The field for the $2 million Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge is leaner than it was, with two teams dropping out of the rocket competition. The exit of Micro-Space and a mysterious unnamed group leaves seven teams still in the hunt - but there could be further spills and thrills between now and October's Wirefly X Prize Cup contest, says organizer Will Pomerantz. You don't have to look any further than the setback recently suffered by the Lunar Lander Challenge's front-runner to see that.
The Lunar Lander Challenge is one of the Centennial Challenges backed by NASA, which is putting up the $2 million in prize money. Teams will compete at the Oct. 27-28 X Prize Cup at New Mexico's Holloman Air Force Base to get their rocket-powered lunar lander prototypes from point A to point B and back again, in accordance with the contest rules.
Pomerantz, the X Prize Foundation's space projects director, is responsible for making sure all the teams follow the rules. One of those rules is that all the teams have to make themselves publicly known 60 days before the competition - and that meant the contest's mysterious ninth team had to reveal itself this week or withdraw.
"They decided it was in their best interest to withdraw from the competition altogether for this year," Pomerantz told me.
Colorado-based Micro-Space, a competitor in past X Prize rocket contests, also decided to pass up this year's faceoff. Micro-Space missed out on a mandatory meeting this month, forfeiting their bid, Pomerantz said. "They have a number of projects going on, and probably they just determined that the best plan for them was concentrating on those efforts, even if it meant they would be forgoing a chance to bring home a check," he said.
That leaves Acuity Technologies, Armadillo Aerospace, BonNova, Masten Space Systems, Paragon Labs, SpeedUp and Unreasonable Rocket still in the running.
"All of our seven teams are in pretty good positions," Pomerantz said. "That said, there's a lot of work to be done between now and October. They're all in a position where they need some things to go right and not a lot of things to go wrong."
Something did go wrong earlier this month for Texas-based Armadillo Aerospace, the only team to compete in last year's Lunar Lander Challenge and the widely acknowledged front-runner to win big bucks this year. One of their two rocket prototypes, Texel, was destroyed in a fiery crash during testing in Oklahoma.
Armadillo's John Carmack said the setback isn't a mortal blow: Texel's twin, Pixel, will vie for the challenge's top prize of $1 million - and the team plans to enter one of its new Module rocket ships in another, less ambitious competition level. But Pomerantz said Armadillo's setback illustrates how quickly fortunes can change. After all, this is rocket science.
If all seven teams make it to October's finals, the show will be positively hopping at Holloman. X Prize Cup spectators could find themselves watching a two-ring rocket circus.
"We've designed for two pad zones, so you can have two competitors with heavily concurrent operations," Pomerantz explained. "While one team is getting ready to pump their gas, the other team is flying - and once the first team touches down, the next team is ready to go."
For more on the buildup to the X Prize Cup, check out Space Prizes, the Spaceports blog and of course RLV and Space Transport News. My friend over at Space.com, Leonard David, is also keeping track of developments on his LiveScience blog.
Update for 1:30 a.m. ET Aug. 31: The X Prize Foundation has scheduled a Sept. 6 briefing on its Automotive X Prize program, which aims to promote more efficient road vehicles (getting the equivalent of 100 miles per gallon). Among those due to speak is Malcolm Bricklin, the auto-entrepreneur who helped bring the Subaru and the Yugo to America and is now planning to bring plug-in hybrid electric vehicles to market by 2010 through his Visionary Vehicles venture.
The folks behind the Automotive X Prize have signed up 31 teams for the contest and are looking for sponsors to put up the prize money. Is Bricklin signing on? Will it turn out to be the Visionary Vehicles Automotive X Prize or somesuch? Stay tuned for updates next week.
