re:Woohooo

[JustOK]

left arrow, left arrow,left arrow,right arrow,up,up,Up,UP,UP!,UP, shit, we made it.

Re:Woohooo

[evanbd]

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.)

Re:Woohooo

[wampus]

I kind of doubt the thing will be in an oxygen atmosphere on the moon, so there won't be any need to douse it in CO2 after landing.

Re:Woohooo

[Narishma]

The corrections they were making near the end are so that they land as close as possible to the center of the pad, because that counts in determining who gets first place if another team also wins the challenge.

Re:Woohooo

[Anonymous Coward]

Lunar Lander was made by Atari, not Konami.

Re:Woohooo

[justins]

Like OH MY GOD

Google x-prize?

[WindBourne]

Perhaps, just perhaps, this will land on the moon within 2 years. That would be a spectacle to see. I think that if I were Apple or Ellison, I might consider funding it. ANother one might be Paul Allen. Allen has always been on the cutting edge of tech (and unlike his previous partner, not stealing it). Hopefully, he considers talking to carmack and getting this going there. Something like would be likely to spark the kids a bit more.

Re:Google x-prize?

[BuR4N]

I think the Google Lunar x-prize is pointless. Its now more or less 5 years to it expire, but the full sum is only paid out if someone makes the trip before the end of 2012.

The orginal x-prize took 8 years for someone to win, and that prize had a strong commercial (space tourism) appeal, while the Google prize have not.

Re:Google x-prize?

[lysergic.acid]

Then maybe the time limit should be extended. And perhaps it should be geared more towards research teams from academia rather than commercial industries.

First off, this is a much loftier goal (far more difficult than suborbital space flight), so naturally it will take longer to achieve. That's to be expected.

Secondly, these type of high-risk, low (immediate) commercial return ventures are inherently unappealing to private commercial industries. Things like space exploration and basic research are long-term investments in the future of humanity. Private industries prefer short-term investments with immediate returns. That's why government agencies like NASA and publicly-funded research organizations like CERN are needed. Otherwise these tasks would never be undertaken.

Lastly, it would probably speed up the process (of returning to the moon) if NASA hadn't decided to take all that publicly-funded space research/technology and auction it off to the highest bidder, basically turning it into private research (to be guarded as trade secrets) and proprietary technologies that are inaccessible to public researchers. I mean, we went from having no space program to landing on the moon in just under 11 years. Returning to the moon 4 decades later in 5 to 7 years really isn't that unreasonable—given that we're able to build on previously acquired knowledge and experience and actually have the motivation as a society to return to the moon.

good... so far

[CarpetShark]

They seemed to be attempting to land on the X, but gave up in the end. Having to put the thing out with a fire extinguisher is a bit worrying too. Otherwise, looks good.

However, the article really shouldn't say "claims prize" when they just didn't fail. The comp isn't even over yet!

Re:good... so far

[bcmm]

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.

Re:good... so far

[gclef]

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.

Re:good... so far

[CarpetShark]

The flames were from the simulated lunar surface that it lit on fire, not the craft itself.

OK, but the simulated lunar surface looks a lot like concrete. Also, they seem to have some inside their engine, as that's where the flames are coming from ;)

Re:good... so far

[Narishma]

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.

Re:good... so far

[lysergic.acid]

Are you sure the flames were from the simulated lunar surface? It seemed to be coming out of the bottom of the rocket booster and then shooting towards the ground (3:15 in the first video). I think someone mentioned this was done intentionally to freeze the engine's state for further data collection purposes.

Though it does look like the safety personnel sprays the extinguisher at both the lunar pad and the booster.

Not impressed

[SmallFurryCreature]

If they want a shot at faking another moonlanding they really need to hire a better set designer, that didn't look anything like the moon!

Re:Not impressed

[NoYob]

If they want a shot at faking another moonlanding they really need to hire a better set designer, that didn't look anything like the moon!

I had a great set for my faked Moon landing. It looked perfect as the rocket came down on its parachute! For some reason folks said it didn't look like a real Moon landing - go figure!

Re:Not impressed

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I had a great set for my faked Moon landing. It looked perfect as the rocket came down on its parachute! For some reason folks said it didn't look like a real Moon landing - go figure!

You silly, the parachute was too big! Everything is lighter on Moon, you need a smaller parachute.

Actually it was

[MRe_nl]

set cg_bobroll "0"

Girlfriend's reaction

[YourExperiment]

My girlfriend* just walked in the room and saw me watching the video of the successful flight. All she said was "No, you can't have one."

To be fair, she was joking... I think.

* Don't even think about it.

It's not over yet; They didn't actually win

[chroma]

The summary is misleading. They didn't actually win the $1 million yet. Masten Space and Unreasonable Rocket are both going to have a crack at the prize and have until October 31 to best Armadillo's performance.

Market It As a Toy!

[sanman2]

Superb work from the minds of Armadillo!

Maybe they need to find a way to turn something like into a commercializable product, to reap more rewards from their fine work.

I wonder if there's some kind of dual-use alternative market for something like this? How about making a small miniaturized version that could be marketed as a toy for adult geeks? (aka "overgrown kids")

Cmon - wouldn't you like to have your own miniature thrust-vectored hovering lander thingie floating around your office?

Carmack's geek credentials are solid enough to be a brand. He could make his own toy company to market toy versions of any cool space tech he develops.

Re:Market It As a Toy!

[sbierwagen]

You might be able to scale it down and have it run for more than three seconds and without using lawsuit-inspiringly high tank pressures, I don't know, I'm not a rocket scientist.

But something that would be difficult to scale is the electronics. I don't know what precisely Armadillo is using right now, but I know it includes a Crossbow IMU. The control system for a rocket needs high quality gyros, and while the Crossbow is cheap by the rarefied standards of military avionics, it's still a good fifty grand, and is definitely not something that can be replaced by a wiimote accelerometer.

Re:Erm

[mobets]

Maybe the setup crew got confused when they saw Carmack and set up a simulated Mars surface instead.

Re:budget

[QuantumG]

If you've got a "build a little, sell a little" mindset like John Carmack, sure. He's actually said he hasn't spent more than $1 million on Armadillo.. and last year he let slip that the group is actually profitable already. With the prize money they intend to put on a few more people fulltime.