Rocketeers win $1.65 million

Posted: Monday, November 02, 2009 8:30 PM by Alan Boyle

NGLLC / X Prize Foundation

Click for video: Masten Space Systems' Xoie rocket rises above the Mojave
Desert during its prize-winning flight. Click on the image to watch a video report on

the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge from msnbc.com's Dara Brown.

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.

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.

NASA said Armadillo would receive the Level 2 contest's $500,000 second prize.

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. Armadillo won the $350,000 top prize in Level 1 last year.

Armadillo and Masten will be awarded a total of $1.65 million at a Washington ceremony on Thursday, NASA said. The ceremony will close out the three-year-old, $2 million Lunar Lander Challenge program.

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. The kind of power required to win the contest would also be enough for a lunar landing and ascent. But the current contestants don't expect to provide NASA with honest-to-goodness lunar landers anytime soon. Rather, 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."

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. The contests were modeled after the $10 million Ansari X Prize competition for private-sector spaceflight. 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. "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. Each leg of the flight had to last at least 180 seconds, and the rocket had to rise at least 50 meters above the ground. All this had to be done before time ran out on a 135-minute period.

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. 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. The team worked all night to get Xoie back in shape.

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. A stuck valve required some last-minute fiddling. Once the fix was made, Xoie took off again and completed the course. However, there were only six minutes left in the 135-minute window to finish all the close-down tasks.

One last snag left the outcome in doubt: The truck being used to transport Xoie got stuck in the Mojave sand for a few seconds, but broke free. Masten team members scrambled to get the rocket back in position. The job was finished just under the wire.

Thus, Xoie as well as Armadillo's Scorpius qualified for a prize. The tie-breaker had to do with accuracy, as measured by average landing distance from the center targets on the pads.

Scorpius' average landing accuracy on Sept. 12 was about 34 inches (86 centimeters). The unofficial figures for Xoie were around 11 inches (28 centimeters) for the first leg of the round trip, and 4 inches (10 centimeters) for the second. The resulting average of 7.5 inches (19 centimeters) was enough to move Xoie ahead of Scorpius.

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. Armadillo team leader John Carmack said in an e-mail that he was unhappy with the way the competition turned out:

"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. Nobody to be upset at except myself. 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 20-centimeter range. I never thought it was worth investing in differential RTK GPS systems [as Masten did], 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. 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. I was going to argue that if Masten was allowed to take a window on an unscheduled day with no notice, the judges should come back to Texas on Sunday and let us take our unused second window to try for a better accuracy, but our FAA waiver for the LLC vehicle was only valid for the weekend of our scheduled attempt."

In the end, the judges decided to award Masten the million dollars and give Armadillo the $500,000 second prize.

Andrew Jones / NASA

Unreasonable Rocket's Blue Ball vehicle rises during a flight on Saturday.

One more competitor takes flight
The contest started out with four competitors. One of the teams, BonNova, withdrew from the competition before making an official flight attempt. But 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.

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. 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.

Unreasonable Rocket's Level 2 entrant, known as the Silver Ball, made a series of tethered test flights on Sunday. 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.

Update for 3:45 p.m. ET Nov. 5: Masten and Armadillo received their awards at a Washington ceremony with a huge crew of dignitaries in attendance. "This isn't about money. It's about vision and inspiration," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden was quoted as saying in the NGLLC Twitter report from the festivities.

Bolden noted that "prizes allow people to dream, and to do."

Check out the NGLLC09 Twitpic album for photos from the ceremony, and don't miss the video report from our own Dara Brown recapping this year's Lunar Lander Challenge.

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. "The rocket was very close to flying and in the process of hover tests," the BonNova team reported.

Check for updates by doing a Twitter search on NGLLC. Join the Cosmic Log team by signing up as my Facebook friend or following b0yle on Twitter. And pick up a copy of my new book, "The Case for Pluto."

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Comments

Exciting stuff! Ares, shmares -- this is where the real progress is being made.

Joe Strout, Fort Collins, CO (Sent Wednesday, October 28, 2009 6:54 PM)

This is a great mission through out the world. I like space programs all the best.

Ihsan Omid, Kabul, Afghanistan (Sent Thursday, October 29, 2009 1:58 AM)

I am surprised that the day after the launch of Ares 1-x there is not headline coverage or follow up with MSNBC space news.

[ALAN ADDS: I think we've been trying to keep up with the story, and there will likely be more to say today. I've been otherwise engaged (with the Great Pluto Tour) but will be back in the office on Friday and on the case.]

Phil Mangio (Sent Thursday, October 29, 2009 6:49 AM)

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. What a beautiful sight it was to watch the Ares 1-X launch live on NASA tv. We need to give more money to NASA to get the Ares and Constellation programs rocking and rolling to the moon and Mars.

Go NASA!

Eric, Salinas, CA (Sent Thursday, October 29, 2009 9:36 AM)

Hello? The Obama administration cut funding for the Constellation lander program last week. Maybe you can use it as a cappuccino maker.

Harold (Sent Thursday, October 29, 2009 10:25 AM)

Yeah!!! It is an interesting article Ilove spaceship and rocket, and i hope that this project ends well...

Prisci,Quito-Ecuador (Sent Thursday, October 29, 2009 11:32 AM)

The more advances we can do, the better off we will be for getting off world. I can't wait to do that.

S.B. Stein E.B. NJ (Sent Thursday, October 29, 2009 3:51 PM)

I watched this afternoon's flight from my desk (one of the joys of working in Mojave). Alas, they had a minor fire after landing that scorched some sensor wiring and they're done for the day.

Man, three minutes is a looong time to be hanging in the air on rocket power without wings.

Doug Jones (Sent Thursday, October 29, 2009 6:19 PM)

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.

Space-X has put let's see, two vehicles in orbit, including a paying customer's satellite, and has contracts for ISS cargo supply.

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. The dummy upper stage came perilously close the colliding with the booster after staging, and two of three parachutes failed, trashing the booster segments.

You want to call that an awesome success?

Doug Jones (Sent Thursday, October 29, 2009 8:35 PM)

Hey Eric, from Salinas, CA

Look closer. Yeah, a little tinker toy looking, but what you are looking at was done on a budget as small as one/ one millionth the NASA budget.

AND,,,,, There is no NASA anything that can duplicate this flight today. None, nada, zip, zilch.

On the contrary, I suspect anyone of these three, or four, given a budget one/one thousandth, okay lets be generous, one/one hundredth, of NASA's budget, could have equal ARES performance and done it in a year instead of a decade.

These amateur rockets ARE the road to the future. The first space program , fueled with DESIRE and WILL went to the moon and back on what NASA spends for catered lunches today. And they did it in 7 years time.

Aside from the fact we should be going to Mars and not the moon, NASA is planning on that endeavor to take two decades. Slow to get there, but great for feathering a few well heeled nests.

Private industry can do it faster, better, cheaper, and develop valuable spin off technologies as waste product.

This is the big news, ARES is the big budget.

Yes, that is my opinion, and a health dose of fact.

Dean

Dean , Farmington Hills, MI (Sent Thursday, October 29, 2009 10:02 PM)

Anyone (big or small) who raises the bar makes it better for the rest of us.

Thanks for keeping the little guys in the news, Alan.

Onevoice, Frederick MD (Sent Friday, October 30, 2009 11:55 AM)

What's a round trimp ???

[ALAN ADDS: It's a rare breed of typo. Thanks for catching that.]

Kip Columbia SC (Sent Friday, October 30, 2009 1:41 PM)

Somebody ought to put up an X-prize for Ares-class parachutes

j9 (Sent Friday, October 30, 2009 3:38 PM)

Throughout history, despite the bloated bureaucracy that comes with it, national governments are the only organizations with enough resources to fund the greatest ventures of humanity. From the tribal organized immigrations of our pre-history to the moanrchy-funded first expeditions to the New World in the Colonial Age to the grand rockets of the Space Age, it takes the governments to make the initial headway.

I hate big government. The individuals and companies with freedom, the "Edisons" of the world figuring out how to create light and other wonders in their private workshops, certainly make great strides in technology that are unparalleled. To take away the New Space industry would be a mistake to fizzle out the industry as communism fizzled out the Soviet Union economy altogether. However, these big projects do need government resources that no one company can provide.

The way I see it, governments will have to build the bases on the Moon while private industry perfect the orbital platforms that NASA/ESA/JAXA/FSA has begun. 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.

In other words, Armadillo, Masten, Sapcce-X, etc. should not be seen as NASA's competitors for funds for space. Each have different, but equally necessary goals for the survival of Earth life. NASA explores the frontiers, then private industry turns frontiers into humanity heartlands.

Tyler Porter, Georgetown, Ky (Sent Friday, October 30, 2009 5:18 PM)

The VAST difference between what John Carmak said and what Dave Masten said is proof enough of who this WINNER REALLY IS!! Congrats, Dave! You don't just have style and brains.....YOU have CLASS!!! Keep that bar raised to YOUR level!

Ann Wade Tehachapi, CA (Sent Friday, October 30, 2009 5:19 PM)

Hi Alan,

The Pauls aren't Jr./Sr., one is Paul A. Breed and one is Paul T. Breed. Unfortunately I don't currently remember which is which.

Thanks for the article, and good luck with the book tour.

[ALAN ADDS: Thanks, Ben... I changed the reference as you suggested. It looks like Paul T. Breed is the elder of the two.]

Ben Brockert, Mojave (Sent Saturday, October 31, 2009 1:57 AM)

Why were the rules changed?
Originally it was a two day window
and not three,or keep trying till it works

I don't consider Masten the winner.
Joe in Texas

Joe smith,West Point,Texas (Sent Saturday, October 31, 2009 3:11 AM)

More much ado about nothing huh Alan? All this hoopla over tinker toy rockets is getting us nowhere fast on getting back to the moon or on to Mars. 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. We need to back the real deal by getting more money to NASA.

Eric, Salinas, CA (Sent Saturday, October 31, 2009 9:52 AM)

"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."

And yet, NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center sees fit to do something similar...

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/15oct_lunarlander.htm?list93818

...And 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.

Frank Glover, Rochester, NY (Sent Saturday, October 31, 2009 12:07 PM)

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. Congratulation to all of you, not for winning or losing, but for following your dreams.

Jeff, Los Angeles, CA (Sent Saturday, October 31, 2009 5:22 PM)

"Sure pride plays a role, but at the end of the day they are all winners, because they are following their dreams."

And at the end of the day, no matter how it turns out, they'll put it behind them, and turn their attention back to developmental work.

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...

When will Ares 1 fly again?

November 2013?

(Ares 1-Y, a full 5 segment solid rocket, but still using a dummy upper stage)

*Four years* before another suborbital test launch, that will do the *same* as the last one, save for SRB burnout at a somewhat higher altitude and speed? (even though a successful static test firing of a 5-segment solid was recently carried out)

Yeah, I'm getting dizzy watching that fast-paced, 'real deal' program get us to the Moon and Mars...

Frank Glover, Rochester, NY (Sent Sunday, November 01, 2009 12:03 AM)

--
I'm sorry, but, I always think that the Lunar Lander contest is a (surely more complex and advanced than LEGO or Monopoly) "GAME" rather than something useful for NASA (that have ALREADY done it, ON THE MOON with '60s technology!) so, NASA can't learn NOTHING from these (expensive) TOYS and has only wasted time and money
--

gaetano marano - ghostNASA.com (Sent Sunday, November 01, 2009 1:11 AM)

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.

That bird is *tough*. Landed at 10 m/sec straight down and the only evidence of it from a distance is a slight list.

Randall Clague, Cantil, CA (Sent Sunday, November 01, 2009 1:21 AM)

--
hovever, after all, the LLC is not so much different than the (very expensive and nearly useless) $445 million Ares 1-X test... :[
--

gaetano marano - ghostNASA.com (Sent Sunday, November 01, 2009 2:03 AM)

What a bunch of crapWe should stop looking for water on the moon and see if we could just simply learn to stop polluting our water here on the only human friendly planet we know of sofar.We should not be going into space until we are mature enough to take care of and respect what we have here on earth.What are we really wanting on a foreign soil weapons energy how long after we find something we can USE do you think it will be before we destroy that system? My guess not long.Why not a challenge to clean up the dump that is building in the beautiful pacific ocean learn to clean that up and you will have acheived greatness!!!

Randy (Sent Sunday, November 01, 2009 10:02 AM)

Perhaps all you space geeks could rationalize why it so important to go from a planet that is still amenable to life and travel to Mars,for example,which is barren,lifeless and possesses little or no water.What are you malcontents looking for adventure or are you just plain bored? Will the fiscal expenditure ever justify this "Hardy Boys adventure on steroids"...probably not and what about the technical problems associated with sustained weightlessness,muscular atrophy and intense cosmic radiation?Have any of you dimwits ever really applied any profound thought to any of the real challenges posed or do you still live in some little fantasy trip incurred years ago when your mothers sat you in front of the T.V. set to watch Star Trek or Star Dreck or whatever.

Frederick Christensen (Sent Sunday, November 01, 2009 10:35 AM)

Tyler, I don't think anyone argues that our space goals will require gov't funding. As you pointed out it will likely be necessary for some time to come in our space ventures. The gov't funding does not have to be pumped into a gov't owned entity however. This is not to say I advocate ending NASA, but if company A can do the same thing at 1/10th the cost and 3 times as fast...I say buy your product from company A, and let NASA stick to logistics and support.

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. Less than two years!

Tristan, Denver,CO (Sent Sunday, November 01, 2009 7:00 PM)

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.

Robin Snelson, Los Angeles and Mojave, CA (Sent Monday, November 02, 2009 12:06 AM)

The funniest part is that NASA put up all of the prize money for this competition.
And 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.

Cariann Higginbotham, Minneapolis, MN (Sent Monday, November 02, 2009 12:30 AM)

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. All existing evidence can easily be explained away.

Jason Abernathy,MO (Sent Monday, November 02, 2009 2:52 AM)

Hey Dean from MI,

You said "On the contrary, I suspect anyone of these three, or four, given a budget one/one thousandth, okay lets be generous, one/one hundredth, of NASA's budget, could have equal ARES performance and done it in a year instead of a decade.

These amateur rockets ARE the road to the future. The first space program , fueled with DESIRE and WILL went to the moon and back on what NASA spends for catered lunches today. And they did it in 7 years time."

And you are dead wrong.

When you taken into account inflation (not the dollar numbers, but their value) the ammount we were spending during the Golden Era of the 60s was MASSIVE compared to NASAs currently hobbled budget.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Budget

NASA can still get the job done, if properly funded. Which we are not currently doing.

Michael Hoctor (Sent Monday, November 02, 2009 7:42 AM)

"...so, NASA can't learn NOTHING from these (expensive) TOYS and has only wasted time and money."

You have yet to tell me why NASA's MSFC sees fit to build its own 'toy,' or what makes it different, if it's not.

(The answer; 'It's different *because* NASA's doing it.' will be immediately given a failing grade, due to circular logic...)

And again, Boeing sees fit to work with one of the 'toymakers.' Perhaps they both see something in this, that you do not?

To Randy and Fredrick:

You write as if no one is *already* working on the problems you believe are 'more important,' (including human physiology issues) or that they might get solved five seconds sooner if all this went away.

When you can demonstrate that that's so, come back and show me, before you raid someone else's shallow pocket, for something that may already be getting more support than you seem to know...

Frank Glover, Rochester, NY (Sent Monday, November 02, 2009 10:16 AM)

Frederick: You don't have to insult people; let's be somewhat mature here, I'll answer your half-question anyway, although I think you would find the answers to why humans do this yourself if you put some time into it. You seem to be making an argument from ignorance. Mars and the Moon are not the final goals. Yes, Earth is great for life now, but it won't be forever, regardless of how we treat it because the Earth is subject to far more powerful forces than humans, forces that could change it for the worse in a blink of the eye. If we want Earth life to continue, we have to spread it around some. Unfortunately, we can't get to other Earth-like worlds yet (call it Star Trek sci-fi fantasy if you want, but humans wouldn't have aircraft today if we all had your attitude towards innovation in the late 19th, early 20th century). We have to take baby-steps, and the next step is taking on relatively nearby bodies, which happen to be the barren rocks known as the Moon and Mars. Also, many of the wonderful technologies you enjoy today are actually direct results of trying to overcome some of the problems you mentioned with space travel. Humans are innovative and curious. When we are given tough problems, we tend to come up with innovative solutions. Space exploration gives us some of these problems. So space exploration, even to the Moon and Mars, is important for the two reasons above.

Tristan from Denver: Really, I think we are agreeing here but you don't realize it. Scaled Composites did a remarkable thing, but it is something that NASA and the FSA already pioneered about 50 yearss ago. When a technology is new and ambitious, it takes more than a company can handle, so NASA must make the pioneering steps. Then, 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. Hence 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.

Tyler Porter, Georgetown, Ky (Sent Monday, November 02, 2009 3:46 PM)

Well, let's see... who is going to build those next-gen refueling tankers for the USAF again? NASA, Boeing or Airbus?

Peter Noda (Sent Monday, November 02, 2009 4:49 PM)

To Fredrick:
What’s with all the name calling? Unless your 9 years old, you should know better by now that it only makes you sound immature, and people will not take you seriously.

Some of you guys may not know this, but our sun is not going to last forever. It is going to die. Not to mention the possibility of being hit by a massive meteorite. So 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. So it has to start somewhere, and we will need all the time we can spare to make this happen. So something "small" like these Lunar Landers are the first steps in something far greater than some of you can imagine. You may see a "tinker toy", I see a device that is engineered and built to do a specific job, and succeeded to do so. Here is an excerpt from a NASA engineer Brian Mulac and scientist Barbara Cohen:
"By conducting these tests, we gain an appreciation for the design of missions that land on airless bodies," says NASA planetary scientist Barbara Cohen. "Many scientifically interesting places in the solar system are airless. Besides the Moon, we'd like to visit Mercury, asteroids, Europa and other airless destinations. What we learn here could have a broad application."
"It's quite an engineering problem to solve," says Mulac. "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. So 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. Look up, the possibilities are endless!!

David Ventura, CA (Sent Monday, November 02, 2009 8:57 PM)

Space is big very big and it will need both private and Goverment to move on.
When the Chinese make the first human TV broadcast from Mars will you guys finally wake up and act like you reacted to Sputnik 1 on 4 October 1957? I
suggest that you all get your act together or your grandchildren will be hitching rides to Titan on someone else machine.

J Vanasten Montreal, Quebec, Canada (up north eh!) (Sent Monday, November 02, 2009 9:26 PM)

Still beating this dead horse race Alan? Hopefully this amateur rocketeer nonsense is over with and we can focus once again on the real pros of spaceflight, NASA.

I can't wait for the next shuttle flight to the International Space Station coming in two weeks, now we'll see a real rocket fly with real astronauts doing real work in space.

Eric, Salinas, CA (Sent Tuesday, November 03, 2009 9:50 AM)

you poeple who read bible says dont disterb the cosmo but we read and do oposite of that i dont belive big bang a big bang cant do what hapend we are in perfect place in univerce that dosenot hapend in big bang tery so if sun is going to die so are we /we are kiling every other thing that there is

eli phoenix az (Sent Tuesday, November 03, 2009 10:26 AM)

i am happy that armadillo won something in this contest, i am really happy for them.

pratikspace (Sent Tuesday, November 03, 2009 4:27 PM)

I am not impressed. Any decent corporation with government funding could have easily added years and bilions to this. Is this the sort of thing you want to hold up as an example of expanding the space industry? Doing it quick and cheap is not what built the industry into the monster it is. BTW - I can see JPL from my house.... Anything that doesn't have it's own bus line and freeway exit isn't worth considering.

JustAJoe (Sent Tuesday, November 03, 2009 6:07 PM)

Eric, I tire of this continual disrespect you give for people doing serious work for orders of magnitude less than NASA has otherwise managed to do. And as for your weak complaint about the "tinker toy" appearance of the vehicles, need I remind you that the ISS is itself a giant and very expensive tinker toy?

Finally, that real rocket flying real men and doing a little bit of "real work" costs us somewhere around a 250-450 million dollars plus fixed costs of 2 billion dollars a year just for the launch. That's a lot of real money for so-called real work.

For example, that amount of money is more than it cost for SpaceX to develop two rockets, three rocket engines, partial work on a manned capsule, and make five launch attempts (two which succeeded). That's real work. In comparison, the ISS has cost over 100 billion dollars including at least ten years of Shuttle flights (which fly for no other reason these days except for a single Hubble repair job). If we can attain $3,000 per kg payload with the Falcon 9, then the money spent on ISS could have been used to launch roughly 30,000 tons to orbit. That's the mass of roughly a 100 ISS's or 60 missions to Mars (at 500 tons apiece). Mind you, launch costs usually only amount to about 10-20% of the overall cost of a mission, and there are some things that wouldn't fit on a Falcon 9. But there's still a huge amount of potential in space that isn't being exploited by wasteful projects like the ISS.

That's the big problem with your "real work". It comes at the expense of serious US development of space. For $1.65 million, NASA has two interesting and working "tinker toy" prototypes for a lunar lander. That's real work.

Karl Hallowell (Sent Tuesday, November 03, 2009 8:14 PM)

"I can't wait for the next shuttle flight to the International Space Station coming in two weeks, now we'll see a real rocket fly with real astronauts doing real work in space."

Yes, a couple more times, anyway. Then what will you cheer for, after the last orbiter on the last flight comes to a runway full stop?

If Ares/Orion is finished at all, it'll be a very long dry spell for US Government manned space flight before it's operational, without even another Ares test flight to keep you warm, until late 2013. The 'amateurs,' on the other hand, have no reason to stop doing development (Armadillo, returning to work post-NGLLC as I said, is *already* doing flights to increasing altitudes, and they or Masten may break the DC-X record for rocket VTVL altitude before long).

And after years of seeing 'real' NASA astronauts doing nothing in space except occasionally riding with the Russians, even 'dead horse' meat may begin to look interesting to you.

See ya then, friend...

Frank Glover, Rochester, NY (Sent Wednesday, November 04, 2009 4:51 AM)

Frank, both Armadillo and Masten have already beaten DC-X's best time aloft (142 sec), with their qualifying Level 2 flights. DC-X Program Manager Bill Gaubatz, who was present for all four flights as LLC Senior Judge, was delighted.

Randall Clague (Sent Wednesday, November 04, 2009 5:09 PM)

You can see more footage of Armadillo in Diamandis' power point presentation, used during his lecture titled "the best way to predict the future is to invent it yourself" at the Quantum to Cosmos festival:
http://www.q2cfestival.com/play.php?lecture_id=8029

For those of you who are skeptical of why we should be using prize incentives for these kind of projects, it's especially informative.

Megan, Guelph, ON (Sent Friday, November 06, 2009 4:24 PM)

Great news! Congratulations to both Masten and Armadillo, and to Unreasonable Rocket as well! The era of space as a billion-dollar government jobs program is coming to an end, and the era of true space development for all is beginning, thanks to efforts such as these. After decades of very little progress, finally it feels like things are happening again!

Joe Strout, Fort Collins, CO (Sent Saturday, November 07, 2009 11:17 PM)

Congratulations to LaserMotive! I'm not sure if or when this will have practical application, but it's great to see good engineering being done anyway.

Joe Strout, Fort Collins, CO (Sent Saturday, November 07, 2009 11:20 PM)

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