Odyssey Moon WINS the "Odyssey Moon Lunar X Prize"

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after the news about a further help of an ESA official (then ESA too) I've changed the thread's title from "might Odissey-Moon team be The Chosen?" to "Odyssey Moon WINS the Odyssey Moon Lunar X Prize"

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Maybe Odyssey is the first and others will do likewise, I cant blame them for being better at getting help than other teams. Now that they have shown it is possible to partner with NASA others may do the same. Like I said it will be good that someone wins the prize. Theres a long way to go still and I wouldn't right off the other teams just yet.



Aside from the fact that I'm not sure there are any teams in those countries I think you underestimate their capabilities, ITAR would probably prevent a US team working with them though.

Odyssy Moon is an Isle of man team and therefore has to negotiate ITAR.

I don't have a copy of the current rules, but the rules for the original X Prize stated that other teams had to have equal access to government resources.

If other teams can't get the same agreement with ESA/NASA that Odyssey Moon has then they will be disqualified. If other teams can get the same terms then who cares?

Odyssey Moon CAN hire NASA/ESA engineers and CAN do this kind of agreements with NASA since Odyssey Moon has the money to do that... and Odyssey Moon finds the money it needs since it's (clearly) supported (and, maybe, funded...) by Google

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assuming all teams will get the same agreement with NASA and ESA to take advantage of their know-how and hardware... can we still call it an X Prize or we must call it a NASA/ESA/government project?

where's the difference between Spirit/Opportunity and the GLXP rovers if 90% of the know-how and technology used come from NASA ad ESA?

or is it just a sort of "GLXP government bailout"?

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in this rendereing, you can see that Odyssey Moon has already adapted its lunar lander design to the (US taxpayer's hundreds million$$$ funded, NASA engineers developed and ready to use, but nearly FREE for Odyssey Moon) standard lander design:



from this blog: http://thelaunchpad.xprize.org/2008/11/ ... ander.html

in the mean time, ALL other "sparring partners" OMLXP teams STILL play with their "Christmas toys' RC-model lunar landers"...

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Odyssey Moon doesn't have an advantage.

What are they using for their launcher?
What are they using for their Lunar Bus?
What are they using for their rover?
What are they using for their LANDER?
None of these things are built or even prototyped yet for Odyssey.

Read carefully:
http://www.odysseymoon.com/index.php/co ... opmen.html
'Lunar Lander Prototype – Odyssey Moon’s “MoonOne” lunar lander will be adapted from a small spacecraft system under development at NASA Ames called the Common Spacecraft Bus, which uses an innovative modular design adaptable to a variety of mission configurations as either an orbiter or a lander. Under the partnering agreement, NASA will share technical data and provide engineering support to Odyssey Moon Ventures. NASA also will share data from the Hover Test Vehicle, an engineering prototype of the Common Spacecraft Bus developed at Ames to evaluate hardware and software systems through rapid prototyping and ground-based testing. Lunar Lander Prototype – The Odyssey Moon “M-1” lunar lander will be adapted from the Common Spacecraft Bus developed at the NASA Ames Research Center.'

Adapted from...
This means NASA will give them data, and they still have to build the lander. They don't get a rover. They get data. They have to build their own lander, something that took Armadillo and others years to do. They haven't posted one test, or prototype. They're no further than any other team - and actually - they're all behind ARCA, the only team to post tests of propulsion hardware.

That's one opinion, I suggest you do a little research into Next Giant Leap. Existing commercial companies have already placed a tremendous amount of confidence (and money) on the Falcon 1e, companies that demand a reliable launch vehicle. NGL is confident the F-1e will is available for our mission timing. I wish ARCA all the best, but don't underestimate the challenge of getting sufficient mission mass to LEO, let alone from LEO to the lunar surface.

MikeJ

Companies have placed money on the Falcon 1e- to get into SatCom earth orbit. The moon is not some trivial next step. Does NGL have a lander prototype? It took Armadillo how long to get a lander at simulated delta V for a moon mission? It takes years to get this stuff right, and no one has any sort of significant hardware or even integration tests except ARCA. I actually don't think ARCA can do this, but at least they're trying to get in space right now.

Way, way too much time and effort being spent on rovers and lots of 'we hope's' on everything else. I'm not underestimating the difficulty of trying to raise money to build these programs, I just think many teams aren't being realistic about what needs to be done.

I think the prize itself was designed wrong and could have helped prevent this by chopping up prize money into demonstrated technology and proof of concepts. Stage 1 - reach 100km, win 250,000. Stage 2 - reach 100km from the moon, win 2 million. Stage 3 - soft land on the moon, win 10 million. Stage 4 - perform all mission objectives, win 15 million- etc.

This way you can demonstrate for potential sponsors and investors that you have a concrete shot at this competition. It would promote actual space program and industry development instead of just small rover development- something far less important at this point of the private space industry.

I can't comment on the design of the prize, but I agree milestone payments would be helpful. I was very glad to see the recent NASA Innovative Lunar Demonstrations Data (ILDD) Broad Area Announcement. NGL will certainly submit a proposal and we expect to be very competitive. The CLINs in the ILDD will provide some milestone payments for the data we provide which, of course, helps.
As far as prototypes, we are currently testing our GN&C on a cold gas testbed.
A good audio interview about our GN&C work is online here:
http://evadot.com/2010/07/29/evadot-pod ... giantleap/

MikeJ

They are spending time on rovers because others are spending time on launch vehicles. No one entry would be able to build a launcher AND rover. People are building launchers, so they can be used. Yes, its a 'hope', but it's the only hope for those on limited budgets. In addition, you get more bang for your buck doing the rover. You can build and test for massively lower costs than building a launcher, so more teams can enter.

I've not seen anything from Arca recently - so not sure if their tethered rocket actually worked/will work (most people thing it won't). Have they done anything recently?

Launch vehicles can be purchased (not cheap).
Rovers are "easy" to prototype (ie "cheap").
The hard part, that few teams seem to be working on, is TLI, LOI, DOI, Landing.
TLI (Trans Lunar Injection) might be available from the launch vehicle upper stage, but that requires a larger (more expensive) launch vehicle.
LOI (Lunar Orbit Insertion)& DOI (Descent Orbit Insertion) are not required if you are not concerned with landing position accuracy (we are).
Landing safely requires a combination of robust GN&C and hazard detection.
Getting from LEO to the lunar surface safely is the hard part and that's what we're focused on.

I'd wholeheartedly agree with this statement. I'd also point out communications will be extremely difficult as well. NASA rarely got this completely right, with their (then) nearly unlimited budget. They did it with a lunar orbiter, and a deep space network on Earth (among other things). Even then they had problems, sometimes major.

I guess you could try to get around this with autonomous rovers and landers, but if you're trying to send instructions or fixes, yikes.

Yes, comm is certainly a tricky piece of the puzzle. There are better resources in place now (vs the Surveyor days) but like everything else, they aren't cheap. We plan to USN http://www.uspacenetwork.com/0009.html

I'm sure most of you saw this - but http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/lunar/ ... rol-center its a great example of important, real, milestone hardware tests. Would love to see more teams get this far!