Nov-03-20092 Companies Win NASA's Moon-Landing Prize Money
(topic overview)
CONTENTS:- To Mojave, Calif., to be precise, where there are companies on the cutting edge of civilian space flight, and in 2004 a civilian spacecraft named SpaceShipOne broke a non-military altitude record of 328,000 feet for a manned flight. (More...)
- Remember.it took Scaled Composites less than 2 years and 30million dollars to build a brand new ship from the ground up and put it in space WITH human cargo. (More...)
- The X Prize Foundation is the organization that awarded $10 million for the 2004 suborbital flights of SpaceShipOne, the first privately developed manned rocket to reach space. (More...)
- NASA's Centennial Challenges program's goals are to drive progress in aerospace technology that is of value to NASA's missions; encourage participation of independent teams, individual inventors, student groups and private companies of all sizes in aerospace research and development; and find innovative solutions to technical challenges through competition and cooperation. (More...)
- The competition pitted teams in an effort to lauch a rocket, ascend to 50 meters, hover for at least 180 seconds, and land 50 meters away--and repeat the performance a number of times. (More...)
- What's next, a $1 million prize to the first company that can build a hydrogen bomb, construct a MOSFET (or something else the government did 50 years ago). (More...)
- Permit me to be petty enough to be upset and bitter about a half million dollars being taken from me and given to my competitor. (More...)
SOURCESFIND OUT MORE ON THIS SUBJECTTo Mojave, Calif., to be precise, where there are companies on the cutting edge of civilian space flight, and in 2004 a civilian spacecraft named SpaceShipOne broke a non-military altitude record of 328,000 feet for a manned flight. There, he said he kept knocking on doors until someone finally gave him a job. Brockert, 27, a 2000 graduate of Mediapolis High School and son of Julie Brockert of Mediapolis, got his toe in the door at Masten Space Systems in 2007, being hired there as a technician in the shop. "It turned out to be pretty much the perfect job," he said. Today, his multiple hats include project manager for Xombie and Xoie, Masten's two lunar landers that were designed and built over the past year for entry into the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, a $2 million incentive prize program in partnership with the X Prize Foundation aimed at building a cadre of American companies that routinely and safely fly vertical take-off and landing of rockets for lunar exploration and other applications. He also is deeply involved with testing Masten's rockets, the second of which -- called Xoie -- completed a successful flight Friday to reach Level III of the lunar lander competition. The Masten team has been at work on the X Prize contest for just the past nine months, and completed its first flight-ready spacecraft -- dubbed Xombie -- less than two months ago.
[1] WASHINGTON -- NASA will award $1.65 million in prize money Thursday to a pair of innovative aerospace companies that successfully simulated landing a spacecraft on the moon and lifting off again. NASA's Centennial Challenges program will give a $1 million first prize to Masten Space Systems of Mojave, Calif., and a $500,000 second prize to Armadillo Aerospace of Rockwall, Tex., for their Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge flights.
[2] NASA announced today that the Masten team's "try, try again" effort at California's Mojave Air and Space Port won the top prize in the
Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge's Level 2 contest. The Xoie rocket's final flight on Friday was good enough to best Texas-based
Armadillo Aerospace, which qualified for the prize with its Scorpius rocket in September.
[3] Playa Vista-based X PRIZE Foundation and NASA have named the winners of the $2M, Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander X PRIZE Challenge, after the finals were held over the weekend in the Mojave Desert. According to the groups, they will award $1M to Masten Space Systems, the largest award since the 2004 Ansari X PRIZE competition, for Masten's performance last week in the competition to design a rocket simulating a full lunar lander mission.
[4] PLAYA VISTA, CA -- 11/02/09 -- The race for the $2 million
Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander X PRIZE Challenge (NGLLXPC) incentivized prize purse, funded by NASA and presented by the
X PRIZE Foundation, has come to an exciting finish.
Masten Space Systems, led by David Masten, will be awarded the top $1 million prize on Nov. 5 in Washington D.C. at the Rayburn House Office Building. This is the largest incentivized prize awarded by the X PRIZE Foundation since the 2004
Ansari X PRIZE competition.
[5] "We are all very excited to have David Masten and John Carmack take the top prizes in the 2009 Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander X PRIZE Challenge. It is an honor to award these teams $2 million in prize money," said Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation. "This space race was exciting to watch and experience, as these dedicated teams raced to advance space technology. It is clear that the emerging space industry will continue to benefit from the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander X PRIZE Challenge."
[5] The X Prize Foundation claims that rocketeers invested the
equivalent of $20 million to go after the $2 million in Lunar Lander Challenge prize money. "This space race was exciting to watch and experience, as these dedicated teams raced to advance space technology," Peter Diamandis, chairman and chief executive officer of the X Prize Foundation, said today in a
news release. Dramatic week The contest reached its climax on Friday, when Masten's Xoie rocket made its million-dollar flight.
[3] During the day's fourth test, the rocket severed the tether and crashed, ending the final flight of the Lunar Lander Challenge with a bang. Even though they didn't win any money, Unreasonable Rocket's father-and-son team won high praise from onlookers as well as the organizers of the challenge. "They are only the third team to successfully fly the flight profile of the competition, so they have much to be proud of," the X Prize Foundation's Amanda Stiles wrote on the foundation's
Launch Pad blog. The Mojave Air and Space Port's Witt said he was happy to see multiple competitors blazing a trail for future space technologies. "I'm really proud of all the teams, regardless of the winners," he said. This is an updated version of a report that was first published on Oct. 28. An earlier version of this report mischaracterized the status of BonNova's rocket prototype.
[3] The flight profile must be repeated, with the rocket demonstrating repeat-use capability by returning to the original launch site. Since the NGLLXPC competition launched in 2006, one dozen teams have worked to design rockets capable of being used as part of Moon 2.0, a new era of international and sustainable lunar exploration that draws on both government and private involvement. These rocket designs have already found additional missions, with competing teams already carrying out important development work for NASA, the U.S. Department of Defense, and a variety of private and academic customers. Throughout the competition, NASA put up $2 million in prize money as part of their Centennial Challenges program. The NGLLXPC was comprised of two levels; each level included both first and second place prizes.
[5] All $2 million in prize money has been awarded. "The Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge has had its intended impact, with impressive performances by multiple teams representing a new generation of aerospace entrepreneurs" said Andrew Petro, NASA's Centennial Challenge program manager at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "These companies have demonstrated reusable vehicles with rapid turnaround and a surprising degree of precision in flight, and they have done all this at a much lower cost than many thought possible."
[2] The current contestants don't expect to provide NASA with honest-to-goodness lunar landers anytime soon. They see the prize as an extra incentive to build vehicles capable of taking up suborbital space tourists, or putting small payloads into orbit. "The Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge has had its intended impact, with impressive performances by multiple teams representing a new generation of aerospace entrepreneurs," Andrew Petro, NASA's Centennial Challenge program manager, said in
today's announcement. "These companies have demonstrated reusable vehicles with rapid turnaround and a surprising degree of precision in flight, and they have done all this at a much lower cost than many thought possible."
[3] 
Remember.it took Scaled Composites less than 2 years and 30million dollars to build a brand new ship from the ground up and put it in space WITH human cargo. Jeff, that's so right, they are all winners, working together and emptying NASA's prize purse for rocket contests. Lunar Lander Challengers for the win! Now it's time for NASA to come up with some more prize money for the next rocket contest. The funniest part is that NASA put up all of the prize money for this competition. These are no tinker toys. all teams (Like 7) have put in about $20,000,000 total in the hopes of at BEST winning only $1,350,000? Congrats to Masten and Armadillo for winning and to all the rest of the teams for trying. These guys are making history.
[3] I never thought it was worth investing in differential RTK GPS systems, because it has no bearing on our commercial operations. "The current situation, where Masten was allowed a third active day of competition, after trying and failing on both scheduled days, is different. I don't hold anything against Masten for using an additional time window that has been offered, since we wouldn't have passed it up if we were in their situation, but I do think this was a mistake on the judges' part. "I recognize that it is in the best interests of both the NASA Centennial Challenges department and the X Prize Foundation to award all the prize money this year, and that will likely have indirect benefits for us all in coming years. It is probably also beneficial to the nascent New Space industry to get more money to Masten than Armadillo, since we have other resources to draw upon.
[3] Armadillo completed the challenge several months ago, but their landing accuracy was slightly worse than Masten's attempt. Masten completed the challenge only one day before the expiration of the contest, and was able to do it only because another competitor failed and the X prize foundation allowed Masten to use their launch window (they'd earlier used up their scheduled time slots without doing a successful flight). Armadillo didn't have time or launch permits to go back and improve their accuracy. John Carmack was understandably disappointed in losing the $500K but is taking the long view that Masten needs the money more than they do, and they've already moved on to new projects.
[6] Masten Space Systems qualified for the Level 1 purse on October 7.
The team's rocket, named Xoie, successfully completed Level 2 on Oct. 30, qualifying for the million dollar grand prize. The X-Prize competition's blog, The Launch Pad, noted that "Masten completed two beautiful flights with good landing accuracy, although the team maintained nail-biting levels of anticipation as they came up against the clock at the end of the attempt (2 hours and 15 min are allotted for each attempt)."
[7] The Masten team set out to chase down
Armadillo Aerospace for the Level 2, first-place prize of $1 million. On Oct. 30, in their final attempt, Masten Space Systems successfully launched their 'Xoie' vehicle and achieved an average landing accuracy of 19 cm to beat Armadillo Aerospace's previous accuracy mark of 87 cm.
[5] The $1 million race to build a lunar lander is heating up, as--unexpectedly--Masten Space Systems' Xoie rocket prototype has taken the lead.
MSNBC reports that the Masten team's remote-controlled rocket had a successful test flight, just one day after a damaging fire on the launch pad and two days after communications glitches derailed two earlier launch attempts.
[8] LOS ANGELES (AP) A rocket flew halfway through a simulated lunar landing mission in the Mojave Desert on Thursday before a fire thwarted the attempt to win a $1 million prize. Masten Space Systems' Xoie, a robotic rocket, took off from a launch pad at Mojave Air & Space Port and flew to another pad where it set down on its legs among large boulders as flame licked up the side.
[9] Judges later ruled, however, that the team could make another attempt Friday morning, using a launch window that had been missed Wednesday. It means the six-member team is still on-target to win a $1 million prize at the end of the competition. After a handful of previous launch windows were missed last week, the lander finally made it off the launch pad late Thursday afternoon, where its flight -- involving liftoff, lateral flight, descent, hover and landing -- was nearly flawless, touching down within inches of its target on a nearby lunar landing pad.
[1] The Lunar Lander Challenge is aimed at providing incentives for companies to develop vertical takeoff and landing technology that can be used for moon landings and other purposes. Another company, Armadillo Aerospace of Rockwall, Texas, is the leading contender for the $1 million award, known as the X Prize, after completing the course with its rocket in September.
[9] With a $1 million grand prize up for grabs, amateurs and pros alike tried to prove over the weekend that their rockets could shoot the moon and leave it, too. Four teams initially threw their hats in the ring and their rockets in the air for the
2009 Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, which aims to accelerate development of new rockets that can land on and leave the lunar surface.
[7] Ben Brockert, 27, an employee of Masten Space Systems in Mojave, Calif., examines Xoie, a vertical takeoff and landing rocket, Thursday at the Mojave Air and Space Port, site of flights by Masten Space Systems in the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge.
[1] Masten Space Systems will take home the second-place prize of $150,000 in the Level 1 portion of the challenge. The NGLLXPC was operated by the X PRIZE Foundation at no cost to NASA. This was made possible by the generous support of Northrop Grumman Corporation, which built the original Apollo Lunar Modules used to safely carry crew down to the lunar surface in the 1960s and 1970s.
[5] NASA put up the prize money for the Level 1 and Level 2 contests, but the competition was managed by the X Prize Foundation with commercial sponsorship from Northrop Grumman, the corporate heir of the company that built the Apollo lunar module.
[3] Mojave, Calif. The flight was part of an X Prize Foundation program sponsored by Northrop Grumman to develop a new civilian space vehicle for lunar takeoff and landing and other space applications.
[1] One of the landings for a Level 2 attempt must be made on a simulated lunar terrain with rocks and craters. Masten Space Systems met the Level 2 requirements by achieving accurate landings and captured the first place prize during flights of their "Xoie" (pronounced "Zoey") vehicle Oct. 30 at the Mojave Air and Space Port.
[2] Over the weekend attempts were made to collect some of the loot in the prize purse, and Team Masten Space Systems, from Mojave, California, succeeded. This bags the company $1 million for their successful take off, flying around and landing again on a simulated lunar surface.
[10] Masten Space Systems qualified for the remaining second place prize on Oct. 7, 2009, with an average landing accuracy of 6.3 inches. Because there were no other qualifying Level 1 flights this year, the Masten team will receive the second place prize of $150,000.
[2] Masten also claimed a $150,000 prize as part of the Level 1 competition. Armadillo Aerospace was the first team to qualify for the Level 2 prize with successful flights of its Scorpius rocket Sept. 12 in Caddo Mills, Tex. Armadillo placed second in the Level 2 competition, earning a $500,000 prize.
[2] According to competition officials the Masten team achieved accurate landings and won the first-place prize for Level 2 of the NGLLXPC. Armadillo Aerospace, led by id Software founder John Carmack will take home the second place prize of $500,000.
[5] The $350,000 first-place prize for Level 1 went to Armadillo Aerospace at last year's competition.
[5] In the Level 1 competition, Armadillo Aerospace previously claimed the first place prize of $350,000 in 2008.
[2] The Challenge aims to foster an industry of American companies capable of routinely and safely flying vertical take-off and landing rocket vehicles, and comes with $2,000,000 in prize money, $1,000,000 per level of the competition.
[7] The vehicles to land on the moon no longer exist," explained Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, chairman of the X Prize group that runs the competition. "We believe that entrepreneurial companies can build these lunar spaceships." The compeition was designed to inspire them. Three teams large and small remain in the Challenge, from both billion-dollar companies and backyard rocketeers hoping to make a name for themselves. Over the weekend, teams made their last attempts at the prize; an awards ceremony is scheduled for Thursday in Washington D.C.
[7] While the vessel might have been flyable, Brockert said the attempt would not have been worth the risk. "We don't want to crash it if we don't have to," he said, explaining the spacecraft and a similar launch vehicle used to complete Level I of the X Prize contest with flights earlier in October and September will be used to fulfill Masten Space's business plan, which is to provide a low-cost method for carrying small payloads to suborbital and eventually orbital heights. He said the company's long-term future is orbital insertion of small satellites, as well carrying suborbital research projects for scientists.
[1] Win or lose in the X Prize competition, Brockert said the test flights are immensely helpful to Masten's ultimate goals in commercial space flight. "They're solid demonstrations of the capability of the vehicle," he said.
[1] Brockert built the electrical system for that vehicle, and runs the flight and engine tests. He also was involved in design and construction of both vehicles, which are powered by a combination of isopropyl alcohol and liquid oxygen. In a measure of Delta V, or the speed of a rocket in space when all fuel is expended at the end of a continuous firing of the engines, the Masten vehicles are equal to the Ares 1-X rocket just launched by NASA. Where the future NASA moon rocket differs, of course, is in its payload capacity, which is significantly greater. Friday's successful flight came after a fire midway through Thursday's attempt seemed to have scrubbed Masten Space from this year's competition.
[1] Masten was successful recently with a different rocket, Xombie, that completed flights in a lower level of the competition for smaller prize money.
[9] A different flight by a different rocket, known as Xombie, earned Masten the $150,000 second-place prize in the Lunar Lander Challenge's less ambitious Level 1 contest.
[3] The
Unreasonable Rocket team - founded by Paul T. Breed and his son, Paul A. Breed - persevered to the very end. On Friday and Saturday, Unreasonable Rocket repeatedly tried to fly its Blue Ball rocket through the Lunar Lander Challenge's Level 1 course at Cantil, Calif. The Level 1 requirements were easier than those for Level 2: The rocket had to stay up in the air for only 90 seconds during each leg of the round trip, and both landings could be made on flat pads.
[3] Here a short film of the second attempt. Another valiant attempt was made by Unreasonable Rocket, a father-and-son team consisting of Paul and Paul Breed (according to
NASA Watch ). Their vehicle made a great attempt at the slightly less hard level 1 test (no fake lunar rocks and obstacles in the way, just a flat landing pad) but ran out of fuel at the last minute, causing it to land with a thump and break a leg.
[10] In Level II, the rocket navigates a more challenging boulder-strewn terrain that replicates the lunar surface. Over the past week, team Unreasonable Rocket encountered more ups and downs than the rockets they shot off.
A father-son team, both named Paul Breed, is responsible for Unreasonable Rocket, which entered two vehicles in the competition based on the same technology.
[7] For the past couple weeks, as it became clear that Masten had a real shot at completing the level 2 Lunar Lander Challenge and bettering our landing accuracy, I have been kicking myself for not taking the competition more seriously and working on a better landing accuracy. If they pulled it off, I was prepared to congratulate them and give a bit of a sheepish mea culpa.
[6] "The drama has just been unbelievable," Stuart Witt, general manager of the Mojave Air and Space Port, told me when it was over. The rules for the Lunar Lander Challenge's Level 2 contest required rocketeers to guide their remote-controlled craft through a complete round trip between one launch pad and a different boulder-strewn pad more than 50 meters (164 feet) away.
[3] Level 2 of the Northrop Grumman
Lunar Lander Challenge requires that a remote-controlled aircraft makes a complete round trip between one launch pad and a boulder-strewn pad about 164 feet away, according to the report.
[8] Nasa put up the prize money for the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge as an incentive to spur development of technology by space entrepreneurs.
[11] The Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge involves building and flying a rocket-powered vehicle that simulates the flight of a vehicle on the moon. The lander must take off vertically then travel horizontally, flying a mission profile designed to demonstrate both power and control before landing accurately at another spot.
[2] Thursday's effort had been expected to be Masten's last chance and it was unclear if the judges of the NASA-backed Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge would allow another attempt. Except for the fire the rocket performed well and landed only 16 centimeters from its target, Masten said.
[9] The blaze was quickly put out, but not quickly enough to avoid doing damage to Xoie. That damage meant Xoie couldn't get all the way through the required course. On Thursday night, the Lunar Lander Challenge judges said they would let the Masten team make repairs to the rocket overnight and give them one more chance to fly.
[3] The judges for the Lunar Lander Challenge granted Master a third day to make a final attempt. This decision would later cause controversy. The flight by the Xoie was a success, though not without its dramatic moments, including a stuck valve.
[12] Four teams had been in pursuit of the 2009 Lunar Lander Challenge prizes during the competition that opened in July.
[2] The
last round of the 2009 Lunar Lander Challenge had everything one could wish for in a competition.
[12] The ceremony will close out the three-year-old, $2 million Lunar Lander Challenge program.
[3] The events of the past two months have brought the four-year Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge to a conclusion.
[2] Masten takes second place and 150 thousand. That concludes the Lunar Lander Challenge.
[12] However the officiating controversy turns out, the Lunar Lander Challenge did succeed in inspiring the development of small scale, lunar lander prototypes by small teams of people.
[12] The Lunar Lander Challenge had a come from behind victory and an officiating controversy that may leave a bitter taste for years to come.
[12] In our near future we are looking at planets in our own solar system to study and research, but later on (maybe a several million years) we will need to find another place to live. It has to start somewhere, and we will need all the time we can spare to make this happen. Something "small" like these Lunar Landers are the first steps in something far greater than some of you can imagine.
[3] Well known since the days of the
HP 65 ("the first programmable handheld calculator in outer space")
Lunar Lander.
[6] The X Prize Foundation is the organization that awarded $10 million for the 2004 suborbital flights of SpaceShipOne, the first privately developed manned rocket to reach space. [9] This photo provided by The X Prize Foundation shows the Masten Space System rocket XA-0.1B, also called "Xombie" launching from the pad, traveling 50 meters above the ground at the Mojave Air & Space Port.
[9] The X Prize Foundation said that Mojave, California-based Masten Space Systems had a better landing accuracy than was achieved by Armadillo Aerospace of Rockwall, Texas, which got 500,000 dollars (''306,000) for second place.
[11] With Xoie's success, Masten also took the lead for Level 2.
The previous first place winner, Armadillo Aerospace’s Scorpius rocket, had an average landing accuracy of thirty five inches.
[12] First up was the Xoie rocket from Masten Space Systems, competing for the Level 2 prize.
[12] California-based
Masten Space Systems ' Xoie rocket prototype has won a million-dollar prize from NASA, edging out its closest competitor by just a couple of feet.
[3] The fire damaged wires, a tube and insulation but the rocket could be ready to fly as early as Friday, said David Masten, president and chief executive of Masten Space Systems, based in Mojave, Calif.
[9] Ben Brockert, formerly of Mediapolis and now with Masten Space Systems, celebrates as a spacecraft dubbed Xombie flies from the launch pad Oct. 7 at the Mojave Air & Space Port.
[1] Masten Space Systems, along with other competing teams, descended upon the Mojave Desert last week in a head-to-head showdown.
[5] The goal is to make high-atmosphere flights next year and, depending on how the program develops, to fly into space not long after. In his current job, not having a degree has not held Brockert back. For now, though, he is happy to be working in the less degree-oriented world of "new space," and plans to stick around at Masten Space Systems for a while.
[1] The ultimate goal of the NGLLXPC is to inspire entrepreneurs who can enable a new era of commercial exploration. These milestone events within the privately funded space sector continue to demonstrate the value of prizes and how they stimulate innovation. The successful flights from all of the private space companies continue to underscore the report to President Obama by the Augustine Commission, which called for increased commercial sector participation both in orbital operations and NASA's efforts to reach the Moon by 2020.
[5] Definitely not a million dollar subject to write about Alan. These amateur rockets look like something cobbled together from legos by crazy kids. Write about these amateurs when they do something significant like getting one of their Frankenstein rockets into space, or to the moon. The real news was the awesome success Ares 1-X had yesterday, why no Cosmic Log article Alan? NASA showed us they are still the professional adult at the rocket launching party.
[3] Why I said NASA should go to the Moon while private industry like Scaled Composites is in LEO, then private industry is on the Moon while NASA goes to Mars, then industry goes to Mars as NASA goes to the outer Solar System, etc. So yes, it is time to switch to private industry for LEO for cheaper costs, but that isn't where Ares is going. It's heading to the Moon and Mars, the current realms that NASA should be focusing on.
[3] Then when NASA moves on to exploring Mars, private industry takes over the Moon. When private industry reaches Mars, NASA should be sending scouts to Titan and other outer destinations, etc. These first steps outward are what Ares was designed for.
[3] Now, more than ever, the time is right for private industry to supply NASA with hardware and services to enable suborbital, orbital, and lunar exploration.
[5] When a technology is new and ambitious, it takes more than a company can handle, so NASA must make the pioneering steps. When people know what they are doing, private industry steps in and makes it mass produced at a fraction of the costs of the beureaucratic government.
[3] NASA's Centennial Challenges program's goals are to drive progress in aerospace technology that is of value to NASA's missions; encourage participation of independent teams, individual inventors, student groups and private companies of all sizes in aerospace research and development; and find innovative solutions to technical challenges through competition and cooperation. [2] The program, one of NASA's
Centennial Challenges, was aimed at encouraging the development of new rocket technologies that could potentially be used in future spacecraft.
[3] The first space program, fueled with DESIRE and WILL went to the moon and back on what NASA spends for catered lunches today. They did it in 7 years time.
[3] The competition was managed for NASA at no cost to the taxpayer by the X PRIZE Foundation under a Space Act Agreement.
[2] The contests were modeled after the
$10 million Ansari X Prize competition for private-sector spaceflight.
[3] The Northrop Grumman Corporation is a commercial sponsor that provided operating funds for the contest to the X PRIZE Foundation.
[2] A tiny team called Unreasonable Rocket was expected to make attempts Saturday in Cantil, Calif., according to the X Prize Foundation.
[9] Unreasonable Rocket, a father-and-son team from Solana Beach, Calif., conducted flight attempts during the final days of the competition but did not complete any qualifying flights.
[2] The final competitor was a father and son team of Unreasonable Rocket. Unreasonable Rocket had to pass on the ambitious Level 2 flight due to a broken tank on their Silver Ball rocket.
[12] Unreasonable Rocket's Level 2 entrant, known as the Silver Ball, made a series of tethered test flights on Sunday.
[3] Using the Blue Ball rocket, Unreasonable Rocket went after second place for the Level 1 flight, which Armadillo had won last year.
[12] Armadillo won the
$350,000 top prize in Level 1 last year.
[3] NASA said Armadillo would receive the Level 2 contest's $500,000 second prize.
[3] A team of California rocketeers has won a million dollar (''611,000) prize in a simulated lunar landing contest backed by Nasa.
[11] I have an interesting thought for some of you. What if the lunar landing in the 60s was really faked and now NASA is secretly fu;nneling money into the X prize so that they really can land there soon.
[3] I don't think anyone is going to be surprised that I am unhappy about Masten getting a fourth shot at the level 2 prize. I understand that there is a desire to award all the prize money this year and be able to close the books on the LLC, but I don't think it is fair.
[6] The fact that Blue Ball fell short meant Masten was assured of winning the $150,000 second prize for Level 1, thanks to Xombie's successful flight back on Oct. 7.
[3] Masten's Xoie had an average landing accuracy of seven and a half inches, easily beating Armadillo's Scorpius. The fact that Masten was given a third day to complete the flight of the Xoie elicited a caustic email by Armadillo's CEO John Carmack, who noted that none of the other teams, including his, had been given a third day to complete a flight or to better one they had already accomplished.
[12] The team that ended up 'beating' Armadillo's accuracy was given an extra day of flights. This didn't make John Carmack or many others very happy.
[6] The Masten team achieved an average accuracy of 7.5 inches while Armadillo Aerospace's average accuracy was 34 inches.
[2] Success. and a protest After some technical delays, Xoie took off on Friday morning and touched down successfully on the boulder-strewn pad. Then the Masten team prepped the rocket for its return flight.
[3] Friday's launch came after days of ups and downs: Communication glitches twice ruled out launch attempts on Wednesday, and a fire that broke out on the launch vehicle spoiled the Xoie rocket's maiden flight on Thursday.
[3] The Xoie made the three minute, fifty meter flight from a launch pad to a simulated lunar landscape and back again just under the hundred and thirty five minute time limit.
[12] The flight profile must closely simulate the task of descending from lunar orbit to the lunar surface, refueling and returning to lunar orbit. To match the performance of such a mission here on Earth, the vehicle must fly along a proscribed mission profiled designed to show both control and power, ascending to a height of 50 meters, translating horizontally to a landing pad 50 meters away, landing safely on a rocky lunar-replica surface after at least 180 seconds of flight time.
[5] Alan, Blue Ball ran out of peroxide and hard landed from five meters up, time of flight 85 seconds, landing accuracy well over a meter. With about an hour left in the day, they would have had to fly with a broken leg and make two more flights at 20 cm accuracy. Paul T. didn't think that was feasible, and they called it a day.
[3] We could have probably made a second flight in the drizzle on our scheduled days, and once we had the roll thruster issue sorted out, our landing accuracy would have been in the 20cm range.
[6] The average landing accuracy determined which teams would receive first and second place prizes.
[2] The team's Blue Ball craft fought admirably to complete the Level I challenge. It was unable to return to the original landing pad, and thus wasn't eligible for the prize purse.
[7] As far as I can tell from TFA, the only thing "simulated" was the Level 2 landing site which instead of a flat landing pad was a rocky surface designed to "simulate" the surface of the moon.
[6] The criterion for the Level 2 NGLLXPC requires the rocket to simulate a full lunar lander mission.
[5] There's Armadillo Aerospace, the company founded by video game pioneer John Carmack.
Armadillo's Scorpius Super Mod rocket successfully completed Level 2 of the challenge on Sept. 2, but the group wasn't involved in the weekend's activity.
[7] Blue Ball eventually made it through the first leg of the Level 1 course on Saturday - but the rocket sustained damage during the landing and could not launch again for the second required leg.
[3] The prize purse is divided into first and second prizes for Level 1 and Level 2.
[2] Mastern Space Systems takes first place in the Level 2 category and a one million dollar purse.
[12] Eric in Salinas, Scaled Composites got a vehicle into space (suborbitally) several times in 2004, won a $10M prize for it, and more importantly, hundreds of millions of venture funding. They're building an eight-seat vehicle.
[3] The judges decided to award Masten the million dollars and give Armadillo the $500,000 second prize.
[3] Armadillo and Masten will be awarded a total of $1.65 million at a Washington ceremony on Thursday, NASA said.
[3] Armadillo, Masten, Sapcce-X, etc. should not be seen as NASA's competitors for funds for space.
[3] Masten flew a vehicle on a flawless trajectory, landed it safely, and had some minor wiring damage after landing. They might fly again tomorrow, if the judges allow it. You want to call those amateurs? Yesterday NASA showed that for about half a billion dollars they can launch a 4-segment solid booster with a dummy 5th segment, dummy upper stage, dummy capsule, and dummy launch escape system into the Atlantic.
[3] After Friday's flight, questions were raised about the fairness of giving Masten an extra opportunity to launch beyond the scheduled times on Wednesday and Thursday.
[3] Unable to complete the return flight to the original launch point, it appeared Xoie and her team of builders was out of the competition.
[1] One of the teams,
BonNova, withdrew from the competition before making an official flight attempt.
[3] The attempt, which would have completed requirements for Level II of the competition, was scrubbed when a fuel leak sparked into flames after landing, doing just enough damage to make repair, refueling and safety testing impossible within the remaining flight window.
[1] The competition pitted teams in an effort to lauch a rocket, ascend to 50 meters, hover for at least 180 seconds, and land 50 meters away--and repeat the performance a number of times. [4] Each leg of the flight needs to last at least three minutes, and the rocket has to rise up 50 meters from the ground--all within a 135 minute time period.
[8] The rocket's engine must be started twice in a short time with no ground servicing other than refueling. This represents the technical challenges involved in operating a reusable vehicle that could land on the moon.
[2] We need to back the real deal by getting more money to NASA. "These amateur rockets look like something cobbled together from legos by crazy kids." "NASA showed us they are still the professional adult at the rocket launching party."
[3] We need to give more money to NASA to get the Ares and Constellation programs rocking and rolling to the moon and Mars.
[3] "With our test bed, we're showing we can do it successfully." The great thing about using the '''privet sector''' or '''amateurs''' is that they are not bound by bureaucracy. All they need is funding and an idea to start from. Yes there are important things that need attention on this planet, but there are plenty of people available to work on them. As well there are enough to work on this problem. Like it or not, this idea is going forward, and hopefully it will be a successful part in sending someone or something to another planet, moon, or asteroid. Space is big very big and it will need both private and Goverment to move on.
[3] Boeing (one of the 'adult's' favorite contractors) has seen fit to work with Masten Space Systems (one of the 'amateurs') on planetary lander studies:
http://selenianboondocks.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Boeing_AIAA-2009-6571.pdf You tell me. These are all great people doing great things. Sure pride plays a role, but at the end of the day they are all winners, because they are following their dreams. I don't think anyone would put this much effort into something to eek out a living.
[3] There were some nail biting moments, a crash of one of the lunar landers, a fire, and aggravating glitches worthy of anything that has happened in the space age.
[12] Yet, NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center sees fit to do something similar. http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/15oct_lunarlander.htm?list93818.
[3] Giving teams extra time windows also smacks of desperation and isn't fair to the other teams that don't get extra time windows. If one gets an extra time window then all teams should get one to be a fair contest, otherwise it's just a rigged show like pro wrestling. NASA did a great job with the Ares 1-X test this past week.
[3] Congratulation to all of you, not for winning or losing, but for following your dreams. "Sure pride plays a role, but at the end of the day they are all winners, because they are following their dreams." When anything like this happens among 'professional' aerospace companies, politicians get involved (because of potential constituent jobs), lawsuits get brought, and lawyers get richer. (and decisions sometimes get reversed. desperation and fairness, indeed) Let's see. who's going to build those next-gen refueling tankers for the USAF again? Boeing or Airbus? The NGLLC involves virtual pocket change, compared to any NASA project, and focuses on performance and results on schedule, not who can out-influence whom.
[3] What's next, a $1 million prize to the first company that can build a hydrogen bomb, construct a MOSFET (or something else the government did 50 years ago). It just seems sad that we are still at this point, 50 years later.
[6] Armadillo had taken first for Level 1 last year and gets 350 thousand dollars.
[12] Northrop Grumman supported the competition throughout the four years in which it was offered.
[5] Permit me to be petty enough to be upset and bitter about a half million dollars being taken from me and given to my competitor. The rules have given the judges the discretion to do just about anything up to and including awarding prize money for best effort if they felt it necessary, so there may not be any grounds to challenge this, but I do feel that we have been robbed.
[6] SOURCES1.
The Hawk Eye2.
NASA and X Prize Announce Winners of Lunar Lander Challenge - 7thSpace Interactive3.
Rocketeers win $1.65 million in prizes - Cosmic Log - msnbc.com4.
X PRIZE Foundation, NASA Name $2M Lunar Lander Winners | socalTECH.com5.
X PRIZE Foundation and NASA Cap Amazing Lunar Lander Competition and Award $2 Million in Prizes6.
Slashdot Science Story | 2 Companies Win NASA's Moon-Landing Prize Money7.
Million Dollar Race for Space Gets Exciting - Space | NASA | Solar System | Planets | Shuttle | Astronomy - FOXNews.com8.
Lunar Lander Prize of $1 Million Still Up for Grabs - Gearlog9.
Fosters.com - Dover NH, Rochester NH, Portsmouth NH, Laconia NH, Sanford ME10.
The Great Beyond: Lunar lunacy - X-prize lifts off!11.
The Press Association: $1m prize in lunar landing contest12.
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