John Carmack is on live explaining what happened with the flight. They initially had problems this morning with icing on their LOX lines, apparently because they were not able to store the vehicles overnight in a heated hangar. He says the flight went well up until landing, but hasn’t explained what exactly went wrong during […]
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Armadillo completed the first of its two flights for Level One of the Lunar Lander Challenge at about 1:25 MDT. It appears to have been a success, but there are now reports that there was a fire of some kind after landing–whether on the vehicle or pad is unclear–and it seems unlikely they will make […] The 2.5-hour window for Armadillo Aerospace’s Lunar Lander Challenge Level 1 attempt started about 10 minutes ago when they crossed a white line on the tarmac at the airport. A few minutes later their vehicle, Pixel, was loaded onto a truck and headed for the competition site in the airport midfield. […] Armadillo’s Lunar Lander Challenge launch has been delayed by technical issues: apparently there is some wireless interference disrupting their link to their vehicle. They’re planning to go later this morning; they have a 2.5-hour launch window that opens at 11 am MDT. One team member said they believe they have a 70% chance of winning […] MSNBC reports that the FAA will make a decision by tomorrow morning on whether Armadillo Aerospace will be allowed to participate in the Lunar Lander Challenge after reviewing data from a test flight Thursday at the airport. The test flight (which, unfortunately, I missed seeing in person) went well, although Armadillo’s Quad vehicle tipped over […] It was looking a little bleak there for a while about whether anyone would be able to compete for the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge: Flight International posted a story with the discouraging title “FAA could call halt to NASA lunar lander challenge”, and, more ominously, Leonard David reported that Armadillo Aerospace “ran into snags” […] “Our two greatest problems are gravity and paperwork,” Wernher von Braun is credited as saying. “We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming.” That’s a sentiment likely shared by some of the companies hoping to compete in the Lunar Lander Challenge late this week at the Wirefly X Prize Cup. While some companies […] A couple of former X Prize teams plan on appearing, albeit not competing, at the X Prize Cup next month. Via the Lunar Lander Challenge blog is a press release from the da Vinci Project announcing that they plan to participate in the Cup and “show casing a new design”, and well as planning some […] In just under three months the X Prize Cup will take place in Las Cruces, New Mexico. However, so far there have been few confirmed details about what is going on. The X Prize Foundation had planned to unveil more details on a revamped web site last month, but as of Saturday morning the site’s […] There were a lot of good presentations Friday at the Space Access ’06 conference in Phoenix, although not necessarily a lot of breaking news. Given limited time (plus the fact that the wireless network in the conference room was down most of the day) I’ll for the moment provide some brief highlights: Rick Homans, secretary […] |
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