Hey, I got an idea for a design that can do that...
Posted on 05/07/2006 8:20:13 AM PDT by BenLurkin
LOS ANGELES - NASA raised the stakes in its prize competitions Friday with the announcement of the $2.5 million Lunar Lander Analog Challenge, intended to spur innovations for a new means to safely land on the surface of the moon. While funded by NASA, the next great space prize is administered by the founders of the last one - the X Prize Foundation, creators of the $10 million Ansari X Prize for the first privately funded, manned space program.
That prize was claimed by Mojave's SpaceShipOne in 2004.
This new competition, part of NASA's series of Centennial Challenge prize races, asks participants to design a rocket-powered vehicle that takes off vertically, hovers, travels across a horizontal distance, then lands vertically on a specified site and is able to perform the maneuver repeatedly. These actions simulate those of proposed moon landings.
"NASA's Centennial Challenge program is using the tool of prize competitions, so successfully demonstrated by the X Prize, to plant the seeds for future space commercial activities," NASA Deputy Administrator Shana Dale said. "We're confident the Lunar Lander Analog Competition will stimulate the development of the kinds of rockets and landing systems that NASA needs to return to the moon, while also accelerating the development of the private sub-orbital space flight industry."
(Excerpt) Read more at avpress.com ...
Space Ping
This strikes me as a completely idiotic and inefficient way to do this.
It may be or it may not. I'm not in a position to say though I suspect there are others on this forum who are.
Do you have another way in mind?
Hey, I got an idea for a design that can do that...
Yea. Didn't the first one work. Whats wrong with saving a pile of money and using the same design with required improvements.
Our first one could only do it once.
This is faster/better/cheaper, if you will exscuse the pun...
True, but I think that was mostly due to fuel capacity.
with a 8k computer? Limited cargo?
Think pickup truck for the moon.
NASA is trying to get more involved with public schools as well as private industry. The effort is misguided and half-hearted, but it meets the stated goal of their mission statement. If it were desired to get private industry involved in space development outside of gov't contracts, the 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty would be withdrawn from and claims to entry and mining of outer space resources would be accepted and recorded at the Land Office.
NASA: Please contact Grumman Aerospace, Bethpage, Long Island.
I believe they have some relevant prior experience in successful Lunar Lander designs.
Why re-invent the wheel? They could easily upgrade the rather primitive computer in the original LMs and upgrade the comm antennas.
Sometimes NASA acts like anything before 1980 never happened.
With the advances in technology and materials, though, this new multi-use vehicle should be relatively easy to design.
Correct. The descent engine on the LEM was fired multiple tiimes on Apollo 13.
With enough fuel, of course it could. The descent engine was fired multiple times on Apollo 13.
The Space 1999 Eagle is, IMHO, one of the best and most believeable sci-fi vehicle designs ever. IIRC, Werner von Braun had some input with the show. Too bad he couldn't correct some of the other cheesier elements of the show.
No it couldn't. It required 2 stages of which the first had to be discarded after touchdown. As I read the requirements for the challenge, it sounds like they are looking for a one stage platform that can land and get up and go to another landing spot.
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