Aubrey de Grey on the Colbert Report

The latest post on the Methuselah Foundation blog features a fun interview of de Grey by Steven Colbert. The interview doesn't cover the Foundation's M prize, but that is briefly mentioned in the rest of the post.

Tony Spears on the CMU Lunar X PRIZE Entry

Guest blogger Robin at RLV News posts about an article in the Carnegie Mellon University student paper The Tartan about Tony Spears discussing the CMU Moon Prize Team. The talk was at CMU. Here's a quote that I thought was interesting, especially since Mars Pathfinder's landing doesn't seem all that long ago to me:

“It’s a very fun project. As a child, I created a LEGO model of Spear’s Pathfinder robot,” said John Thornton, a Carnegie Mellon alumnus and research engineer on the project. “It is a chance of a lifetime to work with Tony Spear, the man who was behind that,” he added.

UK Space Conference 2008 Space Prizes, Awards, and Competitions

Here's an article from Rocketry Planet about the UK Aerospace Youth Rocketry Challenge (UKAYRoC), which is similar to the Team America Rocketry Challenge. There's more on it on their blog.

This is happening at the UK Space Conference 2008, which also features the Student Space Experiment Competition where the winner actually gets to have their experiment launched on a smallsat, and the Sir Arthur Clarke Awards for "Recognising UK achievements in Space".

If that's not enough space prize aspects of this conference, one of the guest speakers is William Pomerantz from the X PRIZE Foundation. The program also mentions the Eggs Prize (I'm not sure if they mean the X PRIZE Foundation EGGS PRIZE, or if they mean TARC or UKAYRoC, both of which involve launching model rockets without breaking egg payloads). There's also a water rocket competition.

It sounds like a lot of fun! Not only that, but there are lots of interesting speakers there that I won't go into any details about because I can't think of any current or future prize connections for them (I could mention Alex Tai from Virgin Galactic because of the Ansari X PRIZE connection, but I don't want to start covering Scaled Composites and Virgin Galactic because they're well-covered elsewhere already, and doing too much for me to keep up with).

Update: The X PRIZE Foundation news ticker links to this overview of the event.

NSS Space Elevator Team Recruiting

The Space Elevator Blog has more on the National Space Society Space Elevator team, including details about their search for more team members. Both LaserMotive and the NSS team have had recent announcements of recruiting efforts -- what about the other teams?

Automotive X PRIZE: Tesla, Zap, TriTrack, Congressional Prize Proposal, and More

There's more at the X PRIZE Cars blog, including a big news roundup, including Elon Musk's Tesla getting its first production car built (guess who gets it) and the associated celebration, and a potential Tesla IPO. There's also news of a proposal by Rep. Dan Lungren to take the X PRIZE Foundation's Automotive X PRIZE idea to $1 Billion. There are news links about Zap, AXP video links, and more.

X PRIZE Cars blog also gets an update, and covers the Roane Inventions TriTrack.

Unreasonable Helicopter Autopilot Flying

Unreasonable Rocket recently made more progress.

V Prize Workshop Slides

The V-Prize folks promised to post the slides from the recent V-Prize workshop, and it looks like they're there. The topics address questions like

What is the 'V'?
Why Virginia?
Why have a suborbital point to point prize?
What is the status of the V Prize effort?
What should the rules of the prize be?
How will the prize money be raised?
What's the schedule?

However, some of these - especially the rules and financing - remain questions, at least as far as the slides are concerned. Presumably they were discussed in the workshop (in fact Will Pomerantz's post gave some insight into these discussions).

Odyssey Moon at Next Generation Exploration Conference

Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides sends out an article in Wired Science about the Next Generation Exploration Conference as NASA Ames. One of the speakers is Bob Richards from Lunar X PRIZE team Odyssey Moon.

LaserMotive Recruiting

The Space Elevator Blog mentions a post from Beam Power/Climber team LaserMotive. The LaserMotive post is about an open house they'll have to recruit new members, on Saturday, Feb 23 at their new shop (discussed in a previous post). The SE Blog also has an interview with Jordan Kare from LaserMotive dealing with their laser vendor selection (DILAS), the Photonics West conference, and their general plans.

Valentine's Day Space Prize News Roundup

There are a lot of great things in the prize world to post about, and a lot of them deserve separate posts, but I hurt my back dealing with, of all things, some cat litter, so I skipped yesterday and am making it quick today. I'll by lying down more than sitting at the computer.

The Space Elevator Blog tells us about a surprise team in the 2008 Climber Competition: The National Space Society. The specifics are a surprise, but I've been expecting space advocate societies to get into the prize business on the team side for a while (I think I even posted about it - ?). Actually I thought it would have happened a long time ago. It's a great activity for societies or chapters to get involved with, and makes a great story in magazines or other society communication media. The SE Blog gives details on the team and their approach.

RLV News and the Space Elevator Blog post on the Kansas City Space Pirates' agreement with TRUMPF to us an industrial laser during the 2008 Climber competition, which helps with one part of the competition but presents some other engineering challenges.

RLV News also posts on a Space Fellowship interveiew of Google Lunar X PRIZE team FREDNET. It's an open source project, so ITAR is an issue that is discussed. The team's progress so far, what parts of the job are they going to do in-house vs. buying off-the-shelf systems, what is their schedule, and what their plans are after the prize.

The X PRIZE Foundation has the latest update from Odyssey Moon. Will we see "One small step for Isle of Man"? The post covers some of the bigger reasons to go back to the Moon, and they aren't about "the human spirit of exploration" or anything impractical-sounding like that.

One of the commenters at this RLV News post about UK space plans notes that prizes are mentioned in the 2008-2012 and beyond UK Civil Space Strategy. It states:

The NSTP will be a national programme to support the development of common space technologies and new services. It will identify emerging technologies and opportunities, and use R&D grants and prizes to enable technology development and knowledge exchange between commercial, Government and academic organisations.

One of the 5 parts of the NSTP is:

competitions and prizes to stimulate innovation and wider interest in the benefits of space.

Space Elevator Jr.

The Space Elevator Blog has a notice on the side about a student competition called Space Elevator Jr. It seems to be something along the lines of a smaller version of the Space Elevator Games' climber competition. It still sounds very challenging to me. It's part of the Earth and Space Conference to be held in Long Beach, CA on March 3-5. Here's more information on the competition.

There's also an Active Vibration Control Student Competition.

Get Your Lunar Legacy

William Pomerantz, with a timely post, tells us about some of the reasons people are getting Google Lunar X PRIZE Lunar Legacies, from Valentine's Day wishes, to ways to remember loved ones that have been lost, to friends, to the next generation. Check the post, especially if you don't know about the Lunar Legacy.

University of Cincinnati Department Goes for Prizes

This PDF newsletter from the University of Cincinnati Mechanical Engineering department features a lot of prize competitions:

• the PACE Console Design Competition (for the center console of GM vehicles)
• 2007 Formula SAE Competition (designing and making a Formula One race car)
• DARPA Urban Challenge (computer-controlled cars driving in an urban environment)
• Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition (IGVC; computer-controlled ground vehicles with military objectives)
• U.S Department of Energy Solar Decathlon (solar home competition)

I have to say that if you're doing a senior project, graduate thesis, or similar major academic effort with the potential for hands-on "real-work" application of theories learned in other classes, getting involved with a prize competition seems like a great way to give motivation and focus for your work.

CNN Money on Red Whittaker

CNN Money has a career history of William "Red" Whittaker in "Whittaker Unleashes the Robots". This covers his DARPA Urban Challenge work in a reasonable amount of detail, and gives a little space to his Google Lunar X PRIZE work.

It's good to see some prize-related content appearing in the "Money" section rather than the "Science" or "Space" sections.

PacBio Eyeing the Genomics X PRIZE?

The X PRIZE Foundation links to an article in The Ledger that describes the race, in the business world as well as the Genomics X PRIZE, to be able to sequence a human genome for $1,000. Although it reviews several companies, a lot of the article focuses on PacBio, which isn't registered as one of the Genomics X PRIZE competitors. However, the article says:

Pacific BioSciences, which was founded in 2004, says it can make the leap. “If we ever make this work, there would be no other technology applicable in the sequencing field,” said Hugh C. Martin, the chief executive.

Mr. Martin, who previously ran ONI Systems, a telecommunications equipment company, is nothing if not self-assured. “When we’re ready,” he said, “we’re just going to win the X Prize.”