The team of Paul and Paul Bread completed a peroxide powered flight of their Level 1 vehicle, the Blue Ball, Saturday afternoon, but ran out of propellent before completing the full 90 seconds of flight time. The resulting hard landing damaged the vehicle, thereby ending their Level 1 efforts. They do plan to fly their larger Level 2 vehicle, the Silver Ball, on Sunday, Nov 1st.
Unreasonable’s failure to fully qualify for Level 1 guarantees that Masten Space Systems will win the second place prize of $150,000 for the Level 1 Challenge. MSS has also qualified for the $1 million Level 2 challenge, and is currently leading Armadillo Aerospace in the “closest to the mark” requirement for Level 2. If Unreasonable can successfully qualify for Level 2 and their average distance for the two flights is better than Armadillo’s, they would bump the Texan team from the Level 2 prize money. If their distance is better than Masten’s, they could walk away with $1 million for their three years of effort.