Ministry of Defense Grand Challenge

Aviation Week reports that the British Ministry of Defense has issued a Grand Challenge for a sensor platform that can work in urban combat environments. The current rules include a trophy and the possibility of a contract, but (unfortunately, from the point of view of this blog) no cash prize for the winner is mentioned. In that sense it is similar to the current round of the DARPA Grand Challenge. The MOD Challenge is restricted to UK contestants, unlike the DARPA Challenge which already has contestants from several countries.

More on Centennial Challenges funding

The Cosmic Log site (Alan Boyle from MSNBC, general site linked to the right) has an update on the politics of future Centennial Challenges funding. This post also breaks down the funding for the existing Centennial Challenges.

Sites like Space Politics and HobbySpace/RLV News continue to post updates as they occur.

NASAWatch also had a post on the topic. Esssentially this post was for the SFF press release, but it is interesting because (I suspect) a lot of NASA employees would have read that one. I'm not sure what the prevailing attitude of NASA employees is towards Centennial Challenges.

I haven't seen a post from Selenian Boondocks (to the right) on the Centennial Challenges funding issue, but between the obvious MSS/Lunar Lander Challenge connection, and Jon's frequent discussion of in-space refueling and the proposed refueling challenge that is one of the ones that depends on future funding, I'm suspect it's on his mind.

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.

NSS/NASA Space Settlement Contest

The Winter 2006 Ad Astra magazine from the National Space Society has an article about the 2006 NASA-NSS Space Settlement Contest. This contest is for students grade 6-12, and will be held again in 2007. The winning space settlement designs are featured on the NSS web page here and the NASA web page here. Resources for teachers are available at both sites.

Prize discussion on The Space Show

Dr. Jeff Bell was the guest on a recent Space Show radio broadcast. An important part of the interview concerned prizes, including the Wirefly X Prize Cup Centennial Challenges prize attempts and NASA's Centennial Challenges in general. Dr. Bell is critical of Centennial Challenges, but he doesn't seem to have an objection to the concept of these space prizes or how they are managed. Instead, his main criticism is that the prize award for Centennial Challenges is too low, which is more of a political criticism than a management one. As a result of the low prize value (compared to other space projects), the prizes are not ambitious enough to make the essential advances the space community needs. Dr. Bell also thinks the larger NASA COTS contracts with mandatory milestones rather than a cost-plus approach are too small to achieve their objective (commercial ISS resupply), even with associated private investments. It's true Centennial Challenges is a tiny part of the government space budget, and larger, more ambitious space prize competitions would be welcome by prize supporters. This year's X Prize Cup happened not long after the Lunar Lander Challenge was started (by space industry project standards), so it will also be interesting to see how much progress the competitors have made by next year's event.

More Politics and Centennial Challenges

There have been more blog discussions about the Senate Appropriations committee eliminating Centennial Challenge prize funding for new NASA prize competitions planned for 2007. The Senate and House will have to reconcile their differences on this issue, and apparently a lot of people interested in space want to make sure the new prizes are funded. Rick from the Space Frontier Foundation is asking constituents to convince their Senators (especially if they are on the Appropriations Committee) to fund the NASA space prizes. The SFF tends to only support the most productive fraction of government spending, which is an indication that the prizes are being run efficiently and deserve to be continued. Here are some ideas from a poster at HobbySpace on making your voice heard.

This is for U.S. voters, but it would be interesting to see other government space programs try prizes. Many of the classic technology prizes were offered by European sponsors. Is anyone from ESA listening?

Stay tuned because I think there will be more to come ...

National Space Society Space Art contest

I got a mass email from the NSS (NSS Downlink Issue #68) that describes an NSS Space Art contest. The theme is space settlements, divided by location (orbit, asteroids, Moon, and Mars). There are 12 prizes of varying levels, including cash, software, suborbital launch of a small object, and having the art published in the 2008 NSS Space Settlement Calendar.

ISRU Centennial Challenge update

Spaceports has an interesting update on the MoonROx challenge. If you want to learn more about the subject so you can try to win a quarter of a million dollars, look up "Resources of Near-Earth Space" from the Space Science series from the University of Arizona. Even if you don't win you'll be well on your way to a Chemical Engineering degree.

Politics and Centennial Challenges

Here are some blog discussions about Centennial Challenges and Congressional funding:

- Space Politics has a discussion on what has actually happened between NASA and Congress in the area of new Centennial Challenges

- Space Politics also has an earlier discussion on Centennial Challenges funding

- RLV News has a related discussion here here and here

NASA Aeronautics Contest

Space News reports that NASA is going to have a new round of a contest for high school and college students in various areas of aeronautics, including aspects of Mars missions. Apparently this competition has been held for several years, but this is the first I've heard of it. Winning prizes range from $1,000 to $5,000, and possibly a NASA internship.

DARPA Grand Challenge may lose its prize

DARPA is planning to follow its original Grand Challenge with a new contest for moving a robotic car in urban traffic. However, it appears that the $2.75 million in prize money has hit a pothole. The prize incentive is gone, but 11 teams have been selected for what amounts to traditional grant funding. The contest is still on, but it's hard to see real competitive or entrepreneurial spirit thriving when some of the teams have such an advantage. It would be like trying to build a private rocket when the government funds space shuttles to compete against you. You'd be better off staying home and playing rocket (or Army car) video games. Also, in addition to the incentive of the prize, most of the prestige of winning comes from the high value of the prize. It's still a worthy goal, but from here it looks like the excitement is gone. Hopefully the prize gets revived later.

X Prize Cup Deluge; Mars Society Rover competition

With the X Prize Cup about to start, there are more news stories about the event than I can keep up with, and the main event hasn't even started yet. Rather than try to keep up, I'll just point you to the various blogs and other news sources like RLV News/Hobbyspace, Lunar Lander Challenge, and the rest (linked on the right). Many of them are in New Mexico at the X Prize Cup and will be making updates as they happen. It looks like it's going to be a fun and suspenseful event, with space prize competitions and much more. It's well worth keeping up with at these other sites. The X Prize Cup site itself will have a live webcast so people like me can watch from a distance.

Instead of covering the X Prize Cup, the one item I'll point out is a space prize by the Mars Society, which will be holding a Mars Rover competition simulating a rover controlled by Mars astronauts with a $5,000 prize for the winning team. It's starting to get tough to even keep track of all of the space prizes! I think there will be a lot of prestige value for the university, department, and students that win this one (to say nothing of the fun of making a rover).

Along with the X Prize Cup

Along with the X Prize Cup, where the Lunar Lander Challenge and Space Elevator competitions are going to be held along with many other space-related events, are a couple of space conferences. One is the International Symposium for Personal Spaceflight (ISPS) which will be held right before the X Prize Cup in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Check out the agenda, which includes some people and organizations related to prizes (prize spoinsors, former competitors, and companies no doubt inspired by the X Prize). In addition, as noted by Spaceports, there is the Wirefly X Prize Cup Executive Summit, a more "exclusive" event that, among other things, addresses the question "Can prizes help drive these breakthroughs?" in technologies needed to improve spaceflight. With NASA Administrator Mike Griffin, Peter Diamandis, Al Gore, Anousheh Ansari, and many others present, it will be interesting to see if anyone comes bearing gifts in the form of new, well thought-out space prizes. It would be the perfect time and place for such an announcement in terms of a friendly audience and available news media. In Dr. Griffin's case, it would just be bad form NOT to have some kind of announcement in that NASA-skeptical crowd.

The Space Elevator Reference

NASA Watch.com points us to the Space Elevator Reference. This Internet resource has a number of posts about the Space Elevator Games at the X Prize Cup:

• Space Elevator Games to Spur a New Generation of Space Travel
• Punkworks Space Elevator Games Entry Open House
• 15 Teams to Participate in Space Elevator Games
• The Space Elevator Climber Competition and Sponsorship
• Space Elevator Games Update T-Minus 18 Days
• Space Elevator Games Sponsorship Part 2
• NASA Ups Space Elevator Challenge to $4 Million over 5 Years
• The Centennial Challenges and the Space Elevator

You can be pretty sure that this site will continue to keep us up to date on the power beaming and tether Challenges at this year's X Prize Cup, so keep checking there!

A busy week in the space world

It's been a busy week in the space world, and a busy week in the space prize world, too. For the latest in general space news, check out the "Other Space News" links on the right. (Occasionally there will be news about space prizes at these sites, too). Here are some of the recent events in the space prize world:

Lunar Lander Challenge has an update on that central space prize competition at the upcoming X Prize Cup. Masten Space Systems will not be competing for the Lunar Lander Challenge. The Lunar Lander Challenge was not announced all that long ago, so the competitors haven't had a lot of time to design and implement their entries. Hopefully there will be a follow-on challenge next year.

The X Prize Cup now is called the Wirefly X Prize Cup. I guess that's a sponsor.

RLV News notes that Armadillo LLC, a prominent Lunar Lander Challenge competitor, has a new web page. The second anniversary of the winning Ansari X Prize flight is also discussed there.

Jonathan Goff has more about MSS and the Lunar Lander Challenge.

Anousheh Ansari has some words about her landing, the the next X Prize, and all of our responsibilities after the trip.

Jack Kennedy at Spaceports has an overview about the upcoming Lunar Lander Challenge.

Finally, Space.com has an article that discusses the Space Elevator Games at the upcoming X Prize Cup.