Re: Why isn't XCor entering the Lunar Lander challenge?
- From: BradGuth <bradguth@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 08 Nov 2007 01:04:02 -0000
On Nov 4, 10:48 am, Sloppy Joe <sjoe...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Thu, Nov 01, 2007 at 05:27:25AM -0000, BradGuth wrote:
On Oct 28, 7:05 pm, Joe Strout <j...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
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?
Isn't this spendy and time consuming game of infowar/infomercial
spewing of NASA disinformation fun?
- Brad Guth -
Well, that would sort-of depend on how you define fun. I suppose if you
don't have anything invested in the subject, spendy "infowar/infomercial"
as seen at a distance might be fun to watch. And it's not like there isn't
lots and lots of it around for you viewing pleasure.
PR materials posted on Usenet or in books probably pack the largest bang
for the buck in comparison to television and radio; and some of it is very
entertaining. Nice work if you can get it. But most of the time when I
see it I'm left with the open-ended question of where it's all going. If
I find it poking at my back door, I generally expect less actual fun from
it.
Of course, information warfare for a good cause is in a completely
different class from traditional government propoganda streams.
That's true, but what about our faith-based and/or born-again
government is for a "good cause", other than for directly benefiting
our very own kind of offshore banking cause, and/or of our global
energy domination cause?
Sort of makes Hitler look like some kind of nice upstanding daycare
provider, doesn't it. At least the global domination by Hitler
didn't have any pretend atheist ulterior motives or hidden agendas
like most Zion Yids do.
--
Brad Guth
.
- References:
- Re: Why isn't XCor entering the Lunar Lander challenge?
- From: BradGuth
- Re: Why isn't XCor entering the Lunar Lander challenge?
- From: Sloppy Joe
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