Space Prize Roundup - February 17, 2009

Pittsburgh Innovates - Pop City: Red Whittaker of Google Lunar X PRIZE team Astrobotic joins the National Academy of Engineering:

Dr. William “Red” Whittaker, founder of the Field Robotics Center at Carnegie Mellon University, and John Swanson, ANSYS founder and University of Pittsburgh engineering alumnus and trustee, joined the illustrious national panel, an honor that will give them a voice on important issues to Congress and the Obama administration.

Initial Designs - Kiwi 2 Space - Some early engineering thoughts on an N-Prize entry are shown. The author plans to be at Space Access 2009. Maybe he can hash out some of his ideas there. Here's an earlier N-Prize post - there are more on the N-Prize and Space Access 2008 in the archives.

Speaking of Space Access, SpeedUp is listed on the Space Access 2009 speaker list, but where's the SpeedUp Website?

Speaking of the N-Prize, it's featured on Another Food Blog. The N-Prize may not have the biggest cash reward at the end, but they sure know how to live. Additional proof: N-Prize chocolate (from Qi Spacecraft blog).

The Commercial Space Wiki makes an update to the Prize Bookmarks page. You can see it using cswiki twitter id:

Added link to the PRIZES folder, "Prize Bookmarks" page, to 15USC Ch84, "Commercial Space Achievement Award" authorization for DoC's OSC.

The actual change to the PRIZES folder starts like this:

Pub. L. 102-588, title V, Sec. 510, Nov. 4, 1992, 106 Stat. 5129.), aka
15 USC CHAPTER 84 - COMMERCIAL SPACE COMPETITIVENESS Sec. 5808. Commercial Space Achievement Award

It looks like this prize was even awarded fairly recently! This is an excerpt from the Virgin Galactic Newsletter January 2009

Commercial Space Achievement Award - Space Commerce (NOAA)