Son of Apollo

This Air&Space/Smithsonian article about NASA’s new lunar lander design helps explain why Lunar Lander Challenge is so challenging.

If you think designing LSAM is going to be tricky, remember, the people at NASA only have to worry about landing and taking off from the Moon, and risking the lives of a few government employees at a time.

Teams competing for Lunar Lander Challenge are being held to higher standards, because Lunar Lander Challenge isn’t only about Moon travel. It says right there in the prize description that its goal is to develop the operational capacity of quick turnaround vertical take-off, vertical landing vehicles for the personal spaceflight industry and other launch markets — the kind of space travel you can do from Earth, and the kind that will tend to draw a crowd.