Video of the award ceremony by the XPrize Foundation
The award ceremony for the Lunar Lander XPrize Challenge was held
on Capitol Hill.
Congress funded these prizes for
NASA's Centennial Challenges.
For their role as the inspiration for the Centennial Challenges, the
XPrize Foundation
was contracted to manage and judge the prize.
And Northrup Grumman, makers of the original Apollo LEM, sponsored the
XPrize Foundation's expenses so that management of the prize was at no cost
to the taxpayers, as required by Congress' allocation of the prize money.
So when it was time to make awards, everyone got involved.
The $2M in prizes were as follows:
Level 2 - for two 180-second rocket hover flights within 2-1/2 hours,
tie broken by landing accuracy
Level 1 - for two 90-second rocket hover flights within 2-1/2 hours
First place: Armadillo Aerospace $350,000 (awarded in 2008)
Second place: Masten Space Systems: $150,000 (awarded at this ceremony)
The flight duration requirement was not arbitrary.
With two 180-second hover flights on Earth, these rockets demonstrated the
same amount of impulse and similar controlability required to descend from
lunar orbit to lunar landing and a launch back to orbit.
NASA's intent with this prize was to grow this capability among US companies
for potential future contracts on space exploration missions.
Everyone has also made sure to include an honorable mention for the
father-son team
Unreasonable Rocket
(named because significant inventions
often appear to be unreasonable ideas at first)
of Paul T Breed and Paul A Breed.
Out of a dozen teams, Unreasonable Rocket was the only other team to get
their rocket to the other pad.
Even before that they had already won our admiration as
Paul and Paul showed everyone how high we
can set the bar of sportsmanship.
And that was saying something among a group of teams who already showed
a surprising level of civility while competing for a million dollar prize.
You can see UR's "Blue Ball" rocket in XPrize's video.
After the ceremony, the Masten Space Systems team visited the office of
Congressman Kevin McCarthy whose district includes the
Mojave Air & Space Port.
He's an aerospace enthusiast himself who understood this accomplishment -
so that was a fun visit.
From there we walked to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
for photos with the ceremonial checks,
and SpaceShipOne in the background.
SS1, the winner of the original XPrize, now hangs in the NASM's main gallery.
And Masten Space Systems is located in Mojave literally across the street from
Scaled Composites, who made SS1.
For me, it's been a fascinating wild ride.
Dave Masten wrote the first draft of the business plan for what would become
Masten Space Systems while he rented a room at my home early in the decade.
I was a minor investor in the company before
most people realized what talent the team has.
It was very satisfying to attend this ceremony after seeing
this journey through its course.
And for my first time visiting Washington DC, what an experience it was...
All pages and images on this site are copyright (c) Ian Kluft
unless explicitly indicated otherwise.
Permission is required to use my images, and usually available if you ask first.
