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Masten Qualifies For $1 Million Space Prize

Posted by Soulskill on 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.

2 of 40 comments (clear)

  1. About 2' ?! no wonder US space program screwed by fantomas · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    No wonder the US space program is screwed, if you're taking perfectly fine reported measures in metric (20cm, 78cm) converting them into Imperial and guesstimating what you end up with.

    I suppose 5% inaccuracy is fine for this but you'd be a bit worried if you were in space and the NASA guys were taking the ESA / Russian space agency data and saying "hang on a minute guys, we'll work that out to the nearest foot".

  2. 200g flour vs 200g rice, gloriously off topic by fantomas · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    gloriously off topic but who cares, it's just an idle chat space after all....

    200g flour not the same as 200g of rice? run that one past me, I'm curious! :-)

    Also I don't get your bit about cooking in metric needing special tools, suggesting that cooking in Imperial doesn't need special tools, that the overhead on using metric is higher than using Imperial. Over here in the UK most measuring devices do both but increasingly are metric so "special tools" is more like Imperial rather than metric. How does cooking 200g rice vs 200g flour need more tools than cooking 8oz rice vs 8oz flour?

    Obviously too early in the morning for me but if a recipe asked for 200g flour and then 200g rice surely the weight is the same. They might displace different volumes but surely 200g is 200g on my scales? Recipes over here in the UK tend to be by weight rather than some things by weight and some things by volume (unless its a liquid).

    Don't even get me started on US measurements of "cups" , that really confused me for a long time :-) I have lots of different cups in my cupboard and they are all different sizes. No idea which one is the official, standard sized one! Big chunky mugs for drinking tea when you're in the workshop, tea cups for nice meals, couple of little posh coffee cups for espressos, all different sizes.... no idea which is the official "cup".

    cheers, idling away the morn...