Sigh

Armadillo's fourth and final shot at winning the $350,000 portion of the $2 million Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge ended today in flames.

Bugger.

I had seen a video of Pixel(the one with the four spherical tanks) attempt one of the Lunar Lander Challenge competitions. It landed about a foot off the pad and busted one of it's legs, they tried a repeat, but the missing leg threw off the flight charateristics and caused a crash.

They have a lot of videos at their site:
http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home
http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home/News?news_id=337

Good crash video, of one of the other designs:
http://media.armadilloaerospace.com/2004_08_08/48InchCrash.mpg

unreal! like playing lunar lander with your teeth!

That is what we call XA 0.1. It can only hover for about 45 seconds when fully loaded with fuel. The fuel is liquid oxygen and isopropyl alcohol (i.e. 99% pure rubbing alcohol). This vehicle's purpose is to test plumbing, engines, gymbals and flight control systems before we scale up the airframe and tanks. This test is only showing one engine, though. Once it checks out we add the other three and then let it fly under a teather.

For those who were able to make it to the XPRIZE Cup Expo in Las Cruces this past October, this is the vehicle we had on display at our tent. This won't be our Lunar Lander Challenge entry since it is too heavy (by design).

The deflector you see burning through is made of three layers of laminated douglas fir 2x4s....

This is the blog entry that explains the test: http://masten-space.com/blog/?p=94

This is an entry for a test that we did later in the day. We wanted to know what it would do to the ground considering that will be one of its tasks for the Lunar Lander Challenge. We call this one the Supersonic Posthole Digger: http://masten-space.com/blog/?p=95

There is a mirror on the moon that the bounce a laser off... If they can get a mirror there I'm sure they can get a lunar lander. Its all just a matter of physics.