NASA Centennial ChallengesSFF Proposals 2009

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Lunar Lander Competition II

A follow-on to the recent highly successful Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Competition, which was based on an idea originally suggested by Foundationers at theNASA Centennial Challenges Workshop back in 2004. The new Lunar Lander Competition would be closer in scale to the original concept submitted in 2004.The format of this competition would be similar to the Ansari X-Prize. To win the prize, ateam would need to demonstrate a reusable VTVL vehicle, carrying one pilot and anadditional crew member (or ballast), achieving a suborbital trajectory reaching spacewith a delta-vee representative of that required by a lunar lander.The goal of the LLC II is to encourage the development of viable VTVL landers bymultiple companies. For this reason, and because VTVL suborbital vehicles arearguably harder than the original X-Prize goal, a larger purse is recommended ($20-30million). Second- and third-place prizes are also recommended.

Low-Cost Spacesuit Prize

This concept was also submitted by a Foundationer at the first Centennial ChallengesWorkshop. It was selected by NASA and later included in a White House NASA budgetrequest but not yet funded.This prize would encourage the development of low-cost spacesuits, which are vital tothe safety of the emerging suborbital spaceflight industry, and produce a newgeneration of experienced spacesuit suppliers that NASA can turn to for thedevelopment of more advanced exploration suits. An annual prize of $500,000 isrecommended. To avoid the problem of auditing books to determine the cost of aspacesuit, the competition would instead measure the number of personnel-hoursneeded to assembly a suit from standard, commercially available parts and materials.(This is a realistic proxy because labor is the largest component in spacesuit costs.) Thefirst Low-Cost Spacesuit Prize would be awarded to the first team to build a working suitin a time that meets a minimum qualifying mark set by the judges. After that, the prizewould be awarded annually to the team that beats the previous year's score and thecurrent year's competitors.