Armadillo Aerospace Claims Level 2 Lunar Lander Prize 134
Dagondanum writes "Armadillo Aerospace has officially won the 2009 Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge Level 2, on a rainy day at Caddo Mills, Texas. Reports came in from various locations during the day and spectators posted videos and images using social networking tools such as Twitter. The Level 2 prize requires the rocket to fly for 180 seconds before landing precisely on a simulated lunar surface constructed with craters and boulders. The minimum flight times are calculated so that the Level 2 mission closely simulates the power needed to perform a real descent from lunar orbit down to the surface of the Moon. First place is a prize of $1 million while second is $500,000."
Woohooo (Score:5, Insightful)
Cool.
The flight looked amazingly stable.
GO Armadillo Aerospace. I'm just impressed and pleased that they made it.
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Re:Woohooo (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Woohooo (Score:5, Informative)
Yep, the main engine is thrust vectoring. Roll control is handled by small cold-gas thrusters that use the same helium supply that pressurizes the main propellant tanks.
Note also that "it most certainly looks top-heavy" is actually an example of the pendulum fallacy [wikipedia.org]. It doesn't matter whether the center of mass is far above, a little above, or below the rocket engine, you need active stabilization on a hovering rocket. (On a rocket flying a vertical trajectory, passive stabilization via fins will suffice to hold it basically straight.)
Market It As a Toy! (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe they need to find a way to turn something like into a commercializable product, to reap more rewards from their fine work.
I wonder if there's some kind of dual-use alternative market for something like this? How about making a small miniaturized version that could be marketed as a toy for adult geeks? (aka "overgrown kids")
Cmon - wouldn't you like to have your own miniature thrust-vectored hovering lander thingie floating around your office?
Carmack's geek
Power It With a Bic Lighter! (Score:2)
Hey, why not? It would be cooler than these R/C micro-helicopters
A really cool design would allow you to just plug in an ordinary Bic lighter into it as a ready-made fuel tank.
A fancy version could even have a small camera onboard, and maybe send a video feed back to your laptop via bluetooth. There are R/C helicopters that ha
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but the rest of the principles and operation would still be the same
More X-Prizes (Score:2)
I'm mentioning this in the wake of NASA's awesome low-cost Inflatable Re-entry Vehicle Experiment, which looks to have been a resounding success. It too was done using just a sounding rocket.
Another example of a low-cost experiment was Australia's recent HyShot test for a hypersonic scramjet engine, which was also done using a sounding rocket. Such technologies are much m
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But something that would be difficult to scale is the electronics. I don't know what precisely Armadillo is using right now, but I know it includes a Crossbow IMU. The control system for a rocket needs high quality gyros, and while the Crossbow is cheap by the rarefied standards of military avionics, it's still a good fifty gran
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Control system (Score:2)
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It's all software, but I believe it's a PID controller at heart. I know they do things that aren't strictly PID, like dead bands in the roll control, but I don't think it's terribly complicated. If you read through their updates [armadilloaerospace.com] they have a fair bit of information, in varying levels of detail.
I know they've moved more and more to having broader control loops: instead of one loop that sets a thrust level in order to maintain position, and another that tweaks the throttle to hit the target thrust, they just
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I'd skimmed that updates page but hadn't found much. I took another look and found a bit more: On this page [armadilloaerospace.com], for instance, they mention using a simple PD controller for their throttle. That's not too surprising; it's all you need. What I'm more interested in though, and still haven't found, is how they control orientation -- if they're controlling Euler angles individually or doing something fancier on the Lie group of rotations...
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Yeah, it's gimbaled, like almost all modern rockets. For more info see here [wikipedia.org].
Congrats to Armadillo!
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Yeah, it's gimbaled, like almost all modern rockets. For more info see here [wikipedia.org].
Which is not all that surprising, since Apollo Lunar Module's descent engine was gimbaled as well.
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With the way the thrust cone wandered all over the place as they were landing, showing them compensating for things as they brought it down- I'm suspecting a bit of Gyro stabilization coupled with thrust vectoring for directional changes.
Re:Woohooo (Score:5, Funny)
left arrow, left arrow,left arrow,right arrow,up,up,Up,UP,UP!,UP, shit, we made it.
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Actually it was up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A
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Actually it was (Score:4, Funny)
set cg_bobroll "0"
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Lunar Lander [wikipedia.org] was made by Atari, not Konami.
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You forgot Start...
Geek card please!
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I kind of doubt the thing will be in an oxygen atmosphere on the moon, so there won't be any need to douse it in CO2 after landing.
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Informative? Who wanders Slashdot with mod-points these days? Valley Girls?
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Like OH MY GOD
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Would've been easier with just entering "idspispopd". Or is this already version 2?
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I was impressed by that as well. While I realize it would never have to on the moon, I wonder how well it would deal with a slight breeze. It was making some fairly rapid corrections from what I assume was ground effect buffeting.
Having never seen this one before I was a little taken back at the end when somebody jogged up to it. It was 2-3x bigger than I initially thought.
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The corrections they were making near the end are so that they land as close as possible to the center of the pad, because that counts in determining who gets first place if another team also wins the challenge.
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I was talking about the rapid corrections in the thrust cone while the lander was stable. There's a pronounced difference in the correction rate around the 3:00 mark of the first video as thermals or reflected exhaust began to affect the lander. Those effects won't exist on the moon but it did cause me to wonder just how large an external force it can deal with before becoming catastrophically unstable.
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Living in Texas and following the tweets about it, I believe it was actually fairly windy yesterday. It was stormy and rainy across the state, and I know that they were much more worried about the rain than the wind.
That engine can thrust and vector a lot, and Dallas/Plano (their lab) and west Oklahoma (a common test site) aren't exactly known for their stellar weather, so they've always had to deal with wind.
Sadly I have no concrete numbers, but 10 mph seems like a pretty reasonable limit based on the env
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Google x-prize? (Score:5, Interesting)
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The orginal x-prize took 8 years for someone to win, and that prize had a strong commercial (space tourism) appeal, while the Google prize have not.
Re:Google x-prize? (Score:4, Insightful)
Then maybe the time limit should be extended. And perhaps it should be geared more towards research teams from academia rather than commercial industries.
First off, this is a much loftier goal (far more difficult than suborbital space flight), so naturally it will take longer to achieve. That's to be expected.
Secondly, these type of high-risk, low (immediate) commercial return ventures are inherently unappealing to private commercial industries. Things like space exploration and basic research are long-term investments in the future of humanity. Private industries prefer short-term investments with immediate returns. That's why government agencies like NASA and publicly-funded research organizations like CERN are needed. Otherwise these tasks would never be undertaken.
Lastly, it would probably speed up the process (of returning to the moon) if NASA hadn't decided to take all that publicly-funded space research/technology and auction it off to the highest bidder, basically turning it into private research (to be guarded as trade secrets) and proprietary technologies that are inaccessible to public researchers. I mean, we went from having no space program to landing on the moon in just under 11 years. Returning to the moon 4 decades later in 5 to 7 years really isn't that unreasonable—given that we're able to build on previously acquired knowledge and experience and actually have the motivation as a society to return to the moon.
too much military slop over (Score:1)
Advanced rocket designs and navigation, etc just have too much military dual use potential to them to just wing it out public domain..unfortunately. Otherwise I agree with you, proly quite a bit of wheel reinventing going on now that really doesn't have to be. I think *most* government funded research should be open sourced, especially anything pertaining to medicine, but not that.
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That's very possible. I mean, the more accurate tests are, the more rigorous the safety requirements become. But I think trying to strike a balance between caution and practicality is something we've always had to contend with. The other issue is that space & flight technology today is an order of magnitude more complex than what we went to the moon with in the late 60s. But, at the same time, we should be able to keep up with this growing complexity through technologies like Computer-Aided Design, adva
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The Google X-Prize is silly. The hard part of that prize is not the lander. The hard parts are getting your lander there in the first place, and the requisite high-bandwidth communications link back to Earth. Guidance when you can't use GPS is tricky, but easier than those two. (Detail work can be done inertially, but you also need a star tracker or similar baseline reference to work from.)
Any serious contender for the GXP needs to be planning to do a couple test flights if they want a serious hope of w
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Perhaps, just perhaps, this will land on the moon within 2 years.
They'd have to figure out how to get it on a rocket and to work on the Moon first. Doesn't sound like a two year project to me even if you have someone with deep pockets backing it.
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Strange. I think that Musk's goal is to have transportation available to the moon very soon, rather than later. Why is he quietly working on a H2/LOX engine? Not likely for launch. At this time, he needs to have a number of places to send LVs to; Private Space Station, ISS, Lunar orbit, lunar surface, servicing of sats, etc. The only feasible way to do that is via a tug. I will be su
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I think that Musk's goal is to have transportation available to the moon very soon, rather than later.
The problem here is why do you think "very soon" means within two years? They aren't moving fast enough now to do that IMHO. Look at the delays in the Falcon 9 this year (as well as having only launched 1 of 5 or 6 planned launches this year). That's not a sign of someone who wants to be putting things on the Moon in two years.
good... so far (Score:5, Interesting)
They seemed to be attempting to land on the X, but gave up in the end. Having to put the thing out with a fire extinguisher is a bit worrying too. Otherwise, looks good.
However, the article really shouldn't say "claims prize" when they just didn't fail. The comp isn't even over yet!
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Actually... The rules are a bit interesting...
It's the first one to accomplish the ground rules correctly that wins the purse in question. This means there's a second prize shot at Level 1 and the two Level 1 ones were up for grabs. Now only the Level 1 and Level 2 second prizes are free. They did, in fact, win first place, being first at the Level 2 pass of things. It's only not over in the sense of all the purses not being won.
Re:good... so far (Score:5, Informative)
That's not correct. First, they already won Level 1 last year, so there's only 2nd place of Level 1 available for grabs. This year the rules were changed a bit so that each team can try for the challenge at their home bases, and only Armadillo has so far. There are 2 other competitors that have yet to fly. If they succeed at the Level 2 then they will determine who gets first place by looking at who landed the closest to the center of the pad. So even though Armadillo succeeded, the other teams can still do better in theory and claim first place.
Re:good... so far (Score:5, Informative)
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I was reading about a recent test of a much larger rocket (I forget the details), and it was suggested that it was doused with CO2 at the end not because it wouldn't burn out on its own, but to preserve the engine in whatever state it was at the end of the burn to allow more information to be extracted from it.
You may be thinking of the Ares rocket test a few days ago. YouTube has a video that includes CO2 at the end. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ixQigIsob3tfbvoJ86LbHGi1MSswD9AKOBOG0 [google.com]
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As for the flames needing a fire extinguisher... Heh... I strongly suspect you'd have needed something along those lines for the primary thrusters on the Moon mission or the Space Shuttle rockets. Just because you cut off fuel flow, doesn't mean you don't have fuel still burning in the combustion chamber- you're just not supplying it any more when you do that. It's not like a jet engine or a car engine in several ways. And, I suspect that they put the fire out because of safety concerns rather than ne
Re:good... so far (Score:5, Informative)
Wow...so many things wrong in so few sentences.
1) They landed on the X (well, with the X within the space defined by the legs of the craft). In fact, the craft didn't move much horizontally in the last 30 seconds or so...it pretty much hovered over the X for long enough to meet the 180 sec limit.
2) The flames were from the simulated lunar surface that it lit on fire, not the craft itself. If I were them, I wouldn't be too concerned with lighting the surface of the moon on fire...it seems unlikely.
3) The contest is run in stages, and there are prizes for being the first (and second) team to finish each stage, so they did in fact claim a prize for being the first to finish stage 2 of the contest. Yes, there is still a stage 3, and there is a separate prize for being the first to finish stage 3.
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I wouldn't be too concerned with lighting the surface of the moon on fire...it seems unlikely.
That's a bit of an understatement, considering that the moon has no athmosphere, let alone one out of oxygen. ;)
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Depending on the composition of a material it can burn in space but I doubt a moon/planet that has a massive quantity of oxidizer and fuel sources on the surface would stay that way very long. (All it would take would be heat generated by an impact, etc. to potentially set it off)
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OK, but the simulated lunar surface looks a lot like concrete. Also, they seem to have some inside their engine, as that's where the flames are coming from ;)
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Are you sure the flames were from the simulated lunar surface? It seemed to be coming out of the bottom of the rocket booster and then shooting towards the ground (3:15 in the first video). I think someone mentioned this was done intentionally to freeze the engine's state for further data collection purposes.
Though it does look like the safety personnel sprays the extinguisher at both the lunar pad and the booster.
not launch pad on fire Re:good... so far (Score:2)
The launch pad is a form of concrete, and is not flammable.
The flames are coming from inside the engine, the engine uses the fuel (alcohol) to flow through cooling channels to cool the injectors in the combustion chamber.
When the main valves shut off, there's still some fuel remaining in the cooling channels and this tends to vapourise and burn off even after shutoff- but burning unevenly with the air, rather than the LOX. That's why it's a much cooler reddish flame rather than the much hotter blue flame ex
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2) The flames were from the simulated lunar surface that it lit on fire, not the craft itself. If I were them, I wouldn't be too concerned with lighting the surface of the moon on fire...it seems unlikely.
As there's no air on the moon, I'd call that the understatement of the century. Concern over a goblin eating the spacecraft or it disappearing into quantum nothingness might be better founded.
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First off, the starting pad and the lunar pad are 2 different locations. The first is a normal flat concrete launch pad. The second is supposed to be a "simulated" lunar surface with rocks and craters. And if you look from the top-down view (around 2:39 in the first video), you can clearly see the "X"—that don't look like no rebar I ever seen. In fact, it looks suspiciously like the highly stylized, and quite distinct, "X" in the X-Prize logo.
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It's true; I hadn't thought of whether it was a problem on the moon. It just jumped out at me, as an inelegance in the design, which usually suggests that the whole thing could be done better. I mean, seriously... flames from the engine, lapping around the rest of the craft? It might still work, but it's far from pretty.
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No, but as I said, I was referring to elegance of design. In that context, pretty is a bit different from "pleasing to the eye".
Not impressed (Score:4, Funny)
If they want a shot at faking another moonlanding they really need to hire a better set designer, that didn't look anything like the moon!
Re:Not impressed (Score:4, Funny)
If they want a shot at faking another moonlanding they really need to hire a better set designer, that didn't look anything like the moon!
I had a great set for my faked Moon landing. It looked perfect as the rocket came down on its parachute! For some reason folks said it didn't look like a real Moon landing - go figure!
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I had a great set for my faked Moon landing. It looked perfect as the rocket came down on its parachute! For some reason folks said it didn't look like a real Moon landing - go figure!
You silly, the parachute was too big! Everything is lighter on Moon, you need a smaller parachute.
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If they want a shot at faking another moonlanding they really need to hire a better set designer, that didn't look anything like the moon!
How would anyone know?
Rainy day ..... simulated moon landing? (Score:2)
on a rainy day at Caddo Mills, Texas ...
Surely that alone invalidates a simulated moon landing? (as would any cross winds)
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Cross winds would surely be vastly more significant, but rain would be pretty much irrelevant when you consider the mass of the craft and the amount of thrust involved.
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Surely that alone invalidates a simulated moon landing? (as would any cross winds)
That and the 6x stronger gravity...
I'd think doing the same thing on the Moon would be a lot easier - getting it there, and ensuring it works 100% of the time without the intervention of a man with a screwdriver... not so much.
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This is why this contest was for 3 minutes of hovering - with moon gravity, it translates to about 18 minutes of hovering, which is enough energy to softly land on or take of from the moon.
There are many things in this challenge that do not try to fully simulate the moon - they are not required to operate in heat or cold of the moon, hard vacuum, their vehicle even uses GPS for navigation.
The challenge simulates the most important part of lunar lander - vertical takeoff and landing, and prolonged hovering t
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If manned/unmanned missions to the moon become more common there is always the possibility of a limited GPS system being put in place. Might make navigating unmanned missions easier as well as locating the lander after a longer trip. (Although the later could be taken care of by a tracking beacon as long as line of sight doesn't become a significant issue)
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Definitely. And it did it quite well, actually. What makes it more impressive is the nature of the design- they're not using the same class of tech as NASA and other space agencies have used in the past. It's capable of the same, but it's cheaper and intrinsically more robust- dual systems, etc.
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Actually, the winds are minimal today in this area. I wouldn't know whether they're up over in Caddo Mills, but it's been a slow, steady, soaking rain for the last two days in the area with no appreciable winds (Caddo Mills is roughly 20 or so minutes to the North and East of Dallas along I-30 in-between Rockwall and Greenville.).
Low or no winds would be close enough to the conditions for a test for the purposes of the prizes.
congratulations (Score:2)
Nice thrust vectoring! Congratulations to all at Armadillo Aerospace!
My first thought was it was nice to see some money we spent years ago on Doom and the games built from that engine being put to good use.
I wish I had the math programming skills the he so fluidly can poor out. Truly impressive.
Second thought was John played to much lunar lander (ascii version) back in the day too. (chuckle)
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Good Jorb! (Score:2)
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Try This:
http://spacefellowship.com/Forum/forum-23.html [spacefellowship.com]
twitter? (Score:2)
posted videos and images using social networking tools such as Twitter
I didn't know you could fit videos or pictures in 140 characters. Did they use ascii art?
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But you can fit links to pictures and youtube videos in 140 characters.
budget (Score:1)
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If you've got a "build a little, sell a little" mindset like John Carmack, sure. He's actually said he hasn't spent more than $1 million on Armadillo.. and last year he let slip that the group is actually profitable already. With the prize money they intend to put on a few more people fulltime.
Girlfriend's reaction (Score:5, Funny)
My girlfriend* just walked in the room and saw me watching the video of the successful flight. All she said was "No, you can't have one."
To be fair, she was joking... I think.
* Don't even think about it.
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My wife's reaction was, "No you can't go. You said you wouldn't leave me to go into space."
My response was, "No, I said I wouldn't go without you. You can come too." :D
It's not over yet; They didn't actually win (Score:3, Informative)
The summary is misleading. They didn't actually win the $1 million yet. Masten Space and Unreasonable Rocket are both going to have a crack at the prize and have until October 31 to best Armadillo's performance.
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So is the title. More appropriate would have been "Moved Into First Place for" instead of "Claims" but that doesn't fit on the screen as well.
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Um... didn't we do this 40 years ago? (Score:2)
Like, with slide rules?
Next there'll be a prize to build some kind of circuit that allows us to add binary numbers together. After that we can try to find a way to use steam to pump water out of mines.
Sheesh. At least they might have tried it with Martian conditions instead of lunar ones.
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A computer controlled VTVL rocket vehicle built by a bunch of amateurs? No, we didn't see that.
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A computer controlled VTVL rocket vehicle built by a bunch of amateurs? No, we didn't see that.
Is that what this prize is about? Rewarding people for being amateurs, rather than advances in actual technology?
The LM landed and it took off again, vertically. It was controlled by hand, but computer control is hardly, ahem, rocket science nowadays.
I don't see the point. Why not give prizes for major advances regardless of who achieves them, rather than duplicating 40-year-old achievements with the benefit of hindsight and modern technology?
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Here's the justification for it: http://www.xprize.org/blogs/wpomerantz/ng-llc-rules-explained [xprize.org]
The thing you should know about NASA though is that they don't actually do shit for rational reasons - they just decide to do stuff then they justify it. The fact is, there are very few people doing rocket engine development in the US. Its such a small community that you can have conferences run by students and all the big names in the field will show up. NASA benefits by encouraging commercial interests to do
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My impression is that these prizes are created for specific milestones that delineate an evolutionary path for private, entrepreneurial, kickass space industry. The first steps are simple, and they get harder. They reward excellence for people competing in that space, the best get fantastic press and some (probably not all I would expect) of their investment back. The space elevator competition, the AI automobile competition, etc. all proceed a pace at a time. With respect to your question, IANARS but the i
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You're right that these projects are not doing much technically that's not been done previously by government programmes. Their innovation is that they are dramatically cheaper and that someone other than NASA is taking the risk and making the investment.
(repost of http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=999941&cid=25422361 [slashdot.org])
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Like, with slide rules?
And a few billion dollars? And thousands of engineers, and hundreds of thousands of people at various jobs of all kinds? And a greater proportion of existing computer power (such as it was at the time, but it wasn't slide rules either) devoted to a single endeavor than has ever occurred since?
Anyway, "we" who? Is that you Dr. von Braun?
Your point being? It's been DONE. Move on. (Score:2)
Little kids can now build telescopes better than Galileo made and at far less cost using off-the-shelf components. So what? Do we hand them big prizes for it?
The "we" is "we, the human race."
John Carmack is my autodidactical hero (Score:2)
Not bad for a guy with no college degree!
(Disclaimer: I do have a BSCS. But there is no way I could accomplish the things Carmack has. By the time he was my age, Carmack was working on Quake 3. *sigh*)
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So, go ahead and accomplish something? Surely there must be something that you're good at that overlaps with something you'd find desirable to achieve?
John Carmack? (Score:2)
So I hereby bestow upon him the title
Official Rocket Launcher!
The One. The Only.
More Prizes! (Score:2)
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Not quoted verbatim but somewhat on topic I'd say.
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Maybe the setup crew got confused when they saw Carmack and set up a simulated Mars surface instead.