Lunar landers
A prize for a moon lander will be won this month
Boing!
IF PEOPLE are to explore the moon again they will need ways of travelling across the lunar surface and also of digging holes in it. But because America’s space agency, NASA, spends most of its money on the space station and the shuttle, little is left over for the innovative research and development in areas such as these that many people think it should be carrying out in the first place.
The answer NASA has come up with is something it calls its Centennial Challenges. These are a series of prizes for technological achievement in areas such as beamed power, lunar landers and the extraction of oxygen from lunar regolith (the crushed rock that passes for soil on the moon). The point is to spur technological development using the twin lures of hard cash and the kudos of being officially recognised as cleverer than your peers.
On October 18th, therefore, 19 robots competed in the Regolith Excavation Challenge. The three teams behind the winning machines claimed a total of $750,000.
To win, a robot had to excavate 150kg (330lb) of simulated lunar soil and move it into a container in less than half an hour. Worthy and important, of course, but a sideshow to another of the events that is taking place this month. This is the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge. And it looks as if, by the time festivities are over on October 31st, much of the $2m prize fund for this particular contest will have been won, too.
Companies that have competed in the lunar lander challenge so far include Armadillo Aerospace, TrueZer0, Masten Space Systems, Unreasonable Rocket and BonNova. Against a tight timeline, the teams must prepare their vehicles to make vertical take-offs, controlled flights and successful landings—and then hop back home again. The easier level of the challenge requires flights of 90 seconds and a landing on a small, flat circular pad. The more difficult second level requires a flight of 180 seconds followed by a landing on simulated lunar terrain, complete with rocks and craters.
Last year Armadillo Aerospace (based in Rockwall, Texas) won first place and $350,000 in the easy category. Earlier this month Masten Space Systems (of Mojave, California) replicated Armadillo’s efforts with a lander called Xombie, qualifying for the second prize ($150,000). Both companies, with the other entrants, are now hoping to win the level-two award. Armadillo has already made a qualifying flight and, if none of the other teams can match or beat that by the end of the month, it will walk away with the top prize of $1m.
The lunar lander challenge has been running since 2006 and has provided ample demonstration of the effect, long known in technology-prize circles, that the money and effort invested in winning far exceed the financial value of the prize itself. The promise of prestige loosens the purse strings of both wealthy individuals, such as John Carmack, the computer-game entrepreneur behind Armadillo, as competitors, and large companies, such as Northrop Grumman, as sponsors.
The lunar lander challenge is good news for NASA, because it can now count on groups of potential suppliers and experienced engineers to build any future moon lander. NASA will be hoping for more good news for its moon programme on October 27th, when its experimental Ares 1-X rocket, costing $455m, should make its first test flight from Cape Canaveral, in Florida. Against this backdrop, however, is a struggle for cash, and the new administration has already indicated that it has not got the money to pay for a return to the moon with prizes. So far, attempts to spur the private sector to travel to the moon have not been successful either, probably because not enough money is being offered.
Nonetheless, in the right context, and with the right design, prizes can work. Their other advantage is that—in contrast to the fat government contracts on which much of the aerospace industry thrives—the money is handed out only when the goals are achieved. That is a lesson in incentives that governments would do well to remember.
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Full article and photo: http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14698371&source=hptextfeature
