Briefs: A race to the Moon; More about the ISDC

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a NASA Lunar Lander prize?

maybe, something like this (nov. 2005) proposal...

http://www.gaetanomarano.it...

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Posted by gm at 06/03/07 10:00:52

Excellent editorial by the Houston Chronicle. Instead of spending $20 million per year on a MSFC lunar robootic program office with nothing to manage, Congress should redirect that money to Centennial Challenges for a real lunar lander prize and other prizes that will actually make achievements and progress in space exploration and supporting technologies.

Posted by anonymous.space at 06/03/07 11:06:07

Mr. Whittington had me agreeing with him until he suggested having the competition managed out of the NASA MSFC office.

The whole point of CC these days is the concept of Allied Organizations that actually manage the competition at no cost to the program.

There's nothing but overhead if NASA turns into the administrative arm of these competitions (which was the experience of the DARPA Grand Challenges, both I and II).

Ken

Posted by Ken Davidian at 06/03/07 11:10:19

Personally, I think MSFC should be closed altogether. It started as a pork barrel payoff to Alabama to get their Senators on board, and that's what it is today. Projects at other, far more deserving centers around the country get cancelled if they jeopardize things being done at MSFC, and of course that's a higher priority because of Shelby's stranglehold on the NASA budget. Ames had been working on lunar microlanders, but MSFC got the project whacked because it would have made their own bloated lander project obsolete. We should all be a little tired of Richard Shelby acting like the Town Boss of NASA.

Posted by Alabamarama at 06/03/07 11:29:54

I missed Mr. Davidian's point on my first reading of the Houston editorial. Mr. Davidian is correct. It makes no sense to manage a $50 million lunar robotic landing prize with a $20 million per year lunar robotics program office (at MSFC or elsewhere).

The X PRIZE Foundation, Planetary Society, National Space Society, Spaceward Foundation, or another non-profit is the logical, most efficient, and most effective manager of such a prize competition.

Posted by anonymous.space at 06/03/07 16:57:10

I had the same kind of thought about Mark's proposal that Ken did. However, in the scenario that he outlined, the office is going to be kept open anyway, but will not be funded well enough to do a Lunar mission the usual management style. That arrangement could certainly change in various ways, but let's take it for granted that it's a likely and undesirable outcome.

Is there some kind of compromise Centennial Challenge that could usefully be arranged, where commercial space interests and MSFC interests can work together for their mutual benefit as well as NASA's and the taxpayers'?

For example, have the MSFC office manage, let's say, an instrument to be used by the lander, or the ground data processing elements, or the science teams, or the communication with the lander, or a little lunar rover payload, or some combination or variation on the above.

Have the Centennial Challenges program manage the rest of the program. Use the same kind of Allied Organization approach that is currently used for Centennial Challenges for this part of the mission. I would expect tremendous interest on the part of Allied Organizations.

Depending on the funding available (Mark suggests the office currently gets $20M but currently has other assignments, and also suggests a $50M prize), there might or might not be enough to reasonably expect the Challenge will work, even with a very small payload. In this event, you could hope that the competitors pull it off anyway (eg: by getting additional revenue for the mission somehow, etc).

Alternately, you could scale back the mission so it isn't an actual Lunar mission, but rather a more ambitious "Phase II" of the current Lunar Lander Challenge that flies on Earth, but still is required to take measurements (eg: of the upper atmosphere from a great height, or remote sensing of the Earth's surface like a Lunar Orbiter would do for the Moon) using an MSFC instrument.

Ray (Space Prizes blog)

Posted by Ray at 06/03/07 17:13:53

"For example, have the MSFC office manage, let's say, an instrument to be used by the lander, or the ground data processing elements, or the science teams, or the communication with the lander, or a little lunar rover payload, or some combination or variation on the above."

Possibly, but NASA would need to provide working copies of those payloads to all competitors (or at least finalists) in the competition. That may not be budgetarily possible.
If only one payload can be afforded for only one competitor, then it's just a downselect for a pay-on-performance contract. Even a downselect to a handful of competitors is not terribly desirable as it limits the possibility of a winner or desirable technology emerging out of left field (which is one of the major advantages of a prize competition).

And the conditions for winning the competition could not be predicated on that government-furnished payload working. Regardless of whether it was actually the cause or not, a competitor whose mission failed technically could always blame the government payload, not their spacecraft, launch vehicle, operations, etc.

Posted by anonymous.space at 06/03/07 20:44:59

There are some possible ways around the issue of multiple MSFC hardware versions needed.

1. Assign them tasks that aren't lunar hardware (ground systems, science team management, etc).

2. Make the payload cheap and useful in multiple copies (would a lunar penetrator for seismology fit the bill)?

3. Require a "Phase 1" challenge prize to establish credibility of the team.

4. Require some kind of money placed by the team (partial insurance?)

5. Compromise - maybe only 3 versions of MSFC hardware made - 1st 3 "credible" competitors get to try it.

Posted by Ray at 06/04/07 05:03:46

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