Save Centennial Challenges!

As noted in the November 22 entry, the Space Frontier Foundation has been planning to organize an effort to restore funding for NASA's Centennial Challenges space prizes that was lost in the Senate Appropriations Committee. Here is the SFF announcement of the effort, which includes support from the Space Exploration Alliance (an alliance formed not too long ago from various space industry groups and grass-roots organizations like the Planetary Society, the Mars Society, and the National Space Society), and the X Prize Foundation. These space advocate groups have a variety of interests, goals, and approaches to our future in space, so it is interesting to see that Centennial Challenge funding is an issue that they can all agree on. This isn't too unexpected, since they have all adopted the prize approach in one way or another in their own projects (see the various links on the right).

The Executive Directory of the NSS, George Whitesides, has some comments supportive of Centennial Challenges in the announcement. He also spoke favorably on the Challenges in a Space Show radio interview recorded around the time of the 2006 ISDC in a discussion that covered a lot of other ground.

Space Politics and HobbySpace/RLV News already have updates related to this announcement.

Update: Also see this post.