John Carmack has a fascinating (at least to me) description of the lead up to the XPC and what happened there. And some thoughts about the future.

I’m not at all sure that holding contests like this as the main event of a show like the X-Prize Cup is a good idea. It came out well this year, but it was all just one mishap in testing away from not having any real meat in the show. If you know for sure that you have a real field of contestants it will probably work out, but if the field is “probably one”, it gets real dicey. My official bet is that there will be no more than one other competitor next year, and it may well just be Armadillo again. Masten is the closest, but they still need to fly their very first test vehicle, then design, build, and test a more potent vehicle to even be able to compete for the level 1 prize. We spent six months and about a quarter million dollars in direct pursuit of this, and we had a running start at it. For many things, time can be traded for money, but there are limits. One hundred thousand dollars cash out of pocket is probably the minimum amount that someone needs to be prepared to spend to be in the game next year, and that would be for a single vehicle, relying on luck to not have any mishaps.

And I want to, like the others he mentioned, extend my own congratulations. As I said, it was a good show, even if he didn't get any prize money.

Really a question for John, or to the other readers, who might have an idea...

J.C.: "We spent six months and about a quarter million dollars in direct pursuit of this, and we had a running start at it. "

Working part-time, if I recall correctly? Any idea for what it totals to? three/four months full time? And a very small work force, eight guys?
So, it would mean something like 24-32 man-months?

And for the figure of 1/4 million there were no salaries...? And probably some of the money were spent on onetime purchases (new mill, etc.)...

John

Great post. You point out the time factor. I too think that this was a problem with this year's competition. I really don't think that it was fair to any entrant to have the first competition within a few months (6 months I think) of the announcement of the prize. I know that you have been working at a certain pace for quite a while and I can imagine that you had to accelerate your efforts in order to be ready yourself. However, the 6 month timeframe effectively made it to where you were the only possible entrant for the prize.

We looked at possibly competing and decided that it would be patently impossible to put together a competitive system, or even a functioning one, in only six months. This was a disservice to your effort as well as to any and all competitors. It is going to be fairly difficult to do this in less than one year as well. For the integrity of the competition, it would have been much better to not have the lander competition this year and put it off until next year and give everyone time to put together something that would bring excitement as well as a true competition.

We watched you there and feel your pain!

Dennis

So alt.spacers can shoot their mouths off about "shaming" NASA
and their contractors (See Rand's "OK, Not So Good" post below),
then fall on their collective face, but it's still a "good show"?

At least I havent heard anyone claim that that NASA F-18 shot Pixel down. Maybe there's hope.

So alt.spacers can shoot their mouths off about "shaming" NASA and their contractors (See Rand's "OK, Not So Good" post below), then fall on their collective face, but it's still a "good show"?

Yes.

At least I havent heard anyone claim that that NASA F-18 shot Pixel down.

On what planet would you have expected to do so?

My actual comment was that the value NASA would receive from giving the prize would come from shaming their contractors. So far, they haven't spent anything, since other sponsors paid for the management of the prize. I still contend that if they do give away the $1.35M, it will bring back more than that in rewards from changing perspectives on the difficulty of the task.

John Carmack

So alt.spacers can shoot their mouths off about "shaming" NASA
and their contractors (See Rand's "OK, Not So Good" post below),
then fall on their collective face, but it's still a "good show"?

Let's at least attempt to be accurate here, Greg. Pixel didn't fall over on it's face. I'm not sure exactly what part of Pixel could be said to correspond to a face anyway. But as long as we're attempting anthropomorphism I'd say Pixel more like broke both ankles and fell over on one shoulder.

Not the most glorious outcome imaginable, to be sure, but Pixel did fly twice. As I recall, the Wright Brothers finished their first day of public flight testing with a pranged machine too. All in all, I'd call the Armadillo effort pretty good, espcially given that the sunk cost to date would barely cover the business card and letterhead budget of a typical NASA effort.

The propulsion and guidance performance that
this year's attempts demonstrated was already
significant. It's impressive that someone made
it to the starting line and flew an attempt this
year... someone will claim the prizes soon
enough: I have no doubt that the sort of issues
that arose with the Pixel flights can be
overcome.

I'd hardly describe the overall outcome
as anything like the total failure implied by
such rhetoric as "fell flat on its face".

For all of those who took exception to my "rhetoric", read Jeffery
Bell's article posted today (27 Oct) on spacedaily.com. That will really annoy you.

1) dave w: Even if Pixel had won the prize, it was still just an
entropy producing stunt.

2) My original comment was directed more at Rand's blogging than
John Carmack's original quote. Had a BoLockGrum Co effort reached a similar
fate, Rand (I suspect) would have gone on about how old.space
is incompetent, ect, ect.

read Jeffery Bell's article posted today (27 Oct) on spacedaily.com

Why would I ever bother to waste precious minutes of my life reading anything that Jeffrey Bell ever writes?

Had a BoLockGrum Co effort reached a similar
fate, Rand (I suspect) would have gone on about how old.space is incompetent, ect, ect. [sic]

You'd be wrong. Unless they spent millions on it. Which they might have.

Well, I went and looked up the Spacedaily article (before seeing Rand's warning - is everything Bell writes so sour in tone?)... given that I went and read the thing, however, I figure I might as well bounce this comment off the point he made in his opening paragraphs: he compares the XPC exhibitors with the various rocket car, plane, etc. projects of 1920's Germany, before the demand for a military application forked off the government-secret "V2" development that lead, through a near-linear path of design configurations, to the American ICBM/Saturn/Shuttle lineage of expendable and semi-expendable vehicles.

If the present alt.space efforts are more reminiscent of the "other stuff" from an earlier era than of the Vehicles That Reached The Moon, I consider that a good sign... it looks like alt.space is picking up from where the ballistic missile branch of the solution space tree got forked off.

-dave w