As you may have seen in a front page news article here at UM:

NASA plans to award $2 million to a team that can design, build and fly a mission that simulates a lunar takeoff and landing..."We're confident the competition will stimulate the development of the kinds of rockets and landing systems that NASA needs to return to the moon..." said NASA's associate administrator Shana Dale. To clinch the prize, a team will have to build a vehicle that can launch vertically, hover in mid-air, land vertically on a target 100 meters away and then repeat the feat.

Am I missing something here? Let's see if I've got this right:

- The Lunar Lander simulators, built before Apollo 11 (LLRV's and LLTV's) were unable to successfully perform simulated lunar operations on Earth, even when they last tried in 1968.

- NASA, one year later, (supposedly) had built a Lunar Module that performed flawlessly on lunar missions six times, from 1969 to 1972. The LEM's moved towards the moon, hovered and moved horizontally above the lunar surface, landed vertically on target, and launched vertically into lunar orbit.

- over 34 years later, NASA is holding a contest in hopes that someone can develop a Lunar Lander simulator that can do what the LLRV's couldn't do in 1968, but what the LEM's (supposedly) did do perfectly six times from 1969-72.

Again, the goal of the contest is "... the development of the kinds of...landing systems that NASA needs to return to the moon..."

NASA couldn't build a fully functioning Lunar Lander simulator in 1968, and it seems that they still can't build one 38 years later, despite a $15 billion annual budget and a platoon of research scientists.

What's next? Hmmm....

The Spirit of St. Louis Contest!

The Boeing Company is offering a $4 million prize to anyone that can create a working aeroplane capable of a one-way trans-Atlantic flight! The plane must be able to successfully take off from New York City, fly over the Atlantic Ocean, and safely land in Paris, France at a designated airstrip.

A spokesman for Boeing said the contest goal is "... the development of the kind of aeroplane that Boeing needs to once again be able to cross the Atlantic non-stop." The struggling Seattle company, as most are aware, hasn't successfully flown across the Atlantic for well over 35 years.

In the same article...

2004 - Pres. Bush reveals a daringly bold plan...

"NASA intends to return astronauts to the moon by 2020 and prepare for future human expeditions to Mars.", the Leader of the Free World proudly declared.

JFK declares in 1961: "We will safely land a man on the moon and back before the end of the decade!"

Am I missing something again? We will attempt to land a man on the moon in 16 years. But 37 years ago, we could land a man on the moon in 8 years?

Either NASA makes progress in reverse (in 50 years they will start testing V-1 rockets), or they are now trying to actually do what they had to fake 37 years ago. And they're realizing that making it really happen is a heck of a lot harder than staging it in a studio in Nevada.

lol You make a good point.
I find this a little odd to say the least..

That is false. Over 100 successful flights were made with the LLRV. The few crashes had causes unrelated to the stability of the craft.
http://www.clavius.org/techlltv.html



It is not that NASA can't build their own today. First their budget is controlled by Congress. They are told what to spend their money on. Second by offering a prize to the best design, they get multiple ideas and can pick and choose between them and have it cost them less than it would cost to design it themselves. It is really rather brilliant to have a contest that way.

Another link showing the multiple successes of the test craft.
http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/gallery/movie/LLR...EM-0019-05.html
with this quote


Keep in mind also that on Earth you have to deal with wind which makes the task more difficult than on the Moon. Still 198 successful flight is hardly a failure.

The LLRV was extremely unstable - anyone should be able to see that by looking at the few videos available online. But even if you disagree with that, the link you posted from Jay's website says..This was not because the vehicle was too unstable to control, or because Armstrong was a poor pilot. This is like driving your car down the freeway and having the steering wheel come off in your hands.

!!! Is that analogy actually any more reassuring? That's like getting your car back from the repair shop and the mechanic tells you..

"Well, I've got some good news and some bad news. Good news is that we fixed the alignment problem. The bad news is that the steering wheel is going to come off in your hands while you're cruising at 80 mph on the I-5!"




But the government has told them to spend their money on just that - landing men on the moon by 2020. That certainly includes building a Lunar Lander. And with a $15 billion dollar annual budget, they can certainly dedicate more than a paltry $4 million towards designing and building a working prototpye. That is so insignificant it's ridiculous - a mere 0.00025% of NASA's annual budget!!

The LLRV and the LLTV were still prototypes. They still fulfilled their designed purpose. But sometimes things still break. they got 198 successful flights out of the 1 LLRV alone. So you definitely can't say that NASA couldn't do it then.

As for their $15 Billion budget, that is not all going to landing on the moon. Their budget is spread out over many projects. They can't just arbitrarily reallocate funds as they please. It is still cheaper to have a contest for the design and may come up with some innovative ideas that they would not have had otherwise. Seriously, what is the problem with a contest like this? It gives more people a chance to get involved, could come up with a better design overall and is cheaper in the long run. Are you really complaining over that?

All I can find for "proof" that it worked on your video link is about 16 seconds showing a klugey contraption, huffing and puffing as it rises at about a 15 degree trajectory from vertical, until it gets up to 100 feet or so off the ground.

198 successful flights? I'd like to see this heap successfully complete at least one flight on video. I've only found one other video of this thing as it chugs up from the ground and drifts in the air for about 10 seconds...
http://observe.arc.nasa.gov/nasa/gallery/m...eronautics.html

Where are the complete videos of this giant bedframe that show at least a few of its 198 successful flights? I'd like to see it adeptly maneuver around horizontally and land at a pre-selected target point.

So now it has to look pretty too? It accomplished its intended function to train astronauts. What it looks like shouldn't matter. Its funny that you think it does.

If you want more videos then contact NASA. They should have plenty in their archive.

I've seen a lot of video footage of the Concorde crash in Paris. I have never seen a complete video of a sucessful trans-Atlantic flight by a Concorde. Using your "logic" the thousands of successful flights Concorde made must have been faked.

It's not that running contests are necessarily a "bad" idea for coming up with "inventions". But if you step back and look at the bigger picture, the inherent absurdities of the "contest" should be quite obvious to see.

If the technology existed in 1968 to create a Lunar Lander simulator that performed so brilliantly, why would NASA need to send out for budding inventors to try and create one from scratch 37 years later? That's why I included the Boeing parody in my post. Technological progress: we take previous ideas, machines and devices that already have been proven to work and then we make them better, or at least we try to.

But what about the Lunar Lander simulator? That is claimed to have worked perfectly 35 years ago. NASA wouldn't simply re-build them to original specs and use them, of course. But why can't NASA at least take the "proven" principles of the aerodynamic design, propulsion methods, electro-mechanical properties, and so on, from the LLRV (and afterwards for the LM), and refine them into a new and improved version? It makes no sense to me at all.

NASA is taking a very strange approach. Unlike virtually every other technological advancement - airplanes, automobiles, computers, telephones, radios, televisions, rockets, (most) spacecraft, wireless communication and control, refrigerators, and on and on and on, NASA is basically saying that they need to start from scratch!

Of course it has to look pretty! That should be priority number one!!

Seriously, though - it matters not in the least what it looks like (even as hokey as the LLRV!). As long as it does what it's meant to do, it can look like a giant pile of festering dung!

But I will try to locate more videos of it - at least one that shows it moving laterally and landing.

LOL! The Concorde flights were all faked! How can you be so naive?

The LLRV flights were all able to be filmed from start to finish since they only moved within a small area. So they should certainly have footage of it.

Hey Turb, how are you?!?!

Listen, there are a bunch of films of the LLRV and LLTV in flight. It may be kind of hard to find them, but there were a bunch of training flights done with these things, all the way through Apollo 17.

This vehicle was something that NASA hierarchy wanted to scrap, but which the astronauts insisted upon because each man who actually landed a LM on the moon said that it was a huge help in preparation, despite the risks that were involved.

This contraption was essentially "suspended" by fixed jets that provided 5/6 the weight of the vehicle in thrust. These were constant jets that ran all the time. The control system included jets for allowing the vehicle to rise, and another system for allowing the vehicle to maneuver in pitch, yaw and roll. It was rather complicated, and sometimes balky.

The idea was to simulate the LM handling characteristics during the final phase of the landing approach (from 500 feet above the surface to landing). The typical profile was to take the thing up to 500 feet, and then set up a lateral velocity and execute the landing profile from that point. A couple of incidents (Neil Armstrong's May 1968 bail out being one of them) caused NASA management to consider scrapping the program for safety reasons. But after Apollo 11, and Neil's comments about how well it did in fact simulate that final phase's handling characteristics, the astronauts insisted on keeping it in their training regimen.

Good luck on digging up some videos of this contraption!

Hi, MID! I'm doing well, thanks. Hope that you and yours are equally fine.

Thanks for the info. Since it comes from a very reliable and honest source (you) that these videos do exist, I will try and dig them up from some local venues.

I'd like your opinion on why NASA is taking the "Contest" approach to this craft.

I do understand the potential benefits - high return for relatively low investment. There is always the possibility that a budding inventor(s) will come up with a fantastic machine that works. Looking at it solely within that context, it seems to be quite a good idea.

But what I do not understand is why NASA does not simply continue to refine the original LLRV and LLTV prototypes. Since it had a very high success rate (198 flights for one LLRV) even with 37 year old technology and materials, etc. this route would make much more sense than relying on outside sources who are working from scratch.

Speaking from my 20 years of personal experience working in the OEM medical device industry (I don't know if you may have a similar background) - beta protoypes are revised, expanded, enhanced and refined from the working prototypes.
There is only a very minute chance that once a working prototype has been developed to the point of beta testing that it will have to be scrapped and re-designed from scratch. Basically, the prototype would have to be either completely unreliable, or other factors (such as safety) come into play that are so significant that they cannot be resolved without a complete re-design and fabrication.

When NASA says, "We're confident the competition will stimulate the development of the kinds of rockets and landing systems that NASA needs to return to the moon...", it sounds like a desperate plea for help. It's as if they can't land men on the moon unless completely new machines are designed and created from the ground up, through the help and ingenuity of the public and corporate sectors.

Basically, if you already have (or had) built something that works, why would you need to build another, different one from nothing? To borrow from the adage - it appears as if NASA is trying to re-invent the wheel.

Anyway, I'd appreciate your take on this....

Cheers.

Hey Turb...

Just to let you know, I've been a bit tied up for a couple days, but I will give you my take on this!

Guaranteed, my friend.

I'll be back.

I hope you don't mind if I have a crack at giving my take on this turbonium, although I'm not quite as knowledgable or elequant as MID.

Firstly this challenge is not to build a replacement for the LLRV and LLTV prototypes.

From the NASA Centennial Challenge site:



You are right in saying that NASA needs "completely new machines that are designed and created from the ground up". The Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) last flew in 1972. The technology was from the mid 1960s. There has been no continuous improvement and upgrading to the LEM, it was just binned. It is just not sensible to dig out designs that are that close to 40 years old and rebuild the LEM, and so a new lander is needed.

To give an analogy: if you wanted to win the Indy 500 you would not get hold of the blue prints for the 1972 winner and then try to upgrade it to 2006 standards. You would start from scratch.

NASA gives the reason that it is going down the prize route thus:



NASA has been inspired by some of the innovative solutions that the X-Prize generated. Many of the competetors for that prize suggested very non-standard ideas for a re-usable sub-orbital spacecraft.

In any large organisation people tend to become a bit institutionalised. They tend to start thinking along similar lines, it's human nature to follow the crowd, I am sure NASA is no different. By openning up this Challenge (and several others) to outsiders they are far more likely to see designs which are the results of "thinking outside the box".

Personally I think this is a good idea from NASA, $2 million is a small sum these days for R&D work (and they don't have to pay out if there are no suitable designs).

Link: NASA's Centennial Challenges

No, I don't mind your take on the issue, Waspie. Perhaps I should describe the problem more precisely. The LLRV / LLTV / LM are based on what are (at least claimed to be) proven principles of design and construction for a pioneering method of aerodynamic flight. The desired capabilites for the new Lunar Lander are precisely the same as what the LM could do in 1969.

To put that in the context of your analogy: you would have the best chance of winning the Indy 500 if you improve on the design and engineering principles of a previous Indy car. But if that means the only car (of any type, race or street) previously built was from the 1972 Indy, you would certainly want to dust off the blueprints and work from there. Taking the "ground up" route means you first have to invent a working automobile, period! To wit, a car that works without the use of any previously successful automotive technology and principles as your base point.

Indy cars of today are refinements of previous race cars. Automotive technology (like any other) is based on the progression of earlier designs and creations. The next car after the Model T wasn't a 200+ mph Lamborghini Diablo. It evolved from it, however, after many generations of progressively advanced cars.

So, when looking at creating the new Lunar Lander, we would want to use whatever principles of function, design and engineering in (space)crafts of similarly unique purpose have already been established, and proven to work previously. The problem is that the aerospace industry only has the Apollo era spacecraft to work with.

We have a big time gap between the LM of 1969 and today. Technology has soared since that time in virtually every field of science, engineering, etc. But the LM technology hasn't been built on. The principles of function and design are (supposedly) sound, however.

Again, I don't say that fresh ideas "outside the box" are a bad thing to seek out. But if you already have a gadget that worked perfectly well 40 years ago, it only seems to make sense to take something that already works and build a better version.
If something better comes from an outside inventor that takes a completely different angle, that's great. But it seems very foolish to "depend" on it when you already have something to work from.

Hi Turb...

My take on this discussion is based upon what the Lunar Landing Challenge Program is actually about, and some facts from the past.

I will start off by saying that from my perspective, it appears that this program is a somewhat logical extension to what NASA had done in the past with manned spaceflight engineeering programs.

Private industry was always involved, in the form of the solicitation of proposals from many different contractors nationwide. NASA says, "OK, look, this is what we need, and we'd like you guys to submit proposals regarding this thing." So, everybody gets to work and submits proposals, and when it's all said and done you have North American, Grumman, Boeing, McDonnell Douglas (now a part of Boeing...oddly enough), IBM, and about a million other private companies building the Apollo package in its entirety. It genuinely was an effort of national proportions.

And of course, that same thing is in process today, with Northrop Grumman, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin all working proposals for the CEV.

The contest is looking at something that is only at present conceptualized, necessary for future exploratory efforts, but which is not a part of the current plans or budget. It will be in the future, after a foothold is established on the moon.

They're looking for a ferry vehicle to be used on the moon...a shuttle of sorts, to move back and forth between the lunar surface and lunar orbit. This is a vehicle that is at the moment a dream, and a vehicle that won't be in operation likely for decades.

Now, the contest approach to this makes sense to me, because after Apollo and the functional end of manned space exploration (at least for the past 34 years), independent organizations began to think about a non-government commercial space flight capability, and some extraordinary aerospace innovations began to surface. Burt Rutan, who I consider very likely the most innovative and brilliant aerospace engineer on the planet, started whipping out craft capable of doing phenomenal things. Voyager, around the world non-stop without re-fueling, being only one of his remarkable design accomplishments.

Then you find a group of folks funding a competition to stimulate private space ventures, and Space Ship One is designed...by Rutan, and succeeds. NASA is watching this stuff for sure, and I'm certain the discussion was along the lines of..."This is fantastic stuff. There's little doubt that one of these groups will succeed in attaining private orbital flight one day. Why don't we tap into this pool for some long range stuff that we're going to need."

...I also have little doubt that Rutan will design the vehicle that accomplishes this.

Thus, the contest program for this long range idea, a lunar surface to orbit ferry vehicle. If someone can design a workable vehicle for this purpose, alot of design and development will be taken off of NASA's back, and they'll spend alot less money to get themselves something they can use. I think for certain that should such a vehicle win the prize, that NASA will take it, and tweak it, with the original manufacturer and design team, to make it perfect.

I think that's what this is about.

Regarding the active lunar project, it should be noted that NASA is in fact building upon known designs that have been proven. The NASA administrator has called the CEV/Lunar return program , "Apollo on steroids", and I think that's for good reason. The LM and CSM may have been shelved decades ago, but the design principals of these proven successful vehicles are in fact being built upon.

The CEV itself is based on the tried and true Apollo CM. Looks just like it, for the most part. The LV will be evolved from current Shuttle technology, including SRMs to assist the vehicle into earth orbit. The lander, conceptually, will be similar the the Apollo LM...a highly pumped up Apollo LM, mind you.

However, it's what's inside these vehicles that makes the difference. Today's technology is a million years ahead (Oh, alright, decades ahead) of what we had in the 1960s, despite the fact that that technology was cutting edge at the time.

These things are in fact pumped up versions of old craft that were proven. We're not taking a LM and building it up. We're taking the LM pricipals and using them to construct what may appear to be sinilar looking things, but actually quite different in technology and capability.

Now, the LLRV/LLTVs were innovative designs which were constructed for the express purpose of simulating the handling characteristics of the LM in a 1/6 G environment. They were not designed to be a lunar vehicle prototype. They simulated the last 500 feet of a lunar landing approach and the handling characteristics that a LM would exhibit in that environment. They were also balky, very complex, and sometimes dangerous. In fact, NASA management might well have scrapped them, but for the input of the astronauts who landed a LM on the moon, who said that the vehicle provided the best training possible. They insisted on keeping it and using it.

But it no longer exists, and there's really no need for it. We have a data base of actual performance measures that can be used to construct simulators that will make it seem like you're actually flying a lunar landing vehicle today...very much akin to the phenomenal class D aircraft simulators we have. When you're in one of these things, flying a jet, or perhaps a shuttle, for instance, it is hard to believe you're not actually flying the real thing.
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I think the challenge program is a logical thing, actually. It allows NASA to get on with the lunar landing mission planning and spacecraft development, while doing a little proactive and cost effective work on future vehicles.

I think they're using their resources very wisely.