LaserMotive Motivated

Space Elevator Team LaserMotive was once one of the most frequent beam power team blog posters, but understandably they've been recovering from the big effort last year. Now the Space Elevator Blog catches a new post that describes visually and in words their new workshop. Besides the shop, here's an important note from the post:

For those who are interested in maybe joining the LaserMotive team, I will announce shortly an opportunity for people to visit our shop. Check back soon!

Team America Rocketry Challenge and the RocketBlog

Spaceref has a press release from the Aerospace Industries Association on the Team America Rocketry Challenge (TARC) that gives an overview of this year's competition, and some details on who is contributing to the prizes. Meanwhile, the TARC site has a RocketBlog with a recent post asking teams to tell their stories in the "TARC Spotlight Team of the Week".

Getting the Odyssey Moon Word Out

The Google Lunar X PRIZE site has the latest post from Odyssey Moon, this time from Loretta Whitesides. It's on different speaking events, past and future, with Bob Richards.

First Draft of Space Access '08 Speakers

The Space Access Society site has displayed a list of early confirmed speakers for the Space Access '08 conference. More additions are expected later. Here's the list so far:

Confirmed SA'08 presentations so far: Armadillo Aerospace, FAA AST, Flometrics, Frontier Astronautics, Masten Space, Jim Muncy/PoliSpace, Misuzu Onuki, Rocketplane LLC, Space Propellant Depots Panel with Jon Goff, Dallas Bienhoff, Frank Zegler, and Rand Simberg, Space Studies Institute, SpeedUp, Henry Spencer, Unreasonable Rocket, XCOR Aerospace. Keep an eye on this space for more as the conference approaches.

Many of these presenters were in (as competitors or suppliers) the 2007 Lunar Lander Challenge competition. I'm not sure in all cases who will go for it in 2008, but this year's competition will probably be well-represented at Space Access '08.

X PRIZE Foundation YouTube Channel Updates

According to the X PRIZE Foundation YouTube Channel, several videos have been uploaded to the channel recently.

• Added yesterday, here's a video directed at the Google Lunar X PRIZE teams where Peter Diamandis describes the BlastOff Story.
• Here's one where the X PRIZE Foundation gives an overview of the Foundation's vision. It gives a quick look at all of the current X PRIZEs (Lunar, Genomics, and although it doesn't have the "X PRIZE" title, Lunar Lander Challenge), hints about future ones (Automotive, Medical, Education, Energy, Global Entrepreneurship), and a look at the one that was won (Ansari).
• This one describes the Genomics X PRIZE, and the reasons for having it, in detail. This one very quickly hints at X PRIZEs related to Water and Nanotechnology, but that's a second in the 5 minute video mainly on the Genomics prize.

I'm not sure how old the videos are, but the YouTube site says the last 2 were uploaded to that site 3 weeks and 3 days ago, respectively.

There are other recently loaded ones that I happen to already have mentioned in earlier posts.

FREDNET Discussed at Control Engineering

Google Lunar X PRIZE team FREDNET's blog points to an article at Control Engineering, part of which is about the team.

Miltary Prize Roundup

The British MOD (Ministry of Defense) Grand Challenge had some announcements in January. They're looking for a contractor to support the MOD Grand Challenge event. They also made some changes to the MOD Grand Challenge plans based on observing the U.S. DARPA Urban Challenge, such as making it a 2-phase competition.

Here's a blog from one of the MOD Grand Challenge teams - this one from Reading University. The MOD site has much more on all the teams on their teams page.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Wearable Power Prize site has some fairly new updates involving Instructions and Guidelines for teams as they make and send in certain required documents:

Fuel Plan Instructions
System Description White Paper

Finally, in the Military Prizes section on the right I've updated the Singapore TechX Challenge link which apparently moved.

Next Big Future and Liftport Staff on 2008 Space Elevator Games

Colony Worlds has Carnivals of Space 39 and 40. One of the articles in the carivals is by Next Big Future, and it's on the 2008 Space Elevator Games. The post covers some of the material you know already if you've been following the Space Elevator Blog, but if it's new you get the information in a quick format and can go to the SE blog if you want more.

The comments are also interesting. One mentions a related post at the Liftport Staff Blog expressing safety concerns with the difficult and complex 2008 climber challenge.

Centennial Challenges Allied Organization Summit; IPP and FAST Commercial Flight Services

The NASA IPP (Innovative Partnerships Program) Events Page lists the following:

Mar 10-11, 2008: Centennial Challenges Allied Organization Summit, Washington, DC

This is the third annual meeting of representatives from each of the five Allied Organizations (AOs), the non-profit organizations that administer and execute NASA's seven Centennial Challenges (CC) competitions at no cost to NASA. The goal of the meeting is to foster communication and support among the AOs. During the two-day meeting, each AO will provide a status on their organization, their competitions, and on affiliated activities. The CC program office will status the AOs of internal operations that affect them. Discussion will be held to share lessons learned from past experiences and to coordinate future competition plans.

There are some interesting non-prize IPP sections in the 2009 NASA Budget proposal. For example, right after Centennial Challenges is FAST, which I think would be a new $2M program, if it gets funded:

Facilitated Access to Space Environment for Technology Development and Training (FAST)

The Facilitated Access to Space Environment for Technology Development and Training (FAST) program objective is to mature technologies for future space flight use, especially those technologies that need to be proven in the microgravity environment. FAST will provide access to commercial microgravity flight services to advance NASA technologies, reducing risk levels and enabling more verification and validation of these technologies for space flight missions. FAST also facilitates the procurement of commercial space services by NASA to support the development of future space flight-certified technologies.

Judging for the NSS 2009 Space Settlement Art Contest

Artsnova Digital Art and Space has the inside scoop on the judging for the 2009 Space Settlement Art Contest. The winners were recently announced.

Multiple Voices of Space Advocates

Here's an interesting post on the different factions in the pro-space community. Of course NewSpace is one of the factions, and the Lunar Lander Challenge is briefly mentioned in that context. The main point of the post, however, is to show how the focus and interests of the space community have diversified over the years, much as the TV or musical interests of the general public have split into many sub-genres. In both cases this is due not only to technological changes (lower development costs, cable TV, Internet, satellite radio, etc) but also business and cultural shifts. Clearly there are advantages to being able to pursue excactly the area you're mosts interested in, but the post also points out the disadvantages.

More Review of V-Prize Workshop

Spaceports has a summary of the recent workshop on the V-Prize for a point-to-point suborbital trip. Here's something to look forward to, from the post:

The Power Points should be posted on the V-PRIZE web site soon.

Entrepreneur Alert: Cisco I-Prize

Calling all space entrepreneurs ... Cisco recently started a contest called the Cisco I-Prize. Here's the prize that could be on the line:

The winning team may have the opportunity to be hired by Cisco to found a new business unit and share a $250,000 signing bonus. Cisco may invest approximately $10 million over three years to staff, develop, and go to market with a new business based on your idea.

However, it's not easy to win. Phase I "Brainstorming" is almost over already (but it only started a couple months ago, so if you already have well-formulated ideas you've been pitching, you may be ok). You've got to convince them that you have a business plan that's worth their while investing in. Space businesses may be a tough sell ... but space entrepreneurs may have an advantage this time because they've done so much in the "prize" environment. If you have a "dual use" space concept that can work in space but can also work in terrestrial applications, all the better. Here's what they're looking for:

Ideas should have the potential to bring in at least $1 billion revenue to Cisco over a five- to seven-year period, and submissions must use the IP network as a platform.

Ground station infrastructure? In-space communications using IP and linking to ground networks? Some computer application using space data (imagery, GPS, etc.) like Google Earth? I sure don't know, but I think some space businesses could fit the model.

Check out the Cisco I-Prize blog. So far they've seen a lot of ideas in energy, healthcare, automotive (sounds like those non-space X PRIZEs!) and wireless. However, they're not unfamiliar with commercial space.

The California Space Authority has an article about Cisco and space:

- Cisco Increasingly Looks to Military Space Projects: Here's an excerpt:

Sanford said that by putting a so-called Internet protocol router in space, essentially a modified version of commercial technology used on the ground, the project could serve as a sort of test bed for future, multibillion dollar Air Force investments in a fleet of advanced military-communications satellites. He said it's also a way to get the military "user community directly involved" in specific technical issues and planning for future satellite projects.

The Space Show has an interview with Cisco's Richard Sanford.

Here's a CSA pdf on a Cisco space IP press release.

Planetary Defense Blog on Apophis Contest

I covered this earlier, but I'm always up for an excuse to link to a cool blog: Planetary Defense has a post on a Planetary Society press release on asteroid impacts and the upcoming anouncement of Apophis Mission Design Contest winners.

Pomerantz on Lunar X PRIZE, Virtual Lunar Reality, and Kamen

William Pomerantz has another major X PRIZE Foundation post.

One thing that he mentions is that you should check out the redesigned Google Lunar X PRIZE site. It's going to have a lot of activity, because they're going to announce a number of new teams soon. Like Odyssey Moon, the new registered teams will need to keep up regular posting activity at the site, so we know right off the bat there will be a lot of dynamic content on the page for that reason alone.

Spaceref confirms the new teams with a press release about an X PRIZE Foundation event at Google Headquarters to announce the new teams, and not only that, but a new "preferred partner". Preferred partners are organizations that may offer special deals that to help GLXP teams achieve their goal.

Back to Will's post ... he gives a demo of the GLXP requirement to take a 360 degree image with some regular photos of a famous site mosaicked together to make a full-surround scene. He also discusses some of the cool, useful, and important projects that X PRIZE Foundation board member Dean Kamen has worked on, and one promising new one.