Tuesday, 19 February 2008

2007_02_04_archive



the latest Centennial Challenges budget news

RLV News has gone through the Administration's 2008 NASA Budget

Proposal and picked out the areas from this massive document related

to Centennial Challenges. The 2008 Centennial Challenges proposal is

for $4 million, or under 1/4000th of NASA's proposed budget (which in

turn is an invisible feather on the total 2008 Federal Budget

elephant). Looked at another way, it's a couple hours of Ares I/Orion

development. The document suggests that new challenges will be issued

in areas like Solar Sails, Micro Reentry Vehicles, and Lunar ATVs.

However, the Solar Sail challenge alone was originally envisioned to

be 2 prizes for 2 goals totaling $5 million (not much for an actual

space demonstration), so the challenges might be rolled out ... very

... slowly ...

Posted by Ray at 8:25 PM

Labels: Politics, space innovation prizes

2007 Lunar Lander Challenge registration opens

The X Prize has a news release on the opening of registration for the

2007 Lunar Lander Challenge competion. Spaceref has a post on the

release as does the X Prize Foundation. There are also rule changes

for this year allowing repairs to the vehicle after the first hop ...

as long as the repair materials are brought on the first hop, and not

counted as payload. Northrop Grumman, builder (in an earlier form) of

the Apollo Lunar Module, is the title sponsor for the event again. RLV

News also informs us about this news and is tracking the competitors.

Posted by Ray at 8:08 PM

Labels: events, Lunar Lander Challenge, space innovation prizes

Another suborbital ride

Personal Spaceflight has a post on the over-taxed suborbital space

ride prize winner (Brian Emmett) getting a second chance at reaching


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