Congratulations and Thanks

To Armadillo, Masten Space Systems, Unreasonable Rocket, The X Prize foundation and all the people in these organization and others! I was watching the webcasts a large portion of the weekend.

A month ago, only one team, Armadillo, had ever done even a lunar lander challenge flight from one pad to another. And now there are three. Never mind multiple flights by Masten, both L1 and L2!

The future might be markedly different from present. How about something like testing space telescope instruments in 100+ km VTVL or HTHL flights? Reliable and routine access to space, even though at start for only a brief time in hops, could change everything. You would get everything back intact. Unlike with sounding rockets where recovery seems often so uncertain…

There are some aerodynamic issues still though that I’ve been expounding on for a long time.

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Lunar Lander Challenge 2009

Armadillo finally won L2 already.

Masten and Unreasonable are still flying for second place I think (I’m not 100% clear on the rules) today!

Spacetransportnews is the place to watch all this. (Or it has the links collected.)

It’s historical in a sense. These rockets will serve as the basis for reusable sounding rockets, possibly high altitude tourist vehicles and later orbital system lower or upper stages. When the operations are routine and landings safe, the cost per flight goes down orders of magnitude, compared to ordinary rockets.

A new era for rocketry is dawning.

 

Update: This is the twitter account to follow: http://twitter.com/mastenspace

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