GLXP June 21

Google launches new space race to the moon - CNN - They discuss the "garage bands of space exploration". In the funding area:

Celestis, a company that launches cremated human remains into Earth's orbit, recently announced that it has reached an agreement with two of the teams, Astrobotic and Odyssey Moon, to carry human ashes to the moon.

That's interesting good news to me. I only recall one of the two deals mentioned.

CNN Press; Thoughts about Heritage sites; Congrats to Phoenix - The Pomerantz Report - Will likes the CNN article, except for the last couple lines. He also discusses some NASA Moon missions in the context of the Apollo (and other) site preservation issue. The Lunar X PRIZE forums discussion on that issue continues today with an interesting proposal by Phil Stooke. Some complicating factors are brought up.

Also on the GLXP forums, Will Pomerantz gets STELLAR to explain their unconventional triwheel wheel design. Who'd expect an old (and not very good, in my opinion) movie based on a somewhat better (but not the best by far) Roger Zelazny story to make it into the GLXP discussions? I guess someone thought the wheels graphic looked like that.

Google Says: Bang, Zoom, Straight To The Moon - Information Week - I wonder if there's anything solid about this part of the article:

As of now, about 13 teams are officially signed up, but Google expects that number to swell to 25.

Micro-Space Comm Links Ready for Spacecraft Use - Micro-Space on GLXP Teams site - There's an interesting discussion about a Micro-space "storm chaser" (as in the movie Twister) rocket. It would be cool to have some way to get a Pixel class of vehicle to drop instruments into a tornado without actually losing the instrument dropping vehicle ... but I guess that adventure will probably have to wait for the sequel to Twister.