2 Companies Win NASA's Moon-Landing Prize Money 110
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."
humm (Score:3, Interesting)
1M + 0.5M = 1.65M !
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That's "closed-minded" not "close minded". And those prefixes aren't the sole purview of the organizations that define SI. They were being used in science and technical fields long before SI. And, if I'm not mistaken, bit and byte aren't even SI units.
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And those prefixes aren't the sole purview of the organizations that define SI. They were being used in science and technical fields long before SI.
But even before SI existed Kilo still meant 10^3. Mega still meant 10^6 and Giga still meant 10^9. They never meant 2^10, 2^20, or 2^30 before being corrupted.
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Yes but KB meant 1024 bytes, MB meant 1024^2 bytes and GB meant 1024^3
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But even before SI existed Kilo still meant 10^3. Mega still meant 10^6 and Giga still meant 10^9. They never meant 2^10, 2^20, or 2^30 before being corrupted.
OMG! Surely you aren't suggesting that computer scientists would ever take a common word and repurpose it for their own use! Where would it end? Imagine how confusing it would be if physicists started talking about the "color" of quarks or such! Inventing new meanings for existing words should obviously never be allowed... :p
your mom knew since you were three years old (Score:1)
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Oblig. (Score:1, Funny)
http://xkcd.com/394/
Re:humm (Score:4, Informative)
The extra $150,000 was awarded to one of the companies for their completion of an earlier phase.
Re:humm (Score:4, Insightful)
"It's almost as easy to click the link and RTFA as it is to complain about the summary..."
True, but it doesn't accomplish the same thing.
If you RTFA you find out where the error in TFS came from; complaining about the summary may or may not accomplish this.
If you complain, you draw attention to the poor quality of the summary. RTFA will not do this.
Now, you can argue about what good it does to draw attention to the summary - clearly it's not like the editors care what we think of their work. I can't argue with wanting to make a point, though, and I certainly don't get where the moderators come up with GP as a troll.
Re:humm (Score:5, Funny)
Holy crap there are links to articles in the summaries?!?
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Occasionally, but most of the time the link is to a blog, writing about another blog, who linked to a new article on some aggregator site like Engadget, that may link to the NASA article, but probably links to someone elses blog about the original article.
Rarely are the links to the actual content, without a bunch of opinions and misinterpretations thrown in for good measure.
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Hardly. I will have to give general kudos to the Slashdot editors who usually look at multiple submissions and have to make a judgement call on links in the summaries.
Yes, it is sometimes a blog post, but far more often it is the link to the actual news source (which can be a blog, too!) If the "announcement" is on a blog, that is the original source.
Word of mouth will often come through news aggregators and via blogs. Heck, I've found out some interesting stuff from blogs that I regularly visit... and th
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When did you hear of a NASA project that DIDN'T go overbudget ?
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Didn't you know that anytime two monetary values are added together, the gov't tacks on 10%?
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The Moon's gravity is 1/6th that of the Earth's; that's low, but is by no means "more or less zero".
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close enough, we still need to build them here where there is gravity, bring it there where there is none and have it do what it was designed to do at like you said at 1/6th of earths gravity.
1/6th of Earth's gravity is far from no gravity. And if you're in no gravity then you're not in 1/6th gravity.
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Well, technically it's "less zero", as in not as zero as zero...
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"if we have learned anything in the past, just because it works in a simulation doesn't mean it will work in reality, more or less in Zero G."
'Cause everyone knows the moon has no gravitational pull...
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Re:its NASA!!! (Score:5, Informative)
if we have learned anything in the past, just because it works in a simulation doesn't mean it will work in reality, more or less in Zero G.
FYI, this wasn't a simulation in the sense of a computer simulation, but rather in the sense that they were not actually required to perform this test on the moon. 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.
So, these were real rockets that were really taking off, traveling horizontally, and landing vertically. Yes gravity would be lower on the moon (not zero) and that could certainly introduce some kinds but I think this is still a worthwhile demonstration of working technology.
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Significantly, in terms of Delta-v expended by the design of this demonstration, these vehicles have proven that they would be capable of landing on the Moon from lunar orbit... which was sort of the point of the test.
The only thing missing from this demonstration is a removal of the GPS devices that were used for stabilization and navigation. In some ways, it would be very hard to pull off a demonstration without those navigation aids... as the FAA has specific "Earth" requirements that have to be met for
armadillo placed second! (Score:2)
woot! I've been cheering for Armadillo for a long time, hopefully we can prevent the first strogg attack if they can gain pace and get the number 1 spot soon.
Re:armadillo placed second! (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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and the X prize foundation allowed
NASA allowed Masten not the X Prize Foundation.
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Re:armadillo placed second! (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Not only that. Carmack's vehicle was bigger and thus closer to the real thing, and more difficult to handle. However the control was so accurate that the vehicle hardly oscillated or rotated at all. Much better than Masten's vehicle - even an amateur like me could see it.
IMO Carmack should get the 1st prize. Mastens did also very good job, and would deserve the 1st prize, if Carmack's vehicle were absent.
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If this contest generates some congressional support for a level 3 prize.... I'd put Armadillo as a leading contender.
Or more significantly, if I were trying to build a vehicle that would actually go to the Moon, Armadillo's tech would be something I'd seriously consider in terms of purchasing. I don't know if Armadillo is going to get involved in the Google Lunar X-Prize (a completely different contest), but they certainly have the vehicle capable of getting to the ground in once piece.
Now that would be r
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It's all about timing and thrust vectors (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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Yes, well known since the days of the HP 65 [wikipedia.org]("the first programmable handheld calculator in outer space") Lunar Lander [rskey.org].
CC.
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Strangely enough, one of the early "proof of demonstration" projects John Carmack had with his software was a completely software demonstration of the flight control systems.
He even posted the code for it... but I don't want to bother trying to dig it up. It wasn't that polished, but it did do the job.
Mr. Carmack also controls most of the flight systems with his laptop computer out in the field.... so I wouldn't doubt that he may be using the spacebar or arrow keys to be controlling thrust. When most folk
Other private space companies are Doomed. (Score:5, Funny)
Rocket Club to Nasa Winner (Score:4, Interesting)
Wow, so in 10 years Armadillo went from a rocket club with a bunch of guys launching hobby motors in fields to building moon landers?
D
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Is that so surprising? Have you heard of Robert Goddard? :-)
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More accurately "to building self guided rocket powered models capable of vertical take off and landing". The craft couldn't survive the boost to orbit, let alone the extreme environment of the Earth-Moon cruise, let alone the extreme environment of the landing phase and the lunar surface.
Homebrew liquid fueled engines and homebrew control systems are kinda impressive
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I'm curious about what you think would be missing here, in terms of a real lunar lander?
I'm not suggesting here that the trip into LEO and to get into Lunar orbit is a trivial thing, but presuming that some other vehicle such as the SpaceX Falcon 9 was to launch the Pixel or a similar spacecraft built by Aramdillo.... are you sure it would be considerably more difficult to build a lander that would be capable of picking up a lunar soil sample and then return that to the Earth?
I don't think this is quite so
Carmack was robbed (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.parabolicarc.com/2009/10/30/armadillos-mccormack-robbed-ngllc-judges/ [parabolicarc.com]
The other team had a whole extra day to improve their results that Armadillo did not. This is totally and blatantly unfair, and he has every right to be pissed.
Garbage like this will dissuade other teams from entering, no doubt.
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Its not fair, but the universe doesn't have a concept of fair, just reality (or this dimensions version of reality away, thats open to debate)
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What are you talking about? This has nothing to do with "the universe", it's about the specific, deliberate decisions of crooked, misguided judges.
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No, its about building technology to land on the moon safely and for as little cost as possible.
The contest was never about giving away a million dollars to anyone but the most petty of people. I'm really far too lazy to look, but its a safe bet everyone involved spent more than the million dollar prize just getting something they could consider testing.
You're too focused on yourself and your greed to focus on the bigger picture.
It is entirely about the universe, and forwarding our ability to explore it.
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I love how you accused HEbGb of personal greed after he tried to explain this to you. I'm not sure what sort of a cut he's expecting to get from Armadillo, but it really makes you sound like a paranoid dick. However, I'll try to explain it myself, just out of personal kindness.
The universe is supremely fair. It is a single set of physical rules that apply to
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I would love to give a pithy comeback to this post, but I'll avoid the temptation for now.
Fairness is a relative thing, where shit happens to everybody that sometimes is out of our control. Yes, we can occasionally make decisions that will help improve our odds of success at a task we are dedicated to accomplishing, but things do happen that are randomly bad and awful to ourselves and those around us.
People die of heart attacks, illness, or even events completely out of our control. Perhaps a drunk driver
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Yes, on earth there is a lot of random chance. The universe is based on the laws of physics, not the United States. Launch permits mean nothing when you are trying to land on a far away planet. Away from earth, there is surprisingly little random chance apart from the reliability of the spacecraft (e.g. whether the mechanics did their job or were distracted) where Armadillo won
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I hope you noticed that I'm a different person that the one you previously responded to. I don't know what to apologize for in reference to an earlier post I didn't even write.
As far as getting launch permits to land on the Moon... you might just be surprised at what regulations do exist for going there. International regulation of spaceflight is going to be an interesting and challenging task for future generations of lawyers, and it isn't entirely clear who has jurisdictional authority on spaceflight on
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Agreed!
NASA really administered this contest poorly. At a minimum, the prize money should have been equal and in my opinion, not even that would be fair.
It is really frustrating when the "judges" make rules allowances late in the game.
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It is really frustrating when the "judges" make rules allowances late in the game.
Actually - the rules stated that the judges could do this - but yes, I agree
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I disagree completely. Why should the prize money be "equal"? The point was to provide a strong incentive for contestants to get a vehicle to complete the basic requirements.... and to ensure that somebody who came in "2nd place" would at least receive a little bit of money for their effort instead of simply be left with the expenses of going up.
NASA did an excellent job here... considering that NASA employees running this contest consisted of a single office of I believe two people (it may even be just o
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As I've long predicted, when real money starts being placed on the line - that what the alt.space community calls the 'mammals' (almost hobbyist level startups) will start behaving like the 'dinosaurs' (traditional aerospace companies).
A very interesting Rubicon has been crossed by the nascent 'small space' industry, even if they don't realize all the implications of it yet.
You don't work in business I assume? (Score:3, Insightful)
"Blatantly unfair" ... hmm... I take it you don't work in the business world? :-)
I agree it doesn't sound right but then lots of people on slashdot shout that NASA should behave more like a business concern and less like a bloated government department... being totally and blatantly unfair when it suits them to get the results they want is a good way towards operating like many major corporations...
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The should absolutely behave like a business concern.
But when people are robbed of their just rewards, especially for short-sighted PR reasons, it undermines the trust in the organization itself. Who in their right mind would now put up real money and effort into competing for this prize, when the organizers have already shown that they're perfectly happy to cheat?
That's bad business.
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I'd say it seems like pretty god business, though still blatantly unfair.
NASA's main interest, and the purpose for funding such competitions, is in fostering private research into rocketry and space travel. This decision makes sense for several reasons: firstly, it allowed an extra device to be successfully tested, providing important data for the project developers, aiding them in improving their technologies. Secondly, it enabled them to give the lions share of funding to the more impoverished of the two
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I was wondering the same thing. Didn't NASA do this like six times in the 60's and 70's? Why offer a prize to do something they already know how to do?
Unless they haven't actually done it before... *puts on tinfoil hat*
It ended in some amount of controversy (Score:5, Informative)
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. At the same time, people are more upset with what appears to be arbitrary judging than competition. I think any of the three final teams would have removed a part from their engine and loaned it to another team. In fact, during previous attempts this happened with RR and AA.
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Whine whine, moan moan, bitch bitch.
The real point to the contest was to get the best possible design. Not sure that the extra day really helped that so much, but he did do better, which is more important than who won as far as I'm concerned.
Re:It ended in some amount of controversy (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, but it sounds like Carmack's argument is that he thinks that he could do even better yet again if they had an extra flight. Which makes sense, every time you do a test flight, you learn something, and so that should make your next flight even better. Take this further, and if your ultimate goal is to get the best possible design, then the contest should never end, because there's always room for improvement.
But in reality, when you create a contest, you have to have rules and you have to have a deadline. Bending the rules for one team but not the others is generally unfair. The extra day most certainly did help, because apparently their craft was unable to fly on its three "regulation" attempts.
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This is pretty much where this should have ended. John Carmack could have and perhaps should have secured the permit to get the extra fligh
Re:It ended in some amount of controversy (Score:5, Informative)
I think any of the three final teams would have removed a part from their engine and loaned it to another team.
And indeed, after Masten's third attempt, their rocket was damaged badly enough by a fire that they really thought they wouldn't be able to fly the next day, regardless of the judges' decision. It was the help of volunteers from other competing teams that got them off the ground the next day. In addition to fixing the problem that caused the fire, they essentially needed to replace all the wiring on the rocket.
And the next day, a bunch of Masten's team members drove up to FAR and helped Unreasonable Rocket to troubleshoot their rockets -- even though success by Unreasonable could only cost them prize money.
The members of these teams are not only ridiculously talented, they're also ridiculously open and supportive of each other. It's a bit humbling to watch.
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I completely agree with John on this. A challenge was set. The team first to meet this challenge was Armadillo and so should be awarded the first prize. What if I better even Masten's result in a month or so? Will they take back their prize and award it to me? In the eyes of the public, the first one to complete a challenge wins it. Any deviation from this seems unfair and only hurts the image of all involved.
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The difference is in cost. The hope is that for mere eraser shavings we can have small private companies develop the modern guidance and control software for a lander that would take traditional contractors with NASA direction much more to develop.
When someone says "we did it 50 years ago" remind them that we did it then with 3-4 times the budget, and improved computer technology only lends incremental advantages -- plus that there was some loss of institutional knowledge of vehicle development since we ha
Re:Ummmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes unfortunately 30 years ago. We stopped doing it. And after 30 years most of the people who were involved retired. Or are near retiring. IF we kept it up we will probably be so much better at space travel. However the shuttle product made space travel a bad thing for government, to expensive and not far reaching enough. We need to get off the idea of the StarTrek reusable ship. Until we get much better at it.
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How do we get better at it if we don't practice, make mistakes, make surprising discoveries about what works right although we never expected it to?
We'll never learn anything if we don't try.
However, we're not really going to leave our solar system any time soon for any useful reason until we can break some things we consider 'laws of physics'. Space is just too big and it'll take too long to do anything useful. It takes too long to do anything useful other than what we can manage in orbit already. The m
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Invention isn't linear. We don't actually have to be building spaceplanes in order to improve the technology required for spaceplanes.
The atmospheric portion of any spaceflight involves the same techniques as atmospheric flight in general- improving the technologies for regular flight helps with spaceflight.
The space-based portion of spaceflight involves the same techniques, regardless of whether your craft is reusable. Getting better at spaceflight in general will mean we're better at reusable spaceflight.
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Ships can, and should be reusable. In deep space. The solution is to decouple deep space travel and launch - when you're launching the ship you need multistage and some other tricks to escape the gravity well. But when you're in space you can use the same ship to travel to Mars and back twice, with only a refueling stop, since it takes rather little energy to propel yourself once you're out of Earth's gravity.
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It seems to me that the point of these exercises is to get the civilian programs up to speed and with their own technology.
If a civilian company can duplicate or even best NASA at these "rudimentary" tasks, said company may be in a better position to be entirely self dependent.
If we can encourage these companies to "reinvent the wheel" now, they will be in a really good position to _not_ need NASA as a crutch on issues in the future.
Teaching a man to fish vs giving a man a fish..
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Not to be a negative nancy, but didn't we *actually* do this like 50 years ago?
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).
NASA used a lunar lander (which was developed by a private contractor) roughly 40 not 50 years ago. Bell Labs not government developed the MOSFET. And unlike lunar landers, we still have operable hydrogen bombs and MOSFETs today.
It just seems sad that we are still at this point, 50 years later.
Well, things didn't work out. If we want to get back to the point we were 35-40 years ago, we have to redevelop the technology.
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What's next, a $1 million prize to the first company that can ... construct a MOSFET (or something else the government did 50 years ago).
Exactly whom do you think constructs mosfets? Wisconsin Department of Transportation? USDA? BATF?
Now if the offered a $1M prize for the first mosfet that switches 200 KW yet fits in a SOT-23 package (surface mount, about one by three millimeters) for like electric cars and stuff, that would be interesting ...
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Until 10 years ago, Rockets were the domain of NASA, it's billionaire contractors, and freckle-faced kids. Not you've got people from all kinds of backgrounds excited and building new designs, trying new things, and raising a new generation of inventors, engineers, and students.
That's the point of these contests - more rocket scientists, tech, and healthy innovation.
Lunar Lander's my favorite game... (Score:1)
With the hours I've spent on it, I'm pretty overqualified to do the demo if they need me.
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How many did you write? I bought one, it sucked, so I wrote my own. Then ported it to a different platform.
I wrote a battle tanks game in Z80 assembly, should I go to work for DARPA?
A Real Faked Moon Landing (Score:3, Funny)
Finally some vindication for those in the tinfoil hats.
A new way to imitate the lunar landing? (Score:1)
I see another fake Moon Shot happening! 8-)
--
Ah say, son, you're about as sharp as a bowlin' ball.
Fake! (Score:1)
Competition (Score:1)
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Should have gone to this inventor! (Score:1)
http://gizmodo.com/5393626/ataris-lunar-lander-made-real [gizmodo.com]
Carmack / Armadillo was robbed (Score:2)
If they were giving out extra free days last year Armadillo probably would have got 100% of the money a year ago! The judges should have taken this in to account, bonus points for accuracy? Sure, but they should lose a place just for having to try a 4th time. Fair would be armadillo gets $1.5m, being 'nice' would be $1m to armadillo and .5 to Masten. But the other way around is just totally bogus.
Armadillo definitely deserved the full million. IMHO...
First impression (Score:2)
Disgraceful farce proving NASA is incompetent (Score:2, Funny)
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.
"Boosted Hop" video (Score:3, Interesting)
Apparently since doing their lunar lander run Armadillo Aerospace has been keeping itself busy with "boosted hops," where they fire the rocket up to a certain altitude, and then land back down under the rocket's own power. Here's a neat video of them boosting up to ~1000 feet:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYk9uGrAqn8 [youtube.com]
http://www.hobbyspace.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=16628 [hobbyspace.com]
Starting with lower altitudes, each time they run they're going for an incrementally higher altitude. They've gone up to about 1932 feet (589m) [youtube.com] so far, with the plan to go all the way up to 6000 feet, which is the highest their FAA permit allows them to currently launch. I believe both Armadillo Aerospace and Masten Space Systems have a number of customers in the scientific community who want to use these sorts of controlled boosted hops for running things like microgravity experiments.