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2 Companies Win NASA's Moon-Landing Prize Money
coondoggie writes "NASA said it will this week award $1.65 million in prize money to a pair of aerospace companies that successfully simulated landing a spacecraft on the moon and lifting off again. NASA's Centennial Challenges program, which was managed by the X Prize Foundation, will give a $1 million first prize to Masten Space Systems and a $500,000 second prize to Armadillo Aerospace for successfully completing the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge."
The real key to successfully land the lander is to understand that you need to apply enough thrust to slow your descent without actually reversing the velocity of the craft. If you can balance that action so that you end up only a couple pixels off the ground, you can safely put the lander down on any flat surface.
The other problem is to navigate to a flat surface, but that is also easily solved by pressing the left and right arrow keys.
As for actual controls, I prefer using the spacebar to activate the rockets, although some people like the down arrow key.
I am not surprised at Armadillo's success. John Carmak has been making mars simulators since the early 90s.
>>It's almost as easy to click the link and RTFA as it is to complain about the summary...
Holy crap there are links to articles in the summaries?!?
Finally some vindication for those in the tinfoil hats.
http://xkcd.com/394/
Armadillo was robbed; Armadillo were first by MONTHS, succeeded in their allotted window in two sequential flight attempts and their craft never caught fire unlike Masten's.
Talk about destroying incentive. This is yet another illustration of the endemic incompetence at NASA. They could not organize a piss-up in a brewery.