New Mexico was once again the site of interstellar shenanigans (I'm looking at you, Roswell) as the X Prize Cup rocket expo ended with Armadillo Aerospace's entry into the 2007 Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge exploding in spectacular fashion.
In a last-ditch attempt to win the prize, Armadillo took the engine out of another, more powerful rocket called Pixel – which it had planned to fly in the more difficult level 2 challenge – and used it as a replacement for Module 1's cracked engine.But the engine exploded in a fireball at launch, producing a bang that was audible from more than a kilometre away. Armadillo declared an emergency and fire trucks rushed to the scene, but the fire quickly burned itself out without any intervention or injuries.
Nine teams entered, but only Armadillo Aerospace was actually prepared to compete in time to win the prize. Armadillo was founded by John Carmack, creator of iD Software and the games Doom and Quake.
Deep down, I truly hoped that the future of NASA's landers might be in the hands of a man who was responsible for me losing entire weeks of my junior high life to shooting demons in hell. But alas, it was not to be, and while Armadillo had several successful initial flights, they couldn't seem to replicate the flights to claim the $1.35 million in prize money.
"This weekend, we've had more problems than we've had in the last six months. We know what went wrong, but not why," said Armadillo vice president Neil Milburn. "We know we'll be back again, and we'll nail it next time."
But all is not lost for Armadillo:
NASA has expressed interest in potentially using Armadillo vehicles on Earth to test an automatic hazard avoidance system for its future lunar lander, which would use sensors and software to detect and avoid threats like craters and boulders.
OK, so it's not exactly a compliment to say "we'd like to use your failure of a lander in future test crashes, which it seems to be great for." But maybe this will lead to more noteworthy contributions from Armadillo for NASA in the future — like a BFG 9000. That'd be kickass.
Mock lunar lander contest ends with a bang (ABC News/New Scientist)
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