Leading prize contender Armadillo lost their test vehicle. No problemo as they have others in their modular series.

The front-runner for a $2 million NASA competition to build mock lunar landers has lost one of its two main vehicles in a fiery crash. The company, Armadillo Aerospace, says it will enter a smaller vehicle instead, but outsiders say the upset will level the playing field and add suspense to the upcoming contest.
The Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge is designed to spur innovation in future vehicles that could take off and land vertically on the Moon. The event will be held on 27 and 28 October at the X Prize Cup in Alamogordo, New Mexico, US.

Armadillo has two main rockets, twin vehicles called Pixel and Texel. It plans to enter its better-tested Pixel into the more difficult level 2 contest, which carries a top prize of $1 million, and it had planned to enter Texel into the $350,000 level 1 contest.
But on Saturday, Texel burst into flames after it crash landed during a test.

During the test, Texel lifted off and hovered without incident, then descended again and touched the ground. But it then rose again unexpectedly and began accelerating upward. "Crap, it's going to fly into the crane, I need to kill it," Carmack recalls thinking.
He hit the manual shutdown switch, turning off the vehicle's engine in mid-flight. Texel was about 6 metres above the ground and fell like a stone. One of its fuel tanks broke open when it hit the ground, spewing fuel that ignited and engulfed the vehicle in flames. "It made a fireball that would make any Hollywood movie proud," Carmack says.

Rockets flying, blowing up, what more fun could a guy have?