Zero Science

Map reading secrets may yield $10m, innovations - Nashua Telegraph.com (link from X PRIZE Foundation news ticker) - covers Genomics X PRIZE Team ZS Genetics, which works with the Hubbard Center for Genome Studies at the University of New Hampshire. It explains the "reads" that ZS's system does during genome sequencing. It sounds like going for the prize is right for ZS Genetics because it aligns well with what they need to do to make their product, and it works well for UNH, too, because winning the prize would be good press and "cool", which is important if you want to attract good students and researchers.

Mixing Together Some Lunar Prizes

Here are some quick updates related to 3 lunar prizes:

Heading for the Moon - The Google Lunar Xprize - Mark Posen from RPC Telecommunications announces that RPC Telecommunications has joined up with "InterPlanetary Ventures", a multinational team being formed to enter the Lunar Xprize challenge. Personally, I'm taking on the task of looking after the regulatory and licencing aspects for the IPV team, and will also work with the communications team in designing the Earth-moon communications links.

Interplanetary Ventures hasn't officially registered, but they haven't kept their intentions secret.

Some serious thinking at the Southern California Selene Group - SCSG on GLXP Teams site (link and comments from RLV News) - they are having doubts about launch costs rising, getting a sponsor, and the manned spaceflight vision of the X PRIZE Foundation. On the last point, I'd say what's important is what the team wants to accomplish, not the XPF's spaceflight vision. If they're interested in making robotic missions to moons more feasible (a goal I'm quite sympathetic to, being mainly interested in robotic missions myself unless/until human spaceflight gets a major enabling overhaul such as what XPF hopes for), they should make sure that's what their effort does.

N.C. team shoots for moon in $30M contest - WRAL.com - an article about the new local GLXP team STELLAR

FLOOD! - This was on April 25, but I missed it then, and I don't know how it turned out. It affects unofficial Regolith Challenge team ACME Robotics.

May 2008 Update - Masten Space Systems (Jon Goff) - link from RLV News - This is a major MSS update that covers all sorts of hardware and software work, pictures, design changes, interactions with other LLC teams Paragon and Armadillo, revamping workspaces, igniter sales from Space Access, other potential MSS products and services, team members leaving and new ones arriving, internships available, and business we may hear about later. They're not sure if they'll be able to go for the Lunar Lander Challenge this year.

Lunar X PRIZE Vids at YouTube

Here are some Google Lunar X PRIZE videos that I haven't noticed at the site (which doesn't mean they aren't there). They were recently uploaded to YouTube.

Peter Diamandis - GLXP Student Competition - He describes the quick results from the student teams, and the prizes (trips to the X PRIZE Cup and a Shuttle launch).

Peter Diamandis - ARCA's first test launch - From the summary: Peter Diamandis, X PRIZE Foundation's Chairman & CEO, comments on the announcement made by ARCA at the Google Lunar X PRIZE Team Summit in Strasbourg, France, on May 21, 2008, that they will test launch with hardware in August/September 2008.

Peter Diamandis - GLXP First Team Summit - He overviews the GLXP Team Summit.

Google Lunar X PRIZE First Team Summit Part1 (6 min 30 sec) - From the summary: Part1 contains an introduction from X PRIZE Vice Chairman, Robert Weiss and presentations from Peter Diamandis, Michael Simpson (President, Intl Space, Univ) and Google's Tiffany Montague, GLXP Program Manager.

Google Lunar X PRIZE First Team Summit Part2 (9 min 48 sec) - From the summary: Part 2 contains presentations from Odyssey Moon (Team Leader: Dr. Robert Richards), Astrobotic (Team Leader: William 'Red' Whittaker), Southern California Selene Group (Associate Team Leader: Deborah Castleman) and FREDNET (Team Leader: Fred Bourgeois III).

Google Lunar X PRIZE First Team Summit Part3 (8 min 35 sec) - From the summary: Contains team presentations by ARCA (Team Leader, Dumitru Popescu), LunaTrex (Technical Team Leader: Mary Cafasso), Quantum 3 (Team Leader: Paul Carliner) and Chandah (Team Leader: Adil Jafry).

Google Lunar X PRIZE First Team Summit Part4 (3 min 51 sec) - From the summary: Announcing 4 new contenders with a presentation from the US based JURBAN Team (Team Leader: Dr. Jayfus T. Doswell). The other 3 teams are Advaeros from Malaysia, STELLAR (from the US) and a Mystery Team that has chosen to stay anonymous for now. Stay tuned for more info later.

Also on the GLXP:

Phoenix Mars Mission lands this Sunday - Frednet blog

UARC Wins NASA Award

UC Santa Cruz research team earns NASA award - Spaceref - This press release is on a NASA award, the NASA Public Service Group Achievement Award, for the University Affiliated Research Center (UARC). It's for research that

focuses primarily on information technology, biotechnology, nanotechnology, computer science, aerospace operations, air-traffic management, and space and Earth sciences.

Astrobotic Videos

Here are some Astrobotic videos at the GLXP site showing off various pieces of Astrobotic hardware:

Lithium Ion Phosphate battery

Lander and Thermal Renderings

Camera Technology

Asteroid Contests

Animation of Foresight: A Radio Beacon Mission to Asteroid Apophis - Planetary Defense (A.C. Charania) - Spaceworks Engineering has a video depiction of their mission plan to Apophis that won the Planetary Society contest.

Move An Asteroid 2008 - technical paper competition - Space for All - posts a reminder from A.C. Charania about the "Move An Asteroid 2008": International Technical Paper Competition. Entries are due by June 9.

Mars Society University Rover Challenge Update

A while ago I posted on the Mars Project Challenge, an effort in contest form to have Mars Society members come up with ideas to take the Society to the next level. They are

looking for a bold and inspiring project in the $10M range.

As I mentioned in the earlier post, that's a good range for something Mars and prize-related ... if they can get the money (or a reasonable fraction of it). Anyway, the deadline is almost here; the deadline is May 25, which happens to be the day Phoenix arrives on Mars.

This isn't the only contest the Mars Society is holding. There's also the University Rover Challenge:

College Teams Prepare for Mars Face-Off at University Rover Challenge - 9 teams have signed up. The contest will happen soon - June 5-7. Raytheon is sponsoring the contest.

Florida RLV Prize Bill Signed

RLV News notes that the Governor signed the bill with, among other things, a provision for a $20M contribution from the State of Florida to an RLV Prize. Also see the comment from Gary Hudson.

Fla. pension to invest in high-tech, space - Forbes.com

From the bill site:

05/21/08 Approved by Governor; Chapter No. 2008-31 Wednesday, May 21, 2008 4:33 PM

05/16/08 Signed by Officers and presented to Governor Friday, May 16, 2008 4:28 PM

Masten Fast Pitch

Masten Space at a riot of startups - RLV News posts on an investment pitch event described on the Masten blog.

Updates on 2008 Pete Conrad Spirit of Innovation Award

I haven't posted much on the Pete Conrad Spirit of Innovation Award because I didn't know so many details were out. I assumed I'd have to wait until the X PRIZE Cup details were released, but I was wrong. There are a lot of details on the student competition that I haven't seen before. Check it out here. Some details from that page:

The 2008 Pete Conrad Spirit of Innovation Award includes two competition categories:

Personal spaceflight: Assume you can go to space. Create an innovative concept and business plan for use in personal spaceflight.
Lunar exploration: Assume you can go to the moon. Create an entrepreneurial venture for lunar exploration.

Students will compete for over $20,000 in prize money, trips to the 2008 X PRIZE Cup, and many more special benefits stemming from the competition’s unique position within the aerospace industry.

The site goes into details on the important benefits to the competitors, but you'll have to go to it to read them. Some more links:

Competition Details

Pete Conrad Spirit of Innovation Award 2008 Rules (PDF)

NASA Means Business 2008

NASA Means Business Competition Awards Top Honors for 2008 - Coalition for Space Exploration - From the article:

The team from the University of Wisconsin - Madison received grand prize honors, including a trip to Washington, D.C. to present its winning entry to top NASA officials and a cash prize. Other finalist teams participating in the final judging were from Embry Riddle Aeronautical University Worldwide of Eglin Air Force Base, Fla.; Bentley College of Waltham, Mass.; and Miami International University of Art & Design – Miami, Fla.

...

The annual competition, sponsored by NASA and the Coalition for Space Exploration and directed by TSGC, meets NASA’s need for promotion by enlisting the innovative minds of today’s college students. This year, participating teams were challenged to develop a program to help NASA share the innovation and technologies it creates to spur developments in research and commerce. The goal was to increase awareness that the nation’s investment in spaceflight technologies can be used in a variety of fields beyond NASA.

There's more in the article on the winning team's efforts. It's not over, though - the winning team has more ahead of them (see the 2008 event timeline.

The NMB site is already posting an early bird call for 2009.

GLXP Team Summit Update

The news and information update opportunities continue at the GLXP Team Summit:

ARCA to test lunar lander with suborbital spaceflight - RLV News - links to several information sources on ARCA's announcement at the summit; there are pictures from the announcement with a good visual aid

Briefs: New GLXP teams; Summit webcast; Student Competition - RLV News - There are several items here, but the one I'll note is the Team Summit Webcast.

Embry-Riddle students test lunar ambitions - East Volusia News-Journal Online.com - 6 recent graduates competed in the GLXP student competition

14 Google Lunar X PRIZE Teams

The X PRIZE Foundation has a press release on the Lunar X PRIZE Team Summit that reveals 4 new teams: X PRIZE Foundation Holds Team Summit, Introduces Official Contenders in Private Moon Race

From the press release (which also describes the student team competition and other aspects of the meeting):

The four new teams are:

Advaeros: Team Advaeros is led by Hanidy Yusof, who founded the Malaysian company Advanced Aerospace Industries. Advanced Aerospace Industries is a small Research and Development company dealing with smart systems for navigation, robotic application, aeronautical and space related activities. They are a team of enthusiastic technical people who work together for the future dreams of flight, both for fun and for knowledge. They plan to design their own launch vehicle, focusing part of their team on craft design, and the rest on launch vehicle design.

JURBAN: Started in 2000, the Juxtopia® Group, Inc. is a not-for-profit research organization whose mission is to improve human learning performance with science and technology that adapts to individual learning needs, enhances cognitive performance, and augments human learning capabilities anytime, anywhere, at any pace, and for anyone. The Juxtopia® Urban Robotics Brilliant Application National (JURBAN) challenge is a Juxtopia® Group program. The JURBAN Challenge Program trains underserved and disadvantaged students to build autonomous service robotic systems that have significant impact in their community. Led by Dr. Jayfus T. Doswell, the JURBAN team will be made up of professional and student engineers.

STELLAR: Based in North Carolina and led by Dick Dell, Team STELLAR includes team members from Insight Technologies, the Advanced Vehicle Research Center, and North Carolina State University. The team plans to highlight educational outreach, and includes volunteers from two schools that participate in the FIRST Robotics competition, which is a national high school competition based in the United States.

Mystery Team: Google Lunar X PRIZE teams have the option of officially registering but remaining anonymous until July 20, 2009. One new team has chosen to keep their identity a secret for the moment, but they are still working hard on their mission plan.

RLV News posts a press release by one of the new teams, Team STELLAR. It gives more details on the team than you see in the paragraph above. The RLV News post also links to the STELLAR web site and the GLXP Teams site, which has a lot of information about the Stellar team.

In fact, all 4 new teams appear on the GLXP Teams site. Even the Mystery Team has an entry. In fact, the mystery team will be blogging like the others. There's a contest to see if you can guess facts about the mystery team. There are a lot of details on the Teams site about the other 2 teams as well. JURBAN has experience in the DARPA Challenges. I expect to be posting about all of them in the near future. Good luck to all of the teams! Hopefully we'll see more bonus prizes funded so more teams will be able to make it to the Moon.

GLXP Posts from Summit and a Team Member Profile

GLXP Teams at the Google Headquarters in February - Chandah - I'll guess that the teams have been checking each other out, and realizing that they can no longer count each other on their fingers. We'll see tomorrow.

Google Lunar X-Prize: More Teams To Join? - Colony Worlds - They have some thoughts on the Team Chandah post.

Getting media trained at GLXP Summit - Chandah

Team Member Profiles: Rick Wills - LunaTrex

Florida RLV Bill at Governor's Desk

RLV News has the latest status on the Florida bill that includes an RLV prize.

Bill would light a fire under Florida's economy - advocates that Governor Crist sign the bill, which has a provision for a $20M/$20M public/private funded RLV prize. (Any comment I might make on who would step up on the private side would be pure speculation). As you can see in this post from May 2, I couldn't tell whether or not this version or the House version with a much smaller public contribution was being carried forward.

You can see the latest status here. The latest activity happened a few days ago:

Bill History:

05/16/08 Signed by Officers and presented to Governor Friday, May 16, 2008 4:28 PM
05/02/08 S Ordered engrossed, then enrolled -SJ 01563 Friday, May 02, 2008 11:34 AM
05/02/08 S CS passed as amended; YEAS 40 NAYS 0 -SJ 01563 Friday, May 02, 2008 11:34 AM

Diamandis Asks for Thoughts on Mega-Prizes

I posted recently about Mega-Prizes, a term that Peter Diamandis used in a recent talk on large prizes for advances that seem impossible or almost so today, and that is also used in some academic prize literature for advances that "trigger radical new directions in science".

Diamandis presents the concept in an XPF blog video.

I guess if I were allocating $100M in prize money (the lower end of what Diamandis is suggesting), I'd probably allocate it for 5-20 smaller prize competitions, since the method has been shown to work well compared to other alternatives in that range. It would be too bad if the $100M opportunity for progress were blown because the challenge was, in fact, as impossible as it seemed.

I guess I'm more inclined to go for several smaller goals that give incremental progress than going all-out on a big project:

Mars Observer, or several smaller Mars robotic missions?

For a more difficult choice, Cassini, or 6-8 Discovery missions?

ESAS/Constellation, or Falcon 1, Falcon 9, Rocketplane, Space Ship 2, Lynx, Spaceloft, Pixel, JP Aerospace, Taurus II, XA 2.0, and numerous other smaller space access projects that could happen with the same funding?

Of course I'd also be inclined to do the mega-prize if the concept generally made sense and that's what the prize funder wanted ... it could work!

GLXP Team Summit Student Competition Results

The Google Lunar X PRIZE Team Summit Student Competition - X PRIZE Foundation news post:

The competition, which required students to plan a mission based on the Google Lunar X PRIZE, resulted in a tie between the International Space University and the University of Stuttgart.

Picasa Photo Album for the Team Summit Student Competition 2008 (266 photos)

GLXP Team Summit Arrives - Student Competition

The Lunar X PRIZE Team Summit's Student Competition is under way ... you can see more photos, various videos of the students at work, and twitter updates.

I suspect this post will be out of date in a couple hours as more Team Summit updates keep coming.

The Mighty Tether

The Space Elevator Blog posts on The Mighty Tether, a movie about the Strong Tether NASA Centennial Challenge featuring team Astroaraneae. From the trailer, it looks like some of the scenes are from the year when the Space Elevator Games were at the X PRIZE Cup, so you'll see some of that in the film, too.

Queen's Space Engineers in the Paper

News from the Queen’s Space Engineering Team - The Space Elevator Blog picks up a post from QSET, and also points out a news article about the team:

Queen's team to build space elevator; Project to be part of international competition that offers $2M grand prize - The Kingston Whig-Standard

I did notice one mistake in the article - last year's competition was held in Utah, not Arizona - but generally the article gives a good overview of the team and competition.