NASA offers big cash for lunar lander design

Valley Press ^ | on Saturday, May 6, 2006. | ALLISON GATLIN

[BenLurkin]

Space Ping

[Brilliant]

This strikes me as a completely idiotic and inefficient way to do this.

[BenLurkin]

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?

[Lunatic Fringe]

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.

Hey, I got an idea for a design that can do that...

[Racer1]

Yea. Didn't the first one work. Whats wrong with saving a pile of money and using the same design with required improvements.

[Flyer]

and is able to perform the maneuver repeatedly

Our first one could only do it once.

[patton]

You, um, ever seen the inside of a government development or aquisition program?

This is faster/better/cheaper, if you will exscuse the pun...

[Lunatic Fringe]

True, but I think that was mostly due to fuel capacity.

[longtermmemmory]

with a 8k computer? Limited cargo?

Think pickup truck for the moon.

[true_blue_texican]

and is able to perform the maneuver repeatedly

The LM could not perform the above requirement.

[RightWhale]

Whats wrong with saving a pile of money and using the same design with required improvements.

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get private industry involved in space development outside of gov't contracts, the 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty would be withdrawn from and claims to entry and mining of outer space resources would be accepted and recorded at the Land Office.

[buccaneer81]

This should do the trick:

[UncleSamUSA]

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.

[Flyer]

The original lander had one single-use engine to land with and a second single-use engine to take off with. The entire design was for a single-use vehicle - and no room for failure. There were no opportunities for a second try.

With the advances in technology and materials, though, this new multi-use vehicle should be relatively easy to design.

[robertpaulsen]

"True, but I think that was mostly due to fuel capacity."

Correct. The descent engine on the LEM was fired multiple tiimes on Apollo 13.

[robertpaulsen]

"The LM could not perform the above requirement."

With enough fuel, of course it could. The descent engine was fired multiple times on Apollo 13.

[AngryJawa]

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.

[JOE6PAK]

[true_blue_texican]

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.