Saturday, June 30, 2007

New York Times on Centennial Challenges

Regolith Excavation Challenger TechRanch reports that the New York Times magazine plans an article on the Centennial Challenges program, and had a photographer at the house of the person behind TechRanch. Sam Dinkins also posts about this NYT article at Transterrestrial Musings, noting Rand's involvement with the Astronaut Glove Challenge.

The video: The Winning Hand

The article: The Amateur Future of Space Travel

I haven't had a chance to read it, but a skim shows it covers Centennial Challenges overall, other prizes like DARPA's challenges and the possible H-Prize, the Astronaut Glove Challenge, the Space Elevator Games (including teams like the Kansas City Space Pirates), and the Regolith Excavation Challenge. I may comment more later, but for now I'll just note that at 8 pages (plus a video) it's more detailed than most news articles.

Update (July 1): Well, now I've read the full article and watched the video, and all I can say is I recommend you read (and watch) it too. The Space Elevator Blog has some comments on the article, especially the part involving Beam Power team the Kansas City Space Pirates.

By the way, I'm not sure if it was there before, but the Kansas City Space Pirates web page has a nice slide show of pictures on their home page. (S

Transterrestial Musings points out another article at the International Herald Tribune by Jack Hitt (author of the NYT article). This one seems to be a version of the longer NYT article that is more focused on Peter Homer and the Astronaut Glove Challenge.