We're challenging the world's top rocketry teams to build self-landing rockets!
The Collegiate Propulsive Lander Challenge (CPLC) is awarding $15k - $50k prizes to student teams who throttle, hover and hop substantial liquid or hybrid rockets over the next 4 years. The CPLC consists of 5 milestones, and is built as a collaborative challenge as opposed to a "competition". Each milestone will be funded for 3 separate teams to achieve it (ie, the first 3 teams who pass the Throttleable Engine milestone will receive $15k each) -- there will be a total of 15 awards with $390k to be distributed.
- Thrust Vector Controlled Hotfire ($15k)
- Throttleable Engine Hotfire ($15k)
- 10s Propulsive Hover ($25k)
- 10m Drop Landing ($25k)
- 50m Hop ($50k)
We're launching this crowdfunding campaign to help secure the funding behind these prizes and launch the challenge in Fall 2022.
There are already 14 top teams from universities around the world signed on to pursue the challenge, and they've collectively performed more than 60 successful liquid & hybrid engine hotfires over the past 4 years, ranging from 500-2,200+ lbf of thrust.
The CPLC is working with great partners like Friends of Amateur Rocketry (FAR), The Spaceport Company and Aegis Trade Law to support teams pursuing this challenge. The founding team & governing board consists of Patrick Finley, Connor Ford & Maanit Madan. We also have an awesome advisory board, including the manager & author of the $2m Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge XPRIZE, two previous VPs at Masten Space Systems, the previous Chief Impact Officer at the XPRIZE, and more -- Will Pomerantz, Michael Mealling, Tom Marotta, Zenia Tata, Colin Ake, Joe Barnard, Mark Holthaus, Rahul Saxena & Angad Daryani.