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