Space Prize Roundup: Poking Fun, Nanosat Launch Seminar, Other Space Florida Prizes, More

Here's a space prize roundup for the last couple weeks:

The Ridiculous Rocket Space Prize - Space for All - In addition to the Ridiculous Rocket Space Prize Facebook event page linked there, there is also a RidiculousRocket Facebook page celebrating the SLS in all of its grandeur.  The image that occurs to me is something like this, but Photoshopped with mighty, if a bit waterlogged and immobile, SLS rockets replacing the columns holding up the bridge.  Or maybe the columns are replaced by barnacle-covered SLS boosters and the road is the SLS core having a rest.  I'm sure someone with graphics art talent and too much free time could do justice to this goofy image.

Team Phoenicia hosting 3rd Nanosat Launch Challenge seminar - Space for All - Team Phoenicia also has some updates:

3rd Team Phoenicia Nanosat Launcher Seminar: Draft Agenda
3rd Annual Team Phoenicia Nanosat Launcher Seminar: Registration Now Open - Team Phoenicia

CubeSats get big - The Space Review - The Nanosatellite Launch Challenge is featured in the article.

CanSat Competition Guide - 2013 - Mission: Sensor Delivery System - Cansat Competition (PDF)

Happy Birthday, GLXP - InstaPom (Will Pomerantz)

Google Lunar X Prize: Hardware Progress - Citizens in Space

The Low-Cost Spacesuit Challenge - Citizens in Space

Space Florida International Space Station (ISS) Research Competition - Space Florida

Space Florida Awards BioCurity $100,000 at Second Annual Igniting Innovation Showcase - Space Florida

Round-up of news coverage of the 2012 Space Elevator Conference - Space Elevator Blog

Space Access '12: A Conference Warmup Roundup

After a long break from posting on Space Prizes, my post backlog is a bit too huge to handle all in one post, so I plan to do some "roundup with a theme" posts.  This post's theme is the Space Access '12 Conference.  It's a good time for this theme, since the Space Show's lineup for this week includes Henry Vanderbilt, who will discuss the 2012 Space Access Society meeting on the radio show today.  The conference itself is scheduled to start April 12.  Many of the presenters at this conference are, or have been, involved with various space prizes (the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge being a prominent example).  Let's take a look at what some of this year's presenters with space prize backgrounds have been up to lately, borrowing heading links straight out of the Space Access '12 agenda.

Altius Space Machines, Jon Goff

New Moonandback Interviews - Altius Space Machines

Armadillo Aerospace

Second Flight of Stiga - Armadillo Aerospace gives a detailed and entertaining description of the flight and subsequent shovel-less shovel recovery.  The post ends with a hint about what to expect next from the team.
More on Armadillo STIG-A flight - RLV News
Florida team pursues Carmack Prize - RLV News
Briefs: Latest ATREX launch target; Project Ursa aims for Carmack Prize - RLV News
NASA selects expt. payloads for commercial suborbital flights - RLV News (This one is relevant to both Armadillo Aerospace and Masten Space Systems) 

Lasermotive, Jordin Kare

LaserMotive: Working the paths at the DoD - LaserMotive
LaserMotive Marks Five Years Pioneering Wireless Power Technology - LaserMotive
Student Science Fair Project Studying Power Beaming - LaserMotive

LaserMotive is also mentioned briefly in this Space Elevator Blog post: JSETEC ‘11

Masten Space, Dave Masten

Why Precision Landing? - Masten Space Systems
Masten's Xaero extended hover test - RLV News
SpaceUp San Diego review - RLV News - This includes a talk by Dave Masten.
Masten Xaero free flight - RLV News
Draper flies Masten's Zombie with GENIE guidance system - RLV News
Masten Space's XEUS lunar lander system - RLV News
Briefs: More on Xombie & Draper; Steve Brody pt. 3 - RLV News
Briefs: Q&A with Masten Space; Alaskan rocket launch - RLV News
Masten's Xaero did 61m free flight on Feb.17th - RLV News

Tim Pickens, Rocket City Space Pioneers GLXP Project

Fourth Graders Name Rocket City Space Pioneers' Lander "Spirit of Alabama" - Rocket City Space Pioneers Blog
Rocket City Space Pioneers Team Member Participates in Electric Car Competition - Rocket City Space Pioneers Blog

Team Phoenicia, Will Baird

Team Phoenicia Wins $1 Million Contract - Team Phoenicia announces an arrangement with Nova Rocketcraft, which is interested in the Nanosatellite Launch Challenge.
Team JURBAN Selects Team Phoenicia Engines for GLXP Lander - Team Phoenicia

You can also see a number of recent rocket test videos and component pictures at the Phoenicia blog.

Team Phoenicia set up the Nanosatellite Launch Challenge seminars.  One of the teams, Vog Rockets, links to one of Phoenicia's seminar recordings in this post: The Team Phoenicia/Techshop Nanosat Launcher Seminar Video: Vog Rockets 

Speedup, Robert Steinke 

Students for the Exploration and Development of Space, Sara Meschberger

2nd Annual SEDS High-Powered Rocketry Competition Announcement - SEDS

Unreasonable Rocket, Paul Breed

Quick Update... - Unreasonable Rocket - This post covers a lot of ground, including a possible "show and tell" topic at the SA '12 conference.
Ideas about business and a request for feedback... - Unreasonable Rocket

Prize Roundup: Heinlein Prize, International Rocketry Challenge, CanSat winners, SEDS Conference, More

Heinlein Prize Honors Elon Musk of SpaceX - Heinlein Prize Trust

06/16/2011: Swing Test - SpeedUp

NASA And DARPA Offer Students Chance To Support Future Missions - NASA - This is for the Zero Robotics competition using floating SPHERES platforms on the International Space Station

The CanSat Competition has posted their 2011 Competition Winners and 2011 Cansat Photos.  Also, the 2012 mission has already been identified: Mission: Planetary Atmospheric Entry Vehicle.

Raytheon has a number of posts about the International Rocketry Challenge at the International Paris Air Show.  You can see all of them at their 2011 Paris Air Show - Team America Rocketry Challenge tag.  The most recent post is Raytheon-Sponsored Texas High School Team Wins International Rocket Fly-Off at Paris Air Show.

Northrop Grumman Announces Student Winners of Fourth Annual Engineering Scholars Program for Woodland Hills Facility - SpaceRef

SEDS Space Vision 2011 - RLV News - The early Speakers list for the conference includes a number of people with prize connections: Bill Nye (Executive Director of the Planetary Society, which has held a number of space competitions like the Apophis Mission Design Competition and numerous contests with themes like space art and mission names), Robert Richards (a Google Lunar X PRIZE competitor), Will Pomerantz (formerly of the X PRIZE Foundation), Jon Goff (who was part of the winning Masten Space Systems Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge team), and Ben Brockert (also from the Masten NG-LLC team, and now a member of another prize-winning NG-LLC team, Armadillo Aerospace).

Team Phoenicia sells first engine - RLV News

Briefs: Masten intern jobs; Langley lifting body event; Bruce Cordell interview - RLV News

White Label Space starts testing engines - RLV News

The next 2 links are from @ChallengeGov:

Now this is a cool ride! - The White House Blog discusses the Experimental Crowd-derived Combat-support Vehicle (XC2V).

The latest International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge opened on May 31. 

A TEA Party organization called TEA Party in Space has a platform that includes the following plank:

NASA shall use competitions and prizes whenever feasible to stimulate the private sector, including individual American inventors, to achieve innovative and affordable solutions to technological challenges.

Prize Roundup: Nanosat Launcher Comment, Make Tech Winner, CAFE and EAA Flight Challenges, More

Student Experiment Microgravity Kit Wins NASA-Make Tech Contest - NASA press release: 

Sponsored by Teachers in Space, a project of the Space Frontier Foundation in Nyack, N.Y, the first "Bring It Back" kits will fly aboard the Excelsior STEM mission scheduled to fly on a Masten Aerospace unmanned suborbital mission later this year. 

Jeff Foust tweets about one of the ISDC 2011 talks:

@jeff_foust: London: NASA's planned $2M nanolaunch prize is a "little light"; estimates it would cost $20-30M to build a nanosat launcher. #ISDC

Also see Jeff's twitter account for tweets on the Google Lunar X PRIZE ISDC session.

3DHawaii expands with private label product and a great trip giveaway - Google Earth Blog

Zephyr Aurora: Taking Shape [45]: More First Small Holes - Team Phoenicia (see more pictures at their site)

Pipistrel’s Four-seat, Side-by-side Electric Airplane - CAFE Foundation blog: 

This unique design has come about by grafting two Pipistrel Taurus aircraft together with a center section which is some 5 meters (16 feet) wide and includes a center pylon housing the electric engine and batteries designed to successfully carry this aircraft to the skies and hopefully to the completion of the 2011 CAFE/NASA challenge, the design bears some similarity to the twin Mustang fighter and even White Knight Two. ... The goal for the development of this aircraft is to enter and hopefully be successful in completing the 2011 CAFE/NASA green flight challenge which is held between July 11 and July 17, 2011 at the Santa Rosa airport in northern California and then also competing in the EAA AirVenture Electric Flight Challenge held at this year’s Oshkosh event just a few weeks later.

Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge Teams Roundup

Many of the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge teams are still quite active.  Here's another update on some of those teams.  This is an impressive week of activity, considering that many of the RLV News posts cover more than one topic.

Armadillo Aerospace update - RLV News - This one features a post by Ben Brockert on the new tube rocket.

Armadillo Aerospace photos - RLV News

Getting ready for big hot flamey stuff at Armadillo - RLV News - This one was also updated to include some Masten pictures.

Briefs: A SS1 for the backyard; A historic Armadillo rocket - RLV News

Briefs: Masten engine test; Armadillo engine test - RLV News

Here's more about the Masten engine test mentioned above:

@ikluft: Preparing for @mastenspace static rocket engine firing test at #Mojave http://twitpic.com/3tc2yn 

I got to watch today... successful @mastenspace rocket engine static test - 3 firings

From an earlier tweet I'm guessing that this next one happened a couple days after the ones above:

@dmasten: Yep, #thrust. Looked like a good run. We're testing engine extremes. http://twitpic.com/3ty726

Briefs: Speed Up update; Alaskan sounding rockets - RLV News

Mr. Bezos, "please don't be evil" - RLV News - This one covers a post at Unreasonable Rocket about patents and openness.

Some Armadillo Q and A - RLV News

@mastenspace: January 30 is the deadline for @mastenspace summer internships! Apply now! Exciting time in sRLV dev / flight testing! http://bit.ly/cAemQk

@spaceberger: After 2 weeks in Mojave, I'm heading home. Had a great time working w/ @mastenspace. Plenty still to do though! Bring it on!

Team Phoenicia continues its series of Zephyr Aurora updates:

• Zephyr Aurora: Taking Shape [34]
• Zephyr Aurora: Taking Shape [33]
• Zephyr Aurora: Taking Shape [32] 

@wikkit : James welding inside the tube rocket. http://twitpic.com/3tzj6n

So how bad do you think it would make me look if I was to webcast an engine test and the engine destroyed itself?

Dual-Fluid Single-Launch Propellant Depots - Selenian Boondocks

The 2011 Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference will be held in a few weeks - February 28 - March 2.  Here is the preliminary program.  The preliminary program includes a student competition session with a Masten Student Prizes Address by Colin Ake, presentations on the Student Suborbital Experiment and Student Essay, and awards.  The program also includes an update session on flight provider program status, with Dave Masten representing Masten Space Systems and Neil Milburn representing Armadillo Aerospace.  Blue Origin, XCOR Aerospace, and Virgin Galactic are also represented.  The conference covers many other topics, too - check the preliminary program for more information.

With all of this activity from the teams long after the prizes, I wonder how much interest there would be in another variant on a lunar lander challenge?

Fed Prize Authority, GLXP News Galore, Goddard Film Fest Winners, More

@ISS_NatLab: Congrats to Team ZeroBotX for their win at the Zero Robotics Competition! http://fb.me/P921Zhla

@ChallengeGov: BIG NEWS! Congress grants broad prize authority to all federal agencies http://go.usa.gov/rOm #challengegov #gov20

@astrobotic: Astrobotic has joined Twitter! Expect on-the-go updates about all our activities.

NASA awards $500k to 3 firms in lunar demo data project - RLV News

Google Lunar X PRIZE gets last minute entries before deadline - RLV News

Space Frontier to hold third TEDxMidTownNY event - RLV News - Note that Ted Southern is one of the Astronaut Glove Challenge winners.

Zephyr Aurora: Taking Shape [28] - Team Phoenicia

Winners Announced: 2010 Best of Goddard Film Festival - NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Way out of the box... - Unreasonable Rocket

Lego Elevators, Pocket Airports, SGAC and Heinlein Trust, LPI T's, Spheres, More

LASER 2010 - The Space Elevator Blog covers the Lego bricks Activity and Space Elevator Race competitions.

Faster and Greener - Pocket Airports (PDF) - The CAFE Foundation - Here's an bit from the abstract:

The potential aeronautical, environmental and societal benefits of on-demand, distributed, Green air travel are examined along with the urgencies and opportunities that pertain. A proposal is presented to rapidly bring about these benefits by extending NASA’s Centennial Challenge for Aeronautics, the Green Flight Challenge (GFC), into a sequence of two additional flight competitions, GFC II and III.

LaserMotive Wins NW Startup Demo - LaserMotive has more details on a win I briefly mentioned in my last post.

List of significant parts.... - Unreasonable Rocket

Zephyr Aurora: Taking Shape [25]
Zephyr Aurora: Taking Shape [24]
Zephyr Aurora: Taking Shape [23] - All from Team Phoenicia

And now for some tweets:

@ISS_Research: 12/16 watch ISS student zero robotics challenge: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/zero.html #NASA #ISS #education

@SGAC: SGAC Partners with the Heinlein Prize Trust to Support the 2011 Future Project Contest http://ow.ly/3qpNQ

@JUXTOPIA_JURBAN: 1st African American Owned Commercial Space Company Launched during Juxtopia Urban Learning Technology Conference @ Morgan State University

Phezu Space, LLC will design and build commercial space on-orbit service vehicles.

@dmasten: Launch vehicle erector trailer works. http://twitpic.com/3g8nmb

@MyMoonLPI: NEW! #MyMoonLPI contest: submit a MyMoon tshirt design: http://bit.ly/eax5oc?

@ConradAwards: In the Spirit of Innovation... - http://eepurl.com/bZgWP

Prize Roundup: Phoenicia History, NW Startup Win, Rover Captions, SBIR, More

IEEE Presentation: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Launch Pad - Check out the presentation within this Team Phoenicia blog post.  It has a lot of interesting information about the team.

Zephyr Aurora: Taking Shape [21] - Team Phoenicia

@LaserMotive: LaserMotive won the NW Startup Demo, beating out some other very good demos.

@MarsRovers: Here are the winning entries from the Oppy caption contest. Drumroll, please: http://on.fb.me/g5WsT0

@jetlab: Students Bounce to the Top at JPL Competition: With rubber band contraptions, leaf blowers, balloons and o... http://bit.ly/hmy1TQ

Internacional Cansat Competition 2011 - coming soon ...

Briefs: Masten Space's SBIR; Rocket City Space Pioneers update - RLV News

Prize Roundup: Free Trips, Launch or Fizzle?, Zephyr Aurora, LEGO ISS Challenge?, NASA Crowdsourcing

Win a Free Trip to Space - Discovery News

Space Tourism: Will it go far or fizzle out? - NewSpace Magazine - This is an overview that features several companies involved with space prizes in one way or another.

NASA Launches Innovative Approach to Solve Old Challenges - NASA Ames shows how NASA is using crowdsourcing and InnoCentive internally to solve 3 challenges:

"NASA InternSpace" ... NASA Ames is considering developing a customized social networking and new media communications platform for use by NASA interns, mentors, and managers. ...
"Low Impact Robotic Sensor Platform for Land Survey" ... This challenge is seeking brainstorms and "eureka moments" for alternative sensor platforms. ...
"Measuring Gas Concentrations in Microliter Samples" ... Suggestions are being sought for a new small device (<10 cm3) capable of measuring key gas concentrations in small volumes (10-500 microliters) of gaseous samples.

Team Phoenicia has some new photos:

• Zephyr Aurora: Taking Shape [16]
• Zephyr Aurora: Taking Shape [15]
• Zephyr Aurora: Taking Shape [14]
• Zephyr Aurora: Taking Shape [13]
• Zephyr Aurora: Taking Shape [12]

I'm curious what the LEGO ® Challenge (coming soon) featured on the NASA International Space Station National Laboratory page sidebar is about.  Any more hints?

Prize Roundup: Nanosat Launcher Seminar, Starting a Startup, Micro-G Challenge, More

@LunaCI: Google Lunar X PRIZE Roundup #36: http://bit.ly/cJFux6 The GLXP loses a leader, but his dream lives on...

Here's more about the Nanosat Launcher Challenge Seminar, which is scheduled to take place today:

@rocketrepreneur: After a nice full 12hr day at the Altius office, I made the drive out to DIA, on my way to the Nanosat LV Seminar tomorrow.

@NASAPrize: Going to Nano-Sat Launch Challenge seminar at Tech Shop in Menlo Park, CA on Saturday. See http://techshop.ws/Upcoming_Events.html

Team Phoenicia/Techshop Nanosat Launcher Seminar: Final Update - Team Phoenicia

If you can't go, don't forget this from an earlier Team Phoenicia post:

We will be posting the Nanosat Launcher Challenge Seminar presentations on youtube to the Team Phoenicia channel.

@ISS_Research: 1/3 NASA’s seeks proposal submissions from 5th-8th graders for 2011 Kids in Micro-g challenge, due 12/8.

2/3 The crew will perform winning experiments onboard ISS: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/nlab/experimentchallenge.html
 
3/3 To learn more about entering the 2011 challenge, contact the ISS Payloads Office at jsc-iss-payloads-helpline@mail.nasa.gov.

Five Control Loops - Jon Goff at Altius Space Systems shows what it's like to juggle multiple jobs in the processing of starting a new space business.

@ikluft: 1 yr ago: 1st place in Lunar Lander #XPrize awarded to @MastenSpace on Capitol Hill. My pics: http://is.gd/gJO4I #newspace

Prize Roundup: Nanosat Launch Seminar, Centennial Winners Keep Going, ZeroG Pictures, More

As the Nanosatellite Launch Challenge Seminar this weekend approaches, the news continues:

Team Phoenicia/Techshop Nanosat Launcher Challenge Seminar: Gathering Questions - Team Phoenicia:

The FAA-AST has asked Team Phoenicia to gather questions that the community would like answered for their part of the challenge.

Nanosat Launcher Challenge Seminar: Agenda Change (11/1/10) - Team Phoenicia

Getting closer - Vog Rockets

@TeamPrometheus - Getting ready to go to the conference for the NASA Centennial Challenge Nanosat contest! Go! Team Prometheus!

Several past Centennial Challenge winners are keeping themselves in the spotlight.  LaserMotive is getting a lot of press and staying active:

@LaserMotive: Regardless of how our pitch is received, I overcame my mental glitches and delivered a good presentation today.

Copter sets a laser-powered record - Cosmic Log

Laser-Powered Helicopter Breaks Records, Is Pretty Cute - Discover

Nov 2nd Update: Joining “The Vault” - Altius Space Machines

NASA’s Quest to Send a Robot to the Moon - The New York Times features Armadillo Aerospace in part of this article.

@paulsrobotics: Moonraker will be dropping the first puck this Friday @ Worcester Sharks! Buy tix through me to support FRC190. Check out the #omgrobots

Of course there's plenty of prize news from other sources, too:

@GoZeroG: 2010 Weightless Photo Competition http://conta.cc/aBapiz via #constantcontact

@sedsusa: The SEDS-USA Video Contest is finished. Thanks to everyone who submitted! Comment on your favorites - http://bit.ly/c6nNxe

CPM TV Pre-Launch Test Phase Begins - Synergy Moon on Google Lunar X PRIZE Teams page

@arielwaldman: Science Hack Day SF is looking for prizes and/or sponsors! Anyone able to help? http://sf.sciencehackday.com/

Roundup: LaserMotive Record, GLXP Updates, Planetary Defense, Boston Moon Ball, More

Team Phoenicia has posted a number of pictures in recent days:

• Zephyr Aurora Taking Shape [10]
• Zephyr Aurora Taking Shape [9]
• Zephyr Aurora Taking Shape [8]
• Zephyr Aurora Taking Shape [7]
• Zephyr Aurora Taking Shape [6]

Competition waxes in the South End -MySouthEnd.com describes the lunar design awards ceremony of SHIFTboston's Moon Ball.

Here's more on LaserMotive:

What’s up with LaserMotive… - The Space Elevator Blog gets us up to date on LaserMotive activities, including the laser powered helicopter demonstration at the Future of Flight Aviation Center.  It also describes a special earlier demonstration of that capability.

Laser-powered 'quadrocopter' sets new record - KVAL.com, Eugene, Oregon covers the recent helicopter demonstration, including a video and picture.

LaserMotive Beams Power to “Quadrocopter” UAV, Breaks World Record for Electric Aircraft - XConomy Seattle - This one doesn't include a video, but it makes up for it with more details in the text.

Google Lunar X PRIZE Roundup #34 - Luna C/I: Moon Colonization and Integration

New Google Lunar X PRIZE Team: Moon Express! - Luna C/I: Moon Colonization and Integration includes some discussion and speculation about the newly announced team.  Be sure to check the comments, too!

Google Lunar X PRIZE Roundup #35 - Luna C/I: Moon Colonization and Integration

@SGAG: SGAC Supports the 2011 Planetary Defense Conference Student Competition – Enter Today! http://ow.ly/31gWa

Brain X Prize may spark big solutions - MSNBC

Prize Roundup: Mars Rover, Mars Prizes, Space Pirates, Nanosat Challenge Seats

@TheMarsSociety: #Poland's Magma rover for #Mars Society's University Rover Challenge 2010. http://plixi.com/p/52138136

"Colonizing Mars" in the Journal of Cosmology - RLV News - The issue includes the article The Mars Prize and Private Missions to the Red Planet.

@Spaceport_NM Another successful #ispcs concluded, and my runway dedication is in a few hours... :D

The Kansas City Space Pirates throw in the towel… - The Space Elevator Blog - In addition to honoring this prominent Space Elevator Games team, this post gives some hints about the future:

I have had several conversations with Ben Shelef about the future of the Climber / Power-Beaming competition and, while it is much too early for me to spill any of the beans, I can safely say that some significant changes in the structure of the Games appear to be in the cards.

Team Phoenicia has a few new posts:

New Sponsor: Dragon Valves
New Sponsor: Micro/sys
Team Phoenicia/Techshop Nanosat Launcher Challenge Seminar Reservations Now Open

NanoSat Seminar, LaserMotive Pitch, Mobile Treasure Hunt, CRuSR's blog, much more

Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference 2011 - CRuSR's blog - Ok, I admit it, I already posted about the conference; this is just an excuse to point out the CRuSR blog. Or is it just an excuse to keep promoting the conference?

Google Lunar X PRIZE Roundup #33 - Luna C/I: Moon Colonization and Integration covers the many events from October 5th to October 12th.

Rocket City Space Pioneers at GLXP Summit - RLV News presents one item that was probably released a bit too recently to have made it into Roundup #33.

More hardware - Vog Rockets

Nanosat Launch Seminar - Vog Rockets:

I’ll be giving a short presentation about Vog and our plans and possibly seeking individuals wanting to join the team.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Launch Pad - Team Phoenicia describes their Google Lunar X PRIZE goal, and how the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, Nanosat Launch Challenge, and the Team Phoenicia/TechShop Nanosat Launcher Seminar on November 6 in Menlo Park, CA all fit together. They give a lot of details about how it all happened, but I think we all have a few more questions!

See their earlier post It's Wonderful for more details on the Nanosat Launcher Seminar. A commenter there asks if the seminar can be recorded ... not a bad idea for potential teams and spectators that can't make it to Menlo Park.

New Sponsor: ASCO Valve - Team Phoenicia

Guests: Josh Neubert, Hung-Jen Wu. Aired on October 10th, 2010 - The Space Show - The topic was the Conrad Foundation Spirit of Innovation Awards Program.

2010 Reach for the Stars Rocket Contest - Space for All

Space treasure hunt sponsored by NASA & Gowalla - Space for All

Briefs: Grand Challenges at NASA; GLXP scorecard - RLV News

Composite Compatability tests. - Unreasonable Rocket

LaserMotive Is 2nd Place Winner at NWEN First Look Forum! - LaserMotive gives more details about their NWEN First Look Forum pitch than I included in my last post.

Space Prize Roundup: SpeedUp Update, Spacesuit Flair, Phoenicia Video, more

07/16/2010: Another Hard Start - SpeedUp

A Bit of Goofiness - Team Phoenicia

New Private Spacesuit Unveiled With New York Flair - Space.com:

Two private spacesuit designers unveiled their first steps toward serious attire for future space travelers Friday night in front of a young, hip crowd of artists and tech geeks in Manhattan. ... Moiseev and Southern first combined their talents as former competitors to win a $100,000 second place prize in NASA's 2009 astronaut glove challenge. Now they have expanded their partnership under the name of Final Frontier Design to go from glove to full-fledged spacesuit designed to be worn inside a spacecraft during launch and re-entry.

Here's the Eyebeam Art and Technology Center notice for the event. There's more information and links about the gloves and spacesuit at that site, and at Spacesuit Gloves. For example, check out Lasercut Glove Patterns.

LaserMotive Video – Who We Are, and What Is Power Beaming - LaserMotive

“Vision of the Future” and “Best Presentation of Space” Winners Announced - Space Frontier Foundation

Google Lunar X PRIZE Roundup #26 - Luna C/I: Moon Colonization and Integration

The Lurio Report - July 17, 2010 - RLV News - This includes some information about the Google Lunar X PRIZE.

Prize Roundup: Mavericks Launch (of Web Site), SE Games Poster, Mojave Event, More

Mavericks Announces Launch of New Website - Mavericks Civilian Space Foundation (formerly Rocket Mavericks) - Here are a couple pages from that site on prizes:

MAVERICKS J-PRIZE COMPETITION
Mavericks Competition Community

The ISEC 2009 Space Elevator Poster - The Space Elevator Blog

National Space Society Announces “NSS in Second Life” Machinima Contest Winner - National Space Society Blog

International Youth Art Competition - Deadline Septempber 30, 3010 - Oregon NASA Space Grant Consortium

Parts Came in... - Unreasonable Rocket

Sponsors Sought For NASA's Centennial Challenges Competitions - NASA - This is a brief news release about the RFI I mentioned in the last post.

How to Get Purty (Part 9)
How to Get Purty (Part 10) - Team Phoenicia

@TeamPrometheus: Launch Tower going up! Matagorda, Texas! And some antennas! 150' antenna tower and 3 meter Dish. Setting date for... http://bit.ly/9An7QZ

@rocketshadow: Plane Crazy, Sat.19 June @ Mojave Airport. Come see the Dick Rutan's new Berkut, with the FINEST paint job I've seen in a while. 10 am-2 pm

@NASAMICI: Getting ready for online presentation From Dr. Antonio Soares re: Robitics and the Space elevator on http://nasamici.com/

Prize Roundup: Falcon 9 Congrats, Cansat 2010, Model Your Town, Armadillo Restart, More

Winners of Panoramio Contest of March 2010 - Panoramio's Blog

There are far too many posts and tweets from people in the space prize community on the successful Falcon 9 flight to cover here. I'll just give a small sample of tweets here:

@PTScientists: Congratulations #SpaceX for the first succesful launch of Falcon9 ! :-) It's an important day for the GoogleLunarX-Prize #glxp #space

@PeterDiamandis: Against all the odds, SpaceX has pulled off the 1st Falcon-9 flight. This will herald a new era of private launch at a much reduced cost!

@Way to go Spacex!!!!! - Unreasonable Rocket

@Eurospaceward: August 6-8. 2010, Japan University Futawa Campus, Japan SE Technology and Engineering Competition JSETEC regulations up at http://jsea.jp/

@glxp: Are you 10-17 yrs old? Share your vision of future human space exploration in this art competition: http://bit.ly/drPLu9 (via @lealem)

@TeamPrometheus: I posted 28 photos on Facebook in the album "Ah oh what's this?" http://bit.ly/9OITul

@Doug_Comstock: Discussing technical objectives of next Centennial Challenge prize competitions at NASA HQ today, plan to announce 3 new competitions soon.

Armadillo - 2000ft boosted hop, engine shutdown/restart, safe landing - RLV News

Some Data - Unreasonable Rocket:

As I've said several times this year, I currently have more rocket time than rocket $, I can continue to do interesting things with my leftover LLC hardware, but it does not match the far end goal. The far end goal is a 100Km 5Kg payload rocket that is reusable and can be reproduced for less than 10K.

Google Lunar X PRIZE Roundup #20 - Luna C/I: Moon Colonization and Integration
Google Lunar X PRIZE Roundup #21 - Luna C/I: Moon Colonization and Integration

8 Scientists Share $3 Million in Prizes - The New York Times covers this year's winners of the Kavli Prize, including the one in astrophysics.

This is from a few weeks ago: Google announces the winner of their "Model Your Town" competition - Google Earth Blog

The 2010 Annual Texas CanSat Competition is scheduled for June 11 - 13 in Amarillo, Texas.

Cansat 2010 preliminary design - Student Space Programs Laboratory

According to POTROCS,

The CANSAT event this year will be an non rocket event. The CANSAT's will be dropped from a helicopter. This change is necessary because of the wheat harvest in the Wayside area.

Team Phoenicia keeps up its recent surge in posts with pictures:

Material Science Testing
How to Get Purty (part 8)
How to Get Purty (part 7)
How to Get to Purty (part 6)

Lunar Lander Challengers

The Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge was won quite a while ago now, but the former teams keep making news. Here are a few recent updates:

Team Phoenicia - This links to the team's newly designed web site. From that site:

Team Phoenicia is undertaking a herculean venture of gloriously confounding proportions: we are entering the Google Lunar X Prize.

Here are some recent blog posts:

How to Get to Purty (part 5)
How to Get to Purty (part 4)
How to Get to Purty (part 3)
In The News
How to Get to Purty (part 2)
How to Get to Purty
Purty

05/02/2010: More Test Firings - SpeedUp

Briefs: XCOR/Masten Space combo; BonNovA test - RLV News
XCOR and Masten collaborate for NASA landers business - RLV News

Masten Space Re-Lights Rocket Engine in Flight - Masten Space Systems

At least one other view of this flight was shown at ISDC 2010. I think it was this heart-stopping one:

Xombie in-air relight view from the ground. - Masten Space Systems on YouTube

SPACE ADVENTURES ANNOUNCES EXCLUSIVE MARKETING AGREEMENT WITH ARMADILLO AEROSPACE - Armadillo Aerospace

Eric Anderson and John Carmack gave more details about this agreement at one of the ISDC 2010 talks:

ISDC 2010 - Anderson/Carmack, Diamandis, Homans - RLV News

The previous link also includes some comments from the Peter Diamandis talk at the ISDC. In addition to the potential prizes listed there, Diamandis also described a few other ideas (all presumably pending funding and additional development). The one I'll mention here is "Lunar Lander Challenge Level 3". I don't have my notes handy (I haven't unpacked from the conference yet), but as I recall the idea was to have a Lunar Lander Challenge that is similar to the one we know, but with no refueling allowed. Staging would be allowed.

Prize Roundup: Maker Faire, Precursors, More

Team Phoenicia at the Maker Faire! - Team Phoenicia - In addition to the title subject, there's this:

PS Website update coming...and hopefully some big news.

Spacing out at Maker Faire - Make

@unrocket: Maker faire was cool, so was big sur, 1K miles in car from Friday to Sunday, not fun.

@paulsrobotics: RT @WPI_Robotics: Moonraker won an editor's choice ribbon at the #makerfaire! http://twitpic.com/1qi013

@NASAMICI: NASA MICI kickoff will go live in 4 hours. Check out our countdown clock at http://nasamiciconference.com #NASA

@InnoCentiveCEO: New $100K InnoCentive Challenge: Synthesis of a Nucleotide-Selective Label for Single-Stranded DNA http://bit.ly/dtjp8N #innovation #biotech

In NASA's new plans for robotic precursor missions to blaze a trail for astronauts, I usually imagine the small robotic scout missions as being a better fit than the larger ones for Google Lunar X PRIZE and similar prize teams. However, this presentation on NASA's robotic precursor missions gives one possibility for the mobile lander part of a Google Lunar X PRIZE team's effort contributing to part of a large NASA precursor mission. (Keeping in mind the limitation on government funding for the prize, it could be a follow-on to the prize effort itself). Slide 14, on a possible "Teleoperated Lunar Lander", includes:

Surface mobility experiment : Sojourner class “rover” at < 35kg with 1-2 instruments (2kg)
– Context camera, Dust particle size analyzer, Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer
– Fetch capability

Looking Back at the Lunar Lander Challenge

With all of the recent space prize activity, I've been barely able to keep up, let alone post on all of the events. I just went through over 100 notifications in my email about prize news articles, blog posts, and so on. Whew! That takes a while, and it's only 1 information path.

My advice is to check sites like RLV News. You can see news on the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge events, the awards ceremony for the winners, and how some of the teams are continuing after the prize. If you follow this blog, you'll know some of the other sites to check, too. I'm not going to duplicate all of that, but I do have a few items I thought were interesting:

Masten Space Systems Wins NGLLC LII - Donna's Journey

Parting thoughts as the NGLLC fades to black - TrueZer0

Did Ask for a Photo? - Team Phoenicia
New Photo - Team Phoenicia

@unrocket - Starting Clean up from LLC my entropy maximization efforts got out of control. Started with my Primary computer,new 1Tb Hdrive, $69.00!

Here's a well-deserved vacation:

@wikkit: I saw two oceans and a gulf in one day. My new record. Wandered around Miami Beach a bit, tomorrow is more exploration here.

I made a couple canned twitter searches for the Lunar Lander Challenge (yes, uh, just in time). Actually, I think the teams will continue to be active in some way, so there will still be content there after the Challenge. The searches are at the top right of Space Prizes blog. There are 2 because Twitter seems to take its 140 character limit idea to its searches, too:

Lunar Lander Challenge Accounts
More Lunar Lander (Masten)