I was able to attend the Northrup Grumman Lunar Lander Competition in Las Cruses, New Mexico Last week. It was good to see both completion of one Round Trip (90 second legs) flight profile, and to see a second team in the air with a FAA licensed flight! “TrueZer0” (TrueHero!) helped viewers understand that keeping a hovering rocket in flight is a lot harder than Armadillo makes it look!

Armadillo didn't exhaust their deep well of “bad luck”, but did put two adequate 90 second flights together to win $350,000. Two years of “Coming Close” has been frustrating for both Armadillo and viewers, but it also erased Armadillo's multi year head start, flying this type vehicle, and eliminates that as an excuse for not flying competitive vehicles. One other team – TrueZer0 - finally did!

Micro-Space fully intends to fly in future events, and can't conceive of any GLXP effort without NASA sized (Billion Dollar) funding succeeding on the Moon without successful lander tests on the Earth.

The 180 second hover duration is of course required for a Moon landing, but the 25 kilogram payload definitely is not needed to be a GLXP winner. I envision Lunar Lander competitions – beyond the NASA funded prizes – growing smaller in mass as well as emphasizing storable fuels (not LOX). A 100 pound system in LEO (a small fraction of a Falcon 1, or PSLV (India) launcher payload) could be orbited for $1 Million and land 10 pounds on the Moon. Given demonstrations of a reliable landing system (in New Mexico), the 20:1 Prize Payoff would be an interesting investment even without sponsorship. A steady ramp up of CubeSat successes is proving the feasibility of low mass space systems.