Google/X-Prize Moon Contest

Joe Strout wrote:

Derek, you're the same nay-sayer who assured us that nobody would win
the first X Prize, either. You were wrong then, and you're wrong again.


I don't recall him saying nobody would win it.

I do recall him saying achieving the X Prize wasn't close to achieving
orbit.

I used to agree with him. But more recently I've been forming the
opinion that rising about the atmosphere is a very major step towards
the goal of achieving orbital flight.

I'd bet even odds the Google moon prize will be won.

Hop

"Joe Strout" schreef in bericht
...
Now here's something worth talking about:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070913/ap_on_hi_te/google_moon_prize


I don't understand, do the teams have to devise their own launcher too? That
alone would be a remarkable feat and would cost far more that $30 million.




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Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

In article ,
"Jim Relsh" wrote:

"Joe Strout" schreef in bericht
...
Now here's something worth talking about:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070913/ap_on_hi_te/google_moon_prize


I don't understand, do the teams have to devise their own launcher too? That
alone would be a remarkable feat and would cost far more that $30 million.

No, they don't. They can buy a launch wherever they choose. SpaceX is
offering discounted launches to contestants, but you could use a Dnepr
or SeaLaunch or whatever you like.

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

"Joe Strout" schreef in bericht
...
In article ,
"Jim Relsh" wrote:

"Joe Strout" schreef in bericht
...
Now here's something worth talking about:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070913/ap_on_hi_te/google_moon_prize


I don't understand, do the teams have to devise their own launcher too?
That
alone would be a remarkable feat and would cost far more that $30
million.

No, they don't. They can buy a launch wherever they choose. SpaceX is
offering discounted launches to contestants, but you could use a Dnepr
or SeaLaunch or whatever you like.

Yeah, Falcon 1 ($8million per launch) immediately popped into my mind.

Ok, pop quiz. How much cargo would a Falcon 1 be able to get into a lunar
orbit?



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"Hop David" wrote in message
...

I used to agree with him. But more recently I've been forming the opinion
that rising about the atmosphere is a very major step towards the goal of
achieving orbital flight.

I know I read an article which said it was not appropriate to compare the
required velocity for an suborbital hop with same for LEO and then say that
proves LEO is X number of times more difficult. I forget the exact numbers,
but it was something like the velocity difference would tempt you to say it
was 20 times more difficult, but various factors result in it being more
like 4 or 5 times more difficult.

--


Regards,
Mike Combs
----------------------------------------------------------------------
By all that you hold dear on this good Earth
I bid you stand, Men of the West!
Aragorn

Len wrote:

On Sep 13, 7:52 pm, (Derek Lyons) wrote:
"Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)" wrote:

I'll lay odds this prize won't be claimed by the current expiry date
of the prize.

I'll also lay odds that if it is claimed prior to the expiry date, the
launch will occur on a recycled Russian ICBM.

Care to lay a bet on that Derek?

Contact me off list, and lets set something up.

If you change your mind about betting with others,
let me know.

I'm not against betting with select others, but against betting with
idiots.

You don't have to give odds, I'll take even money up to 100 bucks.

I was thinking in terms of something more classical - a bottle of
one's favorite comestible say.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

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/lun...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 -

In article ,
Jim Kingdon wrote:
http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/
Interestingly, you just need to land by the deadline, not return the
whole gigabyte by the deadline (according to one of the news articles,

Lunar night will require that the entire mission be 14 days (unless
someone is going for the bonus by trying to survive it). Those extra
few days will likely only matter if, as the deadline looms, one or more
teams decide that even though they aren't quite ready they'll risk a
"cross your fingers and hope" launch.

The self-portrait seems superfluous; hopefully having a substantial
portion of the lander in an image is enough to satisfy it. I don't
think it makes sense to require special hardware just for this.

One of the potential bonuses is to image Apollo hardware. What do
people think of encouraging competitors to lob experimental crafts that
close to Apollo sites?

Wiki says the Mars rovers average 10mm/s; 500m would be 14 hours. So
this doesn't require any new speed records.

I don't see that the lander needs to operate autonomously. If
teleoperation is permissible this basically becomes a race to repeat
Russia's 1970 Lunokhod mission (but in HD!).
--
Jim Prescott - Computing and Networking Group
School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, University of Rochester, NY

On Fri, 14 Sep 2007 12:19:35 -0500, in a place far, far away, "Mike
Combs" made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

"Hop David" wrote in message
...

I used to agree with him. But more recently I've been forming the opinion
that rising about the atmosphere is a very major step towards the goal of
achieving orbital flight.

I know I read an article which said it was not appropriate to compare the
required velocity for an suborbital hop with same for LEO and then say that
proves LEO is X number of times more difficult. I forget the exact numbers,
but it was something like the velocity difference would tempt you to say it
was 20 times more difficult, but various factors result in it being more
like 4 or 5 times more difficult.

That was a blog post by Jon Goff.

http://selenianboondocks.blogspot.co...th-of-25x.html

On Sep 14, 1:23 pm, (Derek Lyons) wrote:
Len wrote:
On Sep 13, 7:52 pm, (Derek Lyons) wrote:
"Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)" wrote:

I'll lay odds this prize won't be claimed by the current expiry date
of the prize.

I'll also lay odds that if it is claimed prior to the expiry date, the
launch will occur on a recycled Russian ICBM.

Care to lay a bet on that Derek?

Contact me off list, and lets set something up.

If you change your mind about betting with others,
let me know.

I'm not against betting with select others, but against betting with
idiots.

You don't have to give odds, I'll take even money up to 100 bucks.

I was thinking in terms of something more classical - a bottle of
one's favorite comestible say.

Well, there's an Armenian cognac that is difficult
to obtain. But I like Grand Marnier...that's more
readily available. Perhaps you have something
in mind in roughly the same price range.

Len


D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL