August 6 2008 Roundup

Space Show at Regolith Excavation Challenge - The Space Show - The actual interviews, and there are several this time, cover lots of topics besides the Regolith Challenge, including (in this order) various California Space Authority (Regolith Challenge organizer) work, the Commercial Space Wiki that Ken Davidian started, and leading Regolith Challenge team Technology Ranch. The guests are Jim Buenrostro (Technology Ranch), Ken Davidian (NASA ESMD Commercial Space Policy, and formerly Centennial Challenges), Janice Dunn, Matt Everingham, and Andrea Seastrand (all California Space Authority).

Hovering reliably is tough - RLV News - This links to a NASA Spaceflight discussion on the number of Lunar Lander Challenge teams that will actually show up, the difficulty of the Challenge (from Jon Goff from Masten Space Systems), and some possible quirks, or at least common patterns, in the nature of space prizes in general.

Prize Power: How Competition Inspires Tech Innovation - Linux Insider - This discusses the X PRIZE Foundation and Innocentive. The Innocentive example is one for cleaning up the Exxon Valdez oil spill when the oil is frozen in the water. The idea that's about to be implemented came from an Innocentive prize after years of in-house experimentation.

Advice For Google's VC Arm: Don't Be Boring- Tech Dirt - From the article: Google's opportunity to do something different could have other possibilities as well. Google already sponsors the Lunar X Prize, and it could create its own series of challenges that might benefit Google's existing businesses (similar to the Netflix Prize).

Google has even done this with the Android Developer Challenge. This is why I was surprised (not disappointed, just surprised) that the Google Lunar X PRIZE turned out to be a lunar surface prize. I was pretty sure they were the sponsor, but I thought they'd come up with a prize that more readily lent itself to Google Earth, like a prize for gathering data for new Google Earth (Google Moon) layers, which would probably require a lunar orbiter. However, The Launch Pad shows that there are ways to integrate the real Google Lunar X PRIZE with Google Earth. You can see all of the teams and partner organizations in this Google Earth layer. It sounds like the XPF folks have more ideas along these lines.

Check out GLXP Fun Stuff for more Google Earth fun, and perhaps let them know if you have more ideas like this (or you've built something like this of your own with an XPF tie-in).

Phoen-etic Blog - The Launch Pad - The blog for one of the newly announced Lunar Lander Challenge teams (and Google Lunar X PRIZE hopeful team) is presented. They're hoping to have daily updates.

Team Phoenicia - This is their website (also see the LLC Teams page). You can see a strong New Mexico State University contingent on the team.

Insanely Busy! - The Dragon's Tales - This includes some Team Phoenicia posts and lots of other material - prehistoric creatures and environments, etc.

Google Lunar X PRIZE T-Shirt Design Competition - The Launch Pad - Here's the competition page.

Keeping tabs on a potential new team - The Launch Pad - This is on the Space Florida/Omega Envoy effort to make a Florida Google Lunar X PRIZE team. It includes a slide show.

Are all of the videos in the SFF $2000 Space Video Contest posted at the linked site? I'm not sure if that's the case, but I only see 3 so far at that link, and there are 3 prizes ($2000, $1000, and $500) ...