Why isn't XCor entering the Lunar Lander challenge?

As you all probably know by now, Armadillo fell a bit short of winning
the Northrup Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge yesterday, despite some
fairly heroic on-site tweaking and swapping of components.

They seem plagued by engine problems -- clogs, hard starts, etc.
They've been designing and building their own engines from scratch from
the beginning, which I respect on one level, but I think they've
discovered that rocket science isn't as easy as it sounds. :)

Which leads one to think: who knows how to build highly reliable engines
of the sort needed for this challenge? Why, XCor, of course. And
really, the rest of the craft is pretty trivial: tanks, avionics,
landing struts, and that's about it. The craft isn't subjected to high
forces, doesn't need to be aerodynamic, and generally isn't much more
complicated than a hobby robot or RC helicopter, except for the
plumbing. And plumbing is what XCor's really good at.

So, now I'm wondering why XCor doesn't enter the contest. They've got
great engines: restartable, reliable, and with no hard starts. They've
probably got (or can get) tanks too. Seems like they could put the rest
of the craft together in a couple of months, and walk away with an easy
$350K or $1M. Quite apart from the money, it'd be great publicity for
them.

Is there some good reason I'm not thinking of that they're not doing
this?

Cheers,
- Joe

--
"Polywell" fusion -- an approach to nuclear fusion that might actually work.
Learn more and discuss via: <http://www.strout.net/info/science/polywell/>
.

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