Re: Google/X-Prize Moon Contest

GOOGLE's 'Lunar X Prize' $30 Million
Foremost, they'll need at least a one-way viable fly-by-rocket soft
lander with loads of reliable down-range flight capability, whereas
that accomplishment alone might also be a first time quest, especially
since there's nothing even within the very best of any R&D prototype
that's quite up to such a task of demonstrating that level of
perfected robotic talent, as is.

BTW, unless our NASA/Apollo wizards were not sharing the whole truth
and nothing but the truth, it should not take hardly any kind of
delivery rocket, especially with such a small robotic payload of
perhaps as little as 1% the nearly 50 tonnes worth of those supposed
rad-hard Apollo missions that got off Earth within their nearly 30%
inert GLOW, and were otherwise stuck with utilizing a mere 60:1 ratio
of rocket per payload, plus the fact that unlike accommodating our
frail DNA there's no great hurry in getting such robotics there (could
take advantage of as much as a full lunar month or two).

A one-way fly-by-rocket ticket to ride might by now actually be
affordably doable, and you'd have to believe with such R&D efforts
being fully prototype demonstrable, at least at nearly zero payload
and hosting minimal fly-by-rocket down-range capacity so as to fully
simulate their 1/6th gravity at full-scale application.

A terrestrial R&D controlled mini-deorbit could certainly be simulated
and thereby accomplished, along with at least a km worth of controlled
down range past a simulated mascon issue, whereas the actual lunar
deorbit and electrostatic dusty down-range trek of demanding 10s of km
worth of multiple and continuous controlled reaction thrusting, as
such might not have to be fully proof-tested, especially if those
impressive supercomputers in charge of those fully modulated thrusters
and of those momentum reaction wheels are each doing their thing, with
sufficient energy and fuel to spare.

http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/lunar/press-release/google-sponsors-lunar-x-prize-to-create-a-space-race-for-a-new-generation
About the Prize Purse:
· The $30 million prize purse is segmented into a $20 million Grand
Prize, a $5 million Second Prize and $5 million in bonus prizes. To
win the Grand Prize, a team must successfully soft land a privately
funded spacecraft on the Moon, rove on the lunar surface for a minimum
of 500 meters, and transmit a specific set of video, images and data
back to the Earth. The Grand Prize is $20 million until December 31st
2012; thereafter it will drop to $15 million until December 31st 2014
at which point the competition will be terminated unless extended by
Google and the X PRIZE Foundation. To win the Second Prize, a team
must land their spacecraft on the Moon, rove and transmit data back to
Earth. Second place will be available until December 31st 2014 at
which point the competition will be terminated unless extended by
Google and the X PRIZE Foundation.
· Bonus prizes will be won by successfully completing additional
mission tasks such as roving longer distances (> 5,000 meters),
imaging man made artifacts (e.g. Apollo hardware), discovering water
ice, and/or surviving through a frigid lunar night (approximately 14.5
Earth days). The competing lunar spacecraft will be equipped with high-
definition video and still cameras, and will send images and data to
Earth, which the public will be able to view on the Google Lunar X
PRIZE website.
-

In addition to the GOOGLE 'Lunar X Prize' of $30 million, there has
already been the ongoing official NASA prize that's offered for anyone
getting the first of such fly-by-rocket lander through its R&D and
protype phase, of subsequently demonstrating the talents and team
expertise of how such applied fly-by-rocket technology can under the
very best of terrestrial conditions safely manage a given simulated
deorbit and down-range task of soft landing without losing its
cookies. Thus far, they're not even close to having accomplished this
for-real simulated deorbit drop and down-range test, that which
includes a reasonably controlled down-range and at least one repeat
soft landing function, without something going terribly wrong, and
damn spendy wrong as well as at least thus far demonstrating their
100% humanly lethal aspects at that.

These lander prototypes are of course configured with minimal payload
and least amount of inert structural mass and limited fuel, so that
they do in fact simulate the real application as though operating at
1/6th gravity. They are also using a lower CG, the most modern of
sensors, momentum reaction wheels and nearly supercomputers, as well
as fully modulated reaction thrusters that simply didn't exist as of
those Apollo missions (of which most all documentation and whatever
supposed expertise has been lost or hidden by some damn fool), and
those efforts are still not good enough or much less trustworthy
enough for any public demonstration. Of course them Russans of far
better robotic fly-by-rocket expertise would be having the very same
demo complications.
- Brad Guth -

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