Responsive Space student scholarship

Like the Smallsat conference, the Responsive Space conference is planning to have awards for student papers at the conference. The awards are available based on the merit of the papers to college students. Each winner can get $500 plus up to $1000 for expenses for presenting the paper at the conference. Check here for details.

Space Advertising for Centennial Challenges

Leonard David has an article on a talk at the 23rd National Space Symposium by Representative Ken Calvert. This talk proposes new space advertising by NASA to fund Centennial Challenges. If funded this year at the Administration's proposed level, Centennial Challenges would have gotten $4 million in the last 3 years, which is a tiny percentage of NASA's tiny portion of the Federal budget, a fact that many space interest organizations are disappointed about since many of them feel that Centennial Challenges are one of, if not the, most productive use of their tax dollars. Here is the full text of Representative Calvert's talk. The prize-related proposal is on pages 2 and 3. Space Politics also has an ongoing discussion about the proposal. Jim Muncy has added some thoughtful comments to the discussion. The original full text of the talk is 8 pages long. Here is an excerpt concerning the proposal:

"... Advertising in space could be one way in which NASA elevates its current visibility among typical Americans. The government could make space assets available for commercial advertising and marketing opportunities. Currently commercial launch vehicles have several logos that represent customers, satellite and launch manufacturers, which is a good first step.

Perhaps the next step is the creation of an advertising system similar to those used by the PGA, National Public Radio or the Smithsonian Institute - all of which have long-term, dedicated and tasteful sponsorships. Of course, I understand this is an area that draws concern about safety and public image issues. By no means do I envision bumper stickers on the Mars Rover or a blinking neon sign on the International Space Station.

When I return to Congress after the recess, I will introduce legislation to authorize space advertising for NASA with the goal to bring in extra funding for the Agency’s prize authority under the current Centennial Challenges program and to raise awareness among private entrepreneurs about the business opportunities in space. The legislation will also create a commission to recommend criteria appropriate for space advertising.

Currently the Centennial Challenges program conducts prize competitions for revolutionary, break-through accomplishments that advance the Vision for Space Exploration and other NASA priorities. The Centennial Challenges program authorized by Congress and implemented by NASA to engage private enterprise is, as are all Agency programs, subject to the congressional appropriations process. However, my proposal would create a trust fund – the Innovation Fund - for the receipts of space advertising revenue which would allow the prize authority to increase without the dependence on annual appropriations. The result would be a self-sustaining prize authority program funded well above the current request of $20 million for the next five years.

Sponsorships through space advertising could take many forms – for example, a company could sponsor a Space Cam on the International Space Station that could be accessed by classrooms around the world for educational purposes. Universities who study atmospheric changes could partner with private enterprise to sponsor a multi-spectral camera for observation. As a former business man, I could easily see how this fund could generate $100 million after it’s up and running. I envision that most advertisements could be virtual thus not adding weight to launches or mass to vehicles. In fact, the very first challenge could be to design the program itself or to have one of our space entrepreneurs deliver a camera to the International Space Station."

Space Elevator blog continues to crank out articles

The Space Elevator blog (link to the right) has been pounding out posts. A lot of their posts are relevant to Space Prizes, and specifically the 2 Space Elevator Centennial Challenges. I advise you to check with them regularly. Here is a sampling of their recent prize-related posts:

possible German space elevator competition with draft rules linked
2006 Space Elevator games video
22 teams registered for 2007 Space Elevator challenges
21 teams registered from around the world
expect carbon nanotubes at Space Elevator tether challenge?
Ken Davidian on the Space Show and comments on the Space Elevator challenge (Ken's comments make total sense to me and show how both NASA and allied organizations benefit from the Centennial Challenges - and as I mentioned in an earlier post this is a very interesting interview)

... and many more. Just check it out periodically if you're interested in Space Elevators, NASA Centennial Challenges, space applications of tethers (space elevators or not), or space applications of beamed power (space elevators or not).

some Lunar Lander Challenge links

Having posted about Armadillo and Masten, I thought it would be good to post links to some of the other Lunar Lander Challenge competitors. This is not an official list; it's just the teams I know of that have announced interest in the 2007 challenge. I think all of them were at Space Access '07, but I missed them (and a lot of other talks). I have not followed this particular space prize that closely because I still hope the excellent Lunar Lander Challenge blog will be doing that (I have a family, full time work, school, hobbies, etc ... I can't cover every space prize the way I'd like!). Here are the ones I've heard of for 2007:

Paragon Labs
SpeedUp
Unreasonable Rocket
Armadillo Aerospace
Masten Space Systems (Also see Selenian Boondocks at the right).

more on 2 vehicle races

Cosmic Log has posted more on the Automotive X PRIZE draft rules that were just release, and also the DARPA Urban Challenge. They are 2 entirely different challenges, but it gets one thinking in different ways when you read about the 2 challenges in the same article. Of course there are other challenges like the British MOD Grand Challenge and Singapore's TechX Challenge, as well as interest (if not available funding) in a Centennial Challenge for a Lunar Vehicle that at least in part remind one of the DARPA challenge.

SmallSat Student Scholarship Competition

The Annual Conference on Small Satellites held in Logan, Utah has a student competition called the Frank J. Redd Student Scholarship Competition. This competition has been help several years so far. It it open to graduate and undergraduate students, and involves writing a paper. Finalists present their papers at the conference. In addition to the chance of winning a significant amount of scholarship money, working towards the competition and potentially winning a prize offers good resume material. I haven't gone to it, but the SmallSat Conference comes highly recommended from many sources. It should be a good networking opportunity for students that are serious about small satellites and related ground infrastructure and applications. The competition site has information for those interested in contributing to the scholarship competition fund.

Major X PRIZE Web Site update

The X PRIZE Foundation web site has a bunch of updates that are worth checking out, in addition to the updates directly related to the Automotive X PRIZE draft rules release. There's an active ticker of X PRIZE Press releases that, at the moment, has a large number of articles from around the world about the release of the Automotive X PRIZE draft rules. It also has a ticker entry for the recent Space Review article on the Lunar Lander Challenge.

The front page of the web site also has a number of celebrity photos and notes from the X PRIZE fundraiser at Google headquarters.

The site also includes a new section on the 2007 Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge. I don't see them yet, but at Space Access '07 Will Pomerantz mentioned that they intend to promote the Lunar Lander Challenge contestant teams more, and they would have sections for the teams on the web site.

The "Judging" section of the Lunar Lander page gives some hints about prizes the Foundation is considering, although it surely all depends on available funding and all sorts of other hurdles. At any rate, the section mentions "In development are the rules for sub-orbital races including fastest time to sub-orbital space and return; highest sub-orbital altitude attained; most passengers carried to sub-orbital altitude and return in a single flight; most passengers carried to sub-orbital flight and return during a fixed time period; fastest turn-around times between sub-orbital flights; and other sub-orbital challenges and design awards. Sub-orbital races will be extended to point-to-point races, eventually between spaceports around the country."

Space Review on the Lunar Lander Challenge

Jeff Foust at The Space Review reports on several of the teams competing for this year's Lunar Lander Challenge prizes at the X PRIZE Cup, including Armadillo Aerospace, Masten Space Systems, SpeedUp, Paragon Labs, Unreasonable Rocket, and others. Much of the report is inspired by talks and discussions at this year's Space Access Society conference. Jeff was also on a panel at this conference.

National Space Society logo contest

Hobbyspace/Space for All informs us about a National Space Society contest to design the next logo for the society, called the NSS Banner Redesign Contest. There are several prizes for the top winners.

Automotive X PRIZE

A couple days ago Alan Boyle reported that the X PRIZE Foundation was about to reveal the draft rules for the Automotive X PRIZE to encourage manufacturable, marketable, consumer-ready, environment-friendly, 100 mpg (or equivalent fuel efficiency) cars. The article gives a lot of background on the development of the prize. Today the draft rules were released, and can be viewed at the X PRIZE Foundation site. Here is the press release that accompanied the release. The purse size is "likely to be in excess of $10 million". There will be "mainstream" (4 passenger, 4 wheel) and "alternative" competitions, with 3 out of 4 dollars going to the winner of the mainstream competition. There will be Qualifying and Grand Prize races, with the winner of the Grand Prize race getting significantly more winnings than the winner of the Qualifying race. There may be "2nd tier" awards for characteristics like lowest estimated lifetime cost, lowest carbon dioxide emissions, lowest tailpipe emissions, and highest MPG equivalent, "people's choice", and best in various vehicle classes like family sedan. The Foundation plans to arrange significant media exposure (web media, traditional media, documentaries, certifications, awards for progress on various fronts) to all teams that make significant advances, not just the winning teams.

As with the Ansari X PRIZE and Archon Genomics X PRIZE, they are going with the nice round "100" (100 MPG equivalent, just like 100 km altitude and 100 human genomes).

Other Automotive X PRIZE links:

Background on Automotive X PRIZE

Overview of the competition

Complete (37 page) Draft Rules

Automotive X PRIZE Blog

Automotive X PRIZE sponsors and donors, and links so you can help

Masten Space Systems and Lunar Lander Challenge

Spaceports has an article on Masten Space Systems and their goal to win a Centennial Challenges Lunar Lander Challenge prize, as well as to provide quick turnaround space access services.

Arts in Space awards

The National Space Society's ISDC 2007 conference has an Arts in Space program. Among other things, this program includes the "Leonardo Da Vinci Space Art Awards" ceremony. There are a number of award categories, including "Space Art Life Dedication", "Space Art Advocate", Space Art Organization", "Zero Gravity Art", "Annual ISDC Artonaut", "Space Art Scholastic and Curatorial Awards", and "Special Space Art Award".

Space Access '07 - Jerry Pournelle

Jerry Pournelle is famous as a science fiction author and computer columnist. At least that's what I know him for. However, at Space Access '07 he showed that he says and does a lot of interesting things in the space field, including with prizes.

Jerry discussed a prize idea as "the quickest way to space". He has been pounding the prize message for a long time - maybe since 1980. He discussed the Longitude Prize.

One prize idea would be a $10 Billion prize for a moon colony with 31 people on the moon for 3 years and 1 day, or $5 Billion for 12 people. Jerry had other prize ideas for a space station, suborbital prizes and reusable space vehicle prizes.

The X PRIZE put prizes in the public view, so Congress is aware of the idea. We could use that fact to help prizes. Prizes are the best way, but they are difficult politically, especially in large dollar amounts. They are not impossible. However, the budget is not ready for authorizations without appropriations.

An audience member had a question on Jeff Bezos or similar wealthy individuals interested in space funding prizes. Jerry's answer was that he's tried with the Gates Foundation, but didn't succeed.

I just summarized the aspects of Jerry's talk that pertained to prizes. Please see these links for more on his talk.

RLV News
Why Homeschool

Space Access '07 - Jim Muncy

Jim Muncy of Polispace had a talk on the politics of organizations like NASA and how they affect the entrepreneurial space community. I'll just summarize the prize-related aspects of this talk.

Last year Jim recommended not confronting NASA about their in-house development plans for Ares and Orion vehicles, since they were going to be supporting the entrepreneurial community with COTS and prizes. Now these progams look uncertain as Ares and Orion are using up much of the rest of NASA's budget, including these promising programs. At first NASA was for the prize idea. However, Congress didn't know which district the prize money will be spent in, or when it will be spent, so they have little interest in prizes. Therefore, Congress is in part at fault. Prizes don't make sense to Congress and their interests, since their job is politics. They make some decisions on substance, but many on politics. Since they don't know who will win a prize, they don't know who to "invite to their fundraiser". Jim doesn't think prizes are the "solution to all problems", but they are a useful tool. According to Jim NASA never explained to Congress about the multiple contestants in multiple districts, and the media help. Therefore Congress is not funding Centennial Challenges, and now NASA has stopped asking for Centennial Challenges money. (Ray's note: For this year they are asking for $4 million, but given the lack of any funding for a couple years, and the fact that $4 million is much less than the original concept of the challenges, you could say that they have come pretty close to what Jim said). On COTS, it seems that NASA would rather go with ISS partners than buy from U.S. private companies. Ares and Orion are eating the rest of NASA's budget (Ray's note: including prizes and numerous other programs) to meet the arbitrary goal of ISS gap reduction. However, if they really wanted to reduce the U.S. ISS human transportation gap so much why didn't they use $2-5 billion to set up prizes to do it? This goes back to the Congressional districts.

Please see the following links for more information about this talk, including many parts I didn't cover because I focused on prizes. (The rest of the talk is also interesting, but I want to focus on prizes because I can't possibly effectively cover a broader subject with the time I have available for this hobby).

Why Homeschool
RLV News

radio show introducing Space Access '07

The Space Show has a recent interview of Henry Vanderbilt, organizer of the Space Access conferences, that was held shortly before the Space Access '07 conference. This interview gives a good background on the overall "mood" of the industry at the time of the conference. It also gives an idea of what to expect for future Space Access conferences. The interview did not focus on space prizes, but they were brought up incidentally. In one case, a caller asked what they could do as a space activist to help the space access entrepreneurs, given that they aren't working in one of the companies. One possibility Henry suggested is calling their Congresspeople in support of NASA's Centennial Challenges prize program and the COTS program.