Masten Qualifies For $1 Million Space Prize

Posted by Soulskill on Friday October 30, 2009 @06:10PM from the fly-me-to-the-moon dept.

RobGoldsmith writes "Masten Space Systems successfully qualified for first place in level two of the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge Wednesday. Flying a brand new vehicle named XA-0.1E (nicknamed Xoie), Masten demonstrated their ability to build, debug and fly a vehicle on a very short timeline. " Reader lessgravity points out a video of the craft completing its mission. Apparently, the team was given an extra shot at the challenge on Friday after having trouble during their scheduled attempts on Wednesday and Thursday, which didn't please John Carmack, founder of rival team Armadillo Aerospace.

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Re:I can well imagine that Carmack is royally POed by Dahamma · 2009-10-30 19:18 · Score: 4, Insightful

Their guidance systems came within about 2' of each other, at which point it's already absurd to call a "winner" on that factor alone since it will have NO bearing in any real world usage. The contest rules prioritized the wrong deciding factor. And because of that (basically it was down to an extra crap shoot that only the other team was allowed) Carmack is legitimately pissed. Run this test 10 times and average it out, with a big penalty for total failure. THEN we'll see which design is something that should be used in a real mission landing.