NASA Offering $2 Million Prize for Lunar Lander 159
coondoggie writes "If you build it, NASA will not only come, it'll give you $2 million dollars for your troubles. The space agency today said it will offer $2 million in prizes if competing teams can successfully build a lunar lander at the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge at Holloman Air Force Base, in Alamogordo, N.M. Oct. 27 and 28th. To win the prize, teams must demonstrate a rocket-propelled vehicle and payload that takes off vertically, climbs to a defined altitude, flies for a pre-determined amount of time, and then lands vertically on a target that is a fixed distance from the launch pad. After landing, the vehicle must take off again within a predetermined time, fly for a certain amount of time and then land back on its original launch pad."
Economics? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Economics? (Score:5, Informative)
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They sure do.
If we RTFA we will note:
If we RTFS we will note:
Why "rocket-propelled"? (Score:2)
Granted, a helicopter would not work on the airless Moon. Granted, a wheeled (or caterpillared) rover may not be suitable for large distances either.
But there may be other designs. For example, the macropods [wikipedia.org] are able to hop over long distances using relatively little energy. The tendons in their large (macro) legs (pods) act as springs allowing them to reuse about 70% of the energy for the next jump (humans only reuse 5-10% on each step).
I suppose, a vehicle could be built to use the same principle [wikipedia.org]. It
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The problem with trying to eliminate atmosphere and gravity is that the only way
Re:Economics? (Score:4, Funny)
A.4.2 Vehicle must take-off vertically utilizing only rocket power from Point A. No aerodynamic or air-breathing methods of hovering, propulsion, steering, or landing are permitted except in the case of abort.
Sucks, as I didn't see that until I'd already built a lander with repulsorlifts.
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Not in this case - because the contestants are going to be universities and small private teams, which in no way have the ability to develop, design, and manufacture a real lunar lander. (Nor even to manage such an effort.)
This prize really is something of a boondoggle for the taxpayers - be
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As for space not being in the nightly news - why should it be? Like Antarctic exploration, it has become routine. Routine stuff, especially stuff with low viewer interest never makes the news.
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When we do return humans to the moon or finally get to Mars, you can bet your ass that the news will cover it, and that a hundred million people (or more) will probably be glued to their TVs. Maybe the space exploration we do now isn't all that exciting to most folks (robotic landers and explorers can't compete with humans for that), but people will still take notice when something as amazing as people wa
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Re:Economics? (Score:5, Informative)
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You are correct - Scaled Composites didn't spend a dime. Burt Rutan was quite clear he wasn't going to enter the contest until a) the prize was fully funded, and b) he found a backer. When both happened, he tossed his hat in the ring.
The commercial venture came about after this - and from a third party.
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The point is that the prize did not cover the costs of development and the development did not happen because of the prize. That point is just as valid whether Scaled Composites, Rutan personally, or an external backer who funded the development.
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Your first point is correct, but your second point is not. Without the prize, Burt never seeks a backer. Without a backer to pay for development, development never starts.
Cement Truck (Score:3, Funny)
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Won't cost more for me! (Score:2)
NASA? (Score:1)
Too... Easy...
America is dying (Score:5, Insightful)
$2B for a half-assed video hosting site Youtube
I am the only one saddened by this?
Re:America is dying (Score:5, Insightful)
15B for a "social-networking" website where people can "poke" each other and buy each other little gifts that are pictures of teddy bears and ducks.
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Next up: The world isn't fair, as my house is worth less than the salaries of all McDonalds employees put together.
Not so bad (Score:2)
Great! (Score:1, Troll)
Come on Armadillo!!!! (Score:3, Informative)
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And I'll bet they've spent a lot more than 2 million. NASA may end up paying out on this, but it will be to an existing established aerospace company that has already spent much more than 2 mil.
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But they haven't won yet, they have no lander. I'm saying it can't be done for anywhere near 2 mil.
They haven't won yet, but they have successfully flown the level one mission [armadilloaerospace.com] outside of competition. So they certainly do have a lander. I don't know if their costs have exceed $2M, but if they have it won't have been by much. Carmack makes the point in this post [armadilloaerospace.com] that their vehicle is probably the first rocket in history to have more spent on consumables than on the vehicle itself:
Pixel had more rocket powered flight time that weekend than Space Ship One had in all of its flights combined. We have also spent more on operational consumables (helium, lox, alcohol, truck rental) than the vehicle itself cost, which is probably a first for any rocket vehicle.
That means the costs so far are almost certainly below $2M.
kidding, kidding (Score:5, Funny)
Do they give you a bonus for also constructing a sound stage that looks like a lunar surface?
i've got a bad feeling about this. (Score:2)
That's no moon.
Significantly different? (Score:2, Interesting)
Surely the enormous difference in atmospheric pressure and gravity mean the only thing that's reasonably useful is the guidance mechanism?
Any rocket scientists out there have any idea what the real benefit of the challenge is?
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I keed, I keed.
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Re:Significantly different? (Score:5, Informative)
So any vessel that could survive in earth's atmosphere doing such tests would be already 75% done for lunar module.
Also the company that does it will most likely win the $2 billion dollar contract to build the lunar module for the government. or at least $100 million dollar help us get started fee.
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In this case, its extra payload space/capacity that is unneeded in an Earth lander (within the definitions of the contest), but would be very useful in a Moon lander.
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Re:Significantly different? (Score:5, Insightful)
And then there's the whole fun of it.
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The power isn't anywhere within an order of magnitude of what will be needed to perform a real lunar mission. The landers participating in the prize competition don't have a science payload, don't have the thermal control systems, don't have the power systems, etc..., etc... Nor do these vehicles have to be strong enough to take the stress of a rocket launch. (And that 25kg 'pa
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Flight profiles worked out accordingly (Score:2)
In some ways, it's probably tougher on Earth, because you don't have the wind to deal with on the moon.
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Here's what the previous one looked like for the last go-round - However, it had turbofans, not rockets:
http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/gallery/movie/LLRV/HTML/EM-0019-06.html [nasa.gov]
I'm in (Score:1)
CHA (Score:5, Funny)
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Of course, we'd have to ship Ballmer to the moon, but that would be an easy problem to solve.
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Ballmer's hot air could get him at least to the upper atmosphere.
He is so full of shit he could prolly light his farts and make it the rest of the way....
Where's the X prize for this? (Score:1)
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We have a winner! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:We have a winner! (Score:4, Funny)
You do realize that you could hook that up to the Internet and patent the whole thing?
Long island companies should try (Score:1)
Now we all know (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:Now we all know (math wrong) (Score:2)
Lets play catch (Score:1)
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Prior art (Score:2, Funny)
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In other words (Score:2)
Perhaps they're doing it right (Score:2)
Trying the X-prize model might be just the right way to tackle this.
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Time to boldly go... (Score:3, Interesting)
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That's so 1969... (Score:5, Insightful)
We should be competing for a Mars lander by now.
They have to. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not worried about the t
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Not completely - I work as a NASA subcontractor, and I work with a few people who were around for the tail end of Apollo (granted, most are looking to retire soon - but they are still very sharp). But the real problem is information rot. Think about it - all the designs and reports from the 1950's and 1960's are written in paper. Fourty year old paper and photographs. Even in the best of storage conditions, these things degrade. I'v
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We aren't reinventing the technology from scratch. (Nor do we need to.) This prize is about as relevant to an actual lander as an Estes model rocket from your local hobby store.
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The Apollo lander was a dirty hack. It worked but it was incredibly hackish. Remember you have a decent motor that is single use. then you have a single use acent motor that is seperate and only lifting 1/3rd the weight as you left the base, most of the fuel tanks, and other gear behind. (also pray the cable/hose seperation system worked or you are a dead man dangling at the end of a rope until your acent motor dies.)
Any lunar lander crash even at low speed would have been incredibly bad. t
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but we were willing to take risks then that they are not willing to take now.
that is the difference.
the public would go apeshit if we exploded a Saturn 5 sized bomb on the cape at launch. back then the public was used to rockets exploding.
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Sure, Columbia failed a few years back and in the first 20 years we had Apollo 1, 7 compared to 3 is a lot more. But Challenger falls in neither pool, as it occured in 1986. Flight rates change. You are cherry picking dates. So let's compare Shuttle to everything prior (ie, capsules on a conventional rocket, the first 15 years of human space flight):
1962-1975:
6 mercury missions - 6 astronau
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For the lander portion, what is the real difference?
Mission accomplished (Score:2)
Important Clue for the Mystified (Score:4, Interesting)
- difference in gravity between moon and earth
- atmosphere here, none there
- etc
Remember that there's recently been *much* talk about actual landings on planetary bodies other than the moon (mars, anyone) where variable factors mentioned above will still be a consideration, but "simply" (for want of a better term) different values for the same problem.For those who're reading slashdot while still mostly asleep/inebriated/high
If you don't know how to build a car, building a world-land-speed-record-breaking car is *very difficult*, if you regularly design and build performance cars for a living, it is a significantly less complex problem.
How many years did it take men to build a working powered flying machine? How many years *after* that before they tweaked the design for
- Passenger flights
- supersonic flights
- heavy lifting caro capacity
- remote-controlled flight
- etc
Seems Nasa has realized that being an overbloated government controlled bureaucracy is not necessarily conducive to rocket-science/heavy-engineering/economically-optimal-solutions (ie stuff they are supposed to be achieving).Perhaps now NASA will focus more on hard-science and rely on commercial enterprise to handle issues like basic-engineering and economical solutions.
Government science projects should not be expected/required to be economically viable/turn a profit - their research is for the generic betterment of mankind and should be available to all. Commercial interests should not be relied upon (certainly not exclusively) to carry out the brunt of core scientific research - much scientific research is *exceedingly* expensive with no obvious expectation of Return On Investment (the space program has "struck it lucky" with many useful and commercial inventions as a result, but nobody said "lets put a man on the moon because we need to invent microwave ovens").
If only we could convince *all* world governments to use 90% of their military budget for scientific research. Wars could be prosecuted with personal combat (trial by arms) and we'd have cured cancer/aids/parkinsons/the-common-cold years ago.
What? (Score:2)
The amazing thing (Score:2)
Lander (Score:2, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Lander_(computer_game) [wikipedia.org]
Previous Design? (Score:2)
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outsource because THEY can't (Score:2)
Re:China and Japan are already there (Score:5, Insightful)
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And fucking cheap, which I suspect is the real motivation. Does he have any idea how much any potential Chinese or Japanese or European or even US-built technologies cost to do something comparable? Orders of magnitude more than $2 million (which is the prize, not the development cost, so one would assume the expected development cost should be even lower than tha
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And fucking cheap, which I suspect is the real motivation. Does he have any idea how much any potential Chinese or Japanese or European or even US-built technologies cost to do something comparable? Orders of magnitude more than $2 million (which is the prize, not the development cost, so one would assume the expected development cost should be even lower than that). The Apollo Lunar Module cost about $50 million in 1969 dollars, and it was less advanced than what they're aiming for this time.
Right. Though keep in mind that no one is developing an actual lunar lander, just the sort of propulsion and control systems that would be necessary. The Apollo LEM had to fulfill requirements (such as life support) that these vehicles don't need to consider.
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FYI, the Chinese and Japanese craft (while cool) are orbiting lunar probes, not landers. The Chinese are eventually planning on doing a lunar lander, but that won't be until 2012 at the earliest.
Re:China and Japan are already there (Score:4, Insightful)
From what I saw on those links you pointed out, those projects have very different goals from the lunar lander challenge. In both cases (as far as the articles made clear) the respective countries were running state-sponsored (not privately funded) programs to get their gadgets into orbit around the moon to take measurements, test out equipment, etc, without ever touching down. The lunar lander challenge, on the other hand, isn't really about the moon part, so much as the lander part (hell, the challenge takes place on earth). My understanding is that it is geared towards developing privately funded solutions capable of performing a task roughly equivalent to what a helicopter can do (vertical takeoff, controlled flight, vertical landing), but without an atmosphere. It's not nearly as much of a marvel as putting a probe in orbit and mapping out a planet (or moon), as NASA has already done (though maybe not to the degree that these new projects plan to), but it's privately funded, and I believe it is done in the name of making future trips to other planets cheaper. NASA's $2M prize is nothing compared to what the various companies could (and probably already have) shell out, so in fact this is actually a money-saver for NASA. If/when we have any sort of permanent setup on the moon, whether it is a colony of humans or an automated ore-extracting plant, or whatever, we will need this capability. Sure, we have it (NASA has done it, and with people onboard to boot), but the basement designers will, out of necessity, find ways to do it that are cheaper, requiring less-exotic materials, less human interaction, etc. These groups will explore the problem space in a way more akin to how the Russians developed much of their space technology (fly it until it breaks, redesign until it flies again, rinse, repeat... which resulted in some pretty bulletproof systems).
Opinions about NASA aside, I would personally like to see us build colonies off of this planet. Maybe we've got plenty of time left on this one, maybe not, but we don't really know, and I would love to visit the moon one day. And if I can develop something in my basement that makes that more affordable for the next generation, I'm gonna give it a try.
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Well, it'll pretty much have to be done outside the US, now that anyone in the country playing around with amateur rocketry is automatically classified as a ("suspected") terrorist and sent off to some other country for "interrogation". But it doesn't have to be Chinese or Japanese; it could be Canadians or Mexicans. (Or maybe Iraqis or Iranians.
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Actual numbers can be found here: at this NASA site [nasa.gov]