8/02/2008 09:09:00 PM
via OnOrbit.com
8/02/2008 06:22:00 PM
A collection of photos posted live via phone from EAA AirVenture 2008. All photos credit: D. Trujillo, X PRIZE Foundation.
The Armadillo X-Racer at EAA AirVenture 2008.
Maragaret presents Google Lunar X PRIZE Team LunaTrex at EAA AirVenture 2008
Rich presents Google Lunar X PRIZE Team FREDNET at EAA AirVenture 2008.
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Will, Margaret, and Rich doing Q&A during a Google Lunar X PRIZE panel at EAA AirVenture 2008.
Jeff Greason from XCOR presents at EAA AirVenture 2008.
Table-top decorations at the Rocket Racing League Party after EAA AirVenture 2008.
8/01/2008 05:45:00 PM
While Will and Nicky and Peter are out in Oshkosh checking out rocket racers and whatnot, we at the X PRIZE offices in Santa Monica had the pleasure of meeting Beasley, the 3 month old (can you believe it??) Saint Bernard owned by Progressive Insurance Automotive X PRIZE director Cristin Lindsay.
8/01/2008 07:45:00 AM
Late last night, my fiancee and I arrived in Wisconsin for our first ever trip to EAA AirVenture, otherwise known simply as Oshkosh. We're excited to be here.
If you are one of the ~700,000 people here at Oshkosh with us, be sure to join us for the Google Lunar X PRIZE panels that will take place today and tomorrow. I'll be joined by representatives from several of the teams, and we'll give the crowd a nice update on what's going. Even better, we'll let out just in time to go and watch the Rocket Racer fly.
Today's Google Lunar X PRIZE panel runs from 1:00pm to 2:15pm local time, and will be held in location #29, also known as "Voyager - Space Ship One." Not too shabby a location name, if you ask me!
There will also be a panel tomorrow, from 11:30-12:45 local, in a different location--location #5, the REMOS Aircraft Pavilion.
I'll also be doing a radio interview tomorrow morning on WOSH at around 9:45am.
I'm going to try to live blog with photos throughout the day today, so check back frequently!
7/31/2008 01:06:00 PM
The next in our series from NewSpace 2008, Will Pomerantz sat down with Bob Richards and James Antifaev of Google Lunar X PRIZE team Odyssey Moon.
Part 2 after the jump...
7/31/2008 11:00:00 AM
Hey all, the fun's just about to begin. Stay tuned here for live updates from the press briefing.
Panel:
Michael Meyer
Peter Smith
William Boynton
Victoria Hipkin
Mark Lemmon
Meyer talking about the mission now. Says it's successful.
Mission being extended to end of fiscal year. Says there's plenty of power left.
More after the jump....
Handing over to Peter Smith, Principal Investigator. He's thanking everyone.
Phoenix will be investigating two new trenches. Possibly different ice properties.
Complete panoramas are completed. Weather investigation ongoing for 65 sols. Expected to find water, and they did.
Probe on the end of robotic arm is investigating soil as well as ice. Microscopes are finding clay-like components. Unexpected properties. Just starting to apply the atomic force microscope which increases resolution by a factor of 40.
Analysis hopes to answer the question: is this a habitable zone? (ie. periodic liquid water and basic ingredients for lifeforms)
Finding sodium, potassium, magnesium, etc. nutrients important for life. Says NO organic materials yet.
Blade on scoop grabbing hard materials, scrapign and rasping to find the ice.
now showing a series of photos of the scraping and digging process.
Several scoops taken. At the bottom is a dark patch of ice. Changes properties (blue to white to red) as it sublimates into the atmosphere throughout the day.
Coming up: Bill Boynton, lead scientist on TEGA
CONFIRMED ICE SAMPLE INTO TEGA OVEN.
Showing awesome animation of how the TEGA sampler works.
Explaining the small setbacks in soil/ice analysis. Yesterday mornign they announced they indeed had a sample. and there was ice in it. Not sure how much, at most a few percent. But ICE IS CONFIRMED. Noticed by melting.
Everything named after fairy tales. This sample is called "Wicked Witch." named for the witch in hansel and gretel who gets pushed into the oven.
Boynton putting on witch regalia: :)
Hipkin now up.
Discussing all the instruments on Phoenix. Landed in late springtime on Mars. Now at sol 65. heading toward sol 74 which is where they expect to see maximum water vapor in the atmosphere.
Showing lidar images now.
Can see 1.5km of lidar beam and also the sky. Can see some of wind direction also. Image can also help understand the composition of particles in the air.
Summary: Late spring to mid summer. Daily measurements of wind, vertical profiles, dust and cloud structure, temperature, pressure, etc.
Combined measurements over time will give understanding of full seasons.
Maximum wind speeds 7m/s (15mph). Wind can tell you how to interpret a lot of the data. Image showing local topgraphy:
Valley sides are 250m high. Local topography is influencing some of the data. Slopes of valley sides are influencing windspeeds. Also affecting temperature data.
Lemmon discussing cameras and SSI
1 megapixel. RGB sent/captured separately
over 100 different directions and 500 photos used to make panoramas.
final panorama is 150 megapixel. and a few hundred megabytes.
[sorry for the low res picture, I'm sure NASA will release the high res soon]
Shallow troughs in ground indicate ice. On right side of image more trenches that confirmed ice.
CO2 ice burial? Rocks are confusing. Many larger rocks, unclear how wind has affected them. Phoenix will look for smaller scale change also. Fraction of seasonal scale changes. Images taken during warmest time of year. Hopefully frost will appear later.
Panoramic photos can put everything in context.
What next? Ongoing imaging. Take another panorama. They expect (no guarantees) a panorama called "happily ever after" that will be 1500 images taken through all geology filters and 2/3 of a gigabyte. That's a massive photo!
Floor is open for questions.
To Boynton: Has TEGA shown that there is a chemical composition of ice, or just the energy differential?
Boynton: Melting point at 0C leaves little doubt that it is ice.
Q: Will the current sample be able to test all kinds of chemical properties or do we need another? Impurities in ice?
A: More tests on current sample, then more later.
Dave Pearlman, San Francisco Chronicle: Can you describe how you managed to get some proportion of ice into TEGA? Any difficulty in moving materials?
Boynton: Not difficult. Didn't expect ice in TEGA sample, but got lucky. Was intending to just do soil. Initial problems with first sample due to 'big glob of dirt' that got stuck in the scoop. Not anticipating future problems.
Pearlman: Does the ice itself contribute to the clumping and stickiness?
Boynton: Good question. Not sure. Soil has interesting physical properties. Clumpiness is one of the more interesting. Hypothesis: salt in soil, in which case ice would contribute. Won't really be able to say whether impurities are coming from ice or dirt. Analysis of ice-rich sample may allow us to associate impurities with ice.
Telephone question from Houston Chronicle: still six ovens left in TEGA, explain strategy for using them, and update on electrical short issue.
Boynton: Electrical short caused by solenoid vibrator. Overheating may have caused wires to touch chassis. The short circuit has disappeared (not sure why). Wasn't really a problem, and they can still operate. They do have plans for the other ovens. Good surface soil samples ready to go. Hopefully not too many rocket debris interference. Might then go back to "Snow White" to get a higher concentration of ice samples. Want to save one oven blank for analyzing organic materials. Want to be able to say with confidence that it isn't material that was brought with from Earth.
Q: Is part of the reason for extending the mission to make sure you can find organic molecules?
A: Part of it. We hope to be able to do this analysis among other. The reason for the extended mission is to use up the remaining ovens.
Victoria: Extended mission also very important for understanding the other seasons. More dust and cloud activity.
Peter Smith: We are finding salts in the surface samples. Purposely not trying to add ice. Some signatures not comprehensive. Hard to say about alkalinity. Over next month or two we'll be able to fully understand.
Meyer: How to all the results corroborate between other missions.
Kate Tobin, CNN: Sample now in TEGA will take a week, then 3-4 weeks analysis, can you explain the whole process? How long to get data down? What happens when it comes down? What types of compounds do you expect?
Boynton: First, heat sample to 35C. Look to see if there's ice. Spend 90 minutes drying out the sample. Get rid of water. Pump the molecules out so they don't interfer. On 3rd day, ramp up temperature to 175C. Expect may be oxidants in sample. Then heat to higher temp, expect organic molecules to be coming off. Finally heat to 1000C, repeat next day, get baseline measurements. Very complicated process. When data gets to earth, you crunch it then plan for next set of data.
Todd Halverson, Florida Today: For Meyers, cost of extending the mission?
Meyers: 2 million dollars through September 30.
Halverson: Put the findings into perspective with other Mars missions.
Meyers: Really big deal. Conclusive search. Future missions moving away from finding water, and looking for actual habitats for life.
7/31/2008 09:10:00 AM
NASA will be briefing the public on the findings of the Mars Phoenix Lander mission today at 11am PDT. We'll try to keep you posted with any updates as they come in.
Expected is the announcement of confirmation of water ice on Mars. Popular Mechanics has a good article on this, out yesterday.
You can tune in to the NASA TV live briefing here.
Stay tuned.
7/31/2008 08:53:00 AM
After Monday's unveiling of WhiteKnightTwo, the buzz around Virgin Galactic (and personal spaceflight in general) is incredibly high. The guys over at Spacevidcast posted this video (which I'm assuming was produced by VG). Thanks for all the X PRIZE lip service ;)
7/30/2008 11:06:00 AM
I've been remembering back to my early X PRIZE days a fair amount lately, but if you'll forgive me one more reminiscence (after all, we weren't blogging back in those days!)...
When I first joined X PRIZE (as an employee, rather than just a volunteer), we didn't have any on-going prizes. The Ansari X PRIZE had been won several months before, and the Lunar Lander Challenge and the Archon X PRIZE for Genomics were each still about a year from announcing. So, until work on the Lunar Lander Challenge and the X PRIZE Cup grew to be a (more-than) full time job, I got to do a lot of blue sky dreaming about potential future X PRIZEs.
In part, this was done by talking to various luminaries of space and other fields to get their opinions on what the next big space X PRIZE should be. We'd call up, for example, the CEO of a rocket company, and encourage them to be self-serving: what prize, we'd ask them, would best help your company accelerate its development and expand your capabilities?
We got a wide variety of answers to that question, as one might expect. One of my favorites, though, came former Speaker of the House and big space prize advocate Newt Gingrich. Newt was a big fan of doing an "Apollo 8" prize for a crewed circumnavigation of the Moon. I'm sure he was happy when, only a year or so later, Space Adventures began offering just such a service for $100 million, even though Space Adventures didn't have all the hardware in hand to offer such a service.
Now, recently, we've had X PRIZE board member Elon Musk talk about how his company SpaceX (a Preferred Launch Provider for the Google Lunar X PRIZE offering discounts to any competing team) might offer a crewed circumlunar service, as well.
Now, the price as reported might be a little inaccurate, but since this kind of money is way out of my range anyway, I feel comfortable saying that I for one would still love to go. I'd hope that many others, including those who actually have the means to purchase such a flight, would feel the same.
I should also note that Mr. Gingrich has continued to talk about prizes in recent times in a variety of settings. Hopefully one day, the idea of making innovation incentive prize winning tax free (which Newt often advocates) will become a reality!
7/30/2008 09:11:00 AM
I was going to post this yesterday, but was slightly too shaken (and busy). Yesterday was NASA's 50th birthday, and our friends at Google celebrated with this fun doodle:
7/29/2008 05:40:00 PM
The last 24 hours have been incredibly important in the history of space. With the first public flight of the Rocket Racing League "X-Racer" and the rollout of White Knight 2. So why so critical?
So long as we are dependent on the ups and downs and political whims of government funding to drive space exploration we are fundamentally stuck on this rock. Governments have two fundamental failures that prohibit them from doing what it takes. First, they are risk adverse... They can't drive breakthroughs because such breakthroughs require risk and the significant possibility of failure. Fail in the government and a congressional investigation will follow, you'll get investigated, demoted, transferred, or black-listed. Second, government agencies can not make the long-term commitment to funding required for space. How can you plan on a 5 - 10 year program when congressional elections every two years, and Presidential elections every 4 years result in start-stop-start-stop-cancel programs... we've seen this over and over again over the past two decades.
What is needed is the development of what i call an "exothermic-economic-reaction" (smile)... a profitable industry whose profits are re-invested into technology R&D and continually improve the product, the reliability, the price-performance equation. Why is it that the major Pharmaceutical companies privately out-spend NASA's entire annual budget on new drugs every year, and the major aerospace primes spend NO money internally on new launch vehicle developments? Because the Pharma companies are VERY VERY profitable, and the launch industry hardly breaks even.
We need profitable, human-related, space companies with large and robust markets that will drive down the cost of spaceflight, in the same fashion that the large and vibrant PC market took us from room-size systems to a laptop on every desk!
OK, now back to Rocket Racing and Virgin Galactic. Both of these are critical steps in creating new markets. Rocket Racing is tapping into the multi-billion dollar entertainment marketplace. If we're successful (disclosure: I serve as Founder & Chairman of RRL), this company could develop into a multi-billion dollar enterprise... a company which is exciting the public about space and driving the development of low-cost and reliable engines. Also important, RRL is teaching us how to operate rocket engines safely with less people... And we also should remember that the cost of spaceflight currently is all about standing armies of people (the cost of fuel is <5%).
In the same fashion, Galactic and my other companies Space Adventures and Zero-G (the only two *operating* space-tourism companies) are all tapping into the private spaceflight market. The goal here is two-fold. (1) Make spaceflight relevant to people because THEY GET A CHANCE TO GO AS WELL; and (2) create a consistent, large and reliable marketplace (self-loading carbon payloads) that drive a demand for 4 flights per day (versus the four flights per year that we currently experience).
The next few years will be critical for our nascent industry. If we do our job well, and we have a few commercial successes and one or two IPOs (e.g. a "netscape moment") then we'll see a flood of private investment capital and intelligence capital that may help us bring about a true renaissance of space.
-Peter H. Diamandis, MD
Chairman/CEO, X PRIZE Foundation
Chairman, Rocket Racing League
Managing Director, Space Adventures
7/29/2008 02:19:00 PM
Just a few minutes ago, I was in Peter Diamandis’ office listening to Mike D Angelo, CTO of the Rocker Racing League, describe the first flight of the XRacer at Oshkosh EAA AirVenture -LIVE!!!! Even though both Peter and I wish we could have been there, it was still exiting to hear the background noise of that amazing flight.
Rick Searfross, a former Space Shuttle commander, was the pilot of the flight and Granger Whitelaw, CEO of the RRL, was next to the announcers stand narrating every step of the flight. The flight seemed to have gone smoothly and from the sounds through the phone, it appeared that the crowd was thrilled!!
Right now, there are two rocket racers being displayed. Even though both planes have special airworthiness certificates for experimental research and development, only one will be flying at Oshkosh. The one that flew today is equipped with a kerosene-fueled engine developed by California-based XCOR Aerospace, and the other racer on display has an alcohol-fueled engine from Texas-based Armadillo Aerospace. Both are very exiting machines that will bring lots of entertainment in the near future.
(Engine test at Oshkosh)
The XCOR rocket racier will be flying again on Friday August 1, at 2:30 pm and Saturday August 2, at 2:30 pm. If you are at all planning to attend Oshkosh, I recommend you do NOT miss these amazing flights. Also, stop by Aero Shell Square where the RLL will be featuring the simulators!!!!!
Three years ago, I stared as an intern for both the X Prize Foundation and the Rocket Racing League, so it is very exiting for me to see that all these years of hard work have paid off. This is a major mile stone in our industry and I can’t wait to see it myself!!!
7/29/2008 01:26:00 PM
My recent post about a trip to NOAA and a letter published by that office generated quite a hubbub. It was slashdotted, driving a lot of traffic here and to a repost of the letter over at Res Communis. Res Communis found it worthy of a follow-on post, which is definitely worth a read.
Just to provide some more detail for people, I wanted to quote a specific section from the regulations NOAA is enforcing:
Remote sensing space system, Licensed system, or System means any device, instrument, or combination thereof, the space-borne platform upon which it is carried, and any related facilities capable of actively or passively sensing the Earth's surface, including bodies of water, from space by making use of the properties of the electromagnetic waves emitted, reflected, or diffracted by the sensed objects. For the purposes of the regulations in this part, a licensed system consists of a finite number of satellites and associated facilities, including those for tasking, receiving, and storing data, designated at the time of the license application. Small, hand-held cameras shall not be considered remote sensing space systems.
-15 CFR Part 960.3
Now, assuming that you are still awake and that your eyes haven't totally crossed by the time you reach the end of that paragraph, you'll want to pay attention to that last line. As you can see there, legislators carved out a specific exemption for "small, hand-held cameras" in the regulations, something that I'm sure the various private spaceflight participants have appreciated.
As Res Communis explains, there is a good reason for a law like this to exist (though I'm sure many can and will take umbrage): "The policy was formulated to ensure open access to sensed data and to assuage the concerns of the rest of the world that the satellite would be used against them in the form of economic or other espionage." But it's clear that at some point, the quality of pictures (or other similar remotely sensed data, which I'll stick to calling pictures for ease of discussion) reaches a point where it could no longer be used for espionage.
Go ahead, try it! Try to perform some espionage from this image, one of the most famous photographs ever taken. When Gene, Jack, or Ron took that picture, he probably had a number of things in mind--the pure beauty of the scene, the educational and inspirational value, a desire to safely navigate back home at the end of the mission--but clearly espionage was not one of them.Based on our discussions with NOAA, I have every expectation that they will find some reasonable way to make sure they don't unnecessarily encumber teams that want to take beautiful shots from the Moon, whether that be for purely artistic purposes or for navigation or instrument calibration purposes, so long as that is in keeping with the spirit of the law--to prevent espionage, et cetera. This is new territory for NOAA--but that's one of the fun things about this prize: it's new territory for everyone!
7/29/2008 12:41:00 PM
About a half hour ago, a magnitude 5.8 earthquake rattled the Los Angeles area. The X PRIZE offices, located in Santa Monica on the westside of LA, felt the quake, which was centered in Chino Hills, about 51 miles east.
Here is a map of the quake, generated with Google Earth using the USGS KML feed.
7/29/2008 11:17:00 AM
Seems that Twitter is down again. Ugh. It happens sometimes, I know. And sadly, this interruption in service means that you, loyal reader, are not getting the Google Lunar X PRIZE info you crave.
Well, let me assure you that such outages need not be a concern.
For those who have no idea who I am (which I'm guessing is a lot of you, unless you were a diehard reader of The Pomerantz Report), allow me to give a brief introduction to, well, me, and to help you understand exactly why I'm here.
My name is Mike Fabio. I grew up in the Great White North, moved to Beantown, and currently reside in Tinseltown. I spent my college years at a small school that you may have heard of, where I got a bachelor's degree in Music (yep, they have degrees in all the humanities), followed by a masters in Media Arts and Sciences.
As you can probably guess, I'm not a space geek. Well, at least not in the traditional sense. I've never worked in the space industry, didn't study it in school, and I've never been to a shuttle launch.
So why am I here?
Well, in a nutshell, I'm here because I believe that the Google Lunar X PRIZE is something that you, the unwashed masses (well, actually, my statistics show that you are in fact quite well groomed) need to know about. It's something you need to care about.
Officially my job at the X PRIZE Foundation is that of Google Liaison. This is a misnomer, as my real job entails communicating with you, the public, the goals, dreams, the passion of this PRIZE.
So what does this have to do with Twitter? Well, it's all about you, really. See, the public likes to get their information through a variety of channels. Once upon a time, long before I was even born, the whole world gathered around this big box in their living room with bright, shiny pictures on it, and watched a couple of guys step off some kind of crazy contraption and utter the memorable words "One small step..." But today, that's all changed. We are bombarded by media. We've got Facebook and MySpace, and Twitter and Pownce. We've got 800 television channels, and most major radio markets have a station on nearly every frequency. Books and comics and magazines aren't exactly dead, they just smell funny. We've replaced our magazines with RSS feeds and blogs, replaced our CDs with MP3s and podcasts, replaced our televisions with YouTube. We are, as you well know, in the thick of a massively convergent media landscape, and we are forced to sift through the noise to find a glimpse of signal.
My job is to make sure that that little bit of signal we produce at the X PRIZE delivers to you the information, news, and entertainment you want. On your terms, using the tools you like. If you want to read blogs, we've got one. If you are a Facebook addict, we've got you covered. Or if you love to get all of your information in 140 characters or less, you can do that too. Streaming video? Check. RSS? Yep. Lifestreaming? You bet. Maps and charts and images? Yep. It's all there, for you. And I hope it's useful.
We want you to be a part of the competition. This is not simply a new race to the Moon. This is a full-on experience, meant to engage and stimulate the minds of a new generation of space geeks, not limited to any age or race or gender, but united by a passion to explore beyond our own planet. It's about you.
You can, of course, follow along using any media you like. But what's really important is that you get involved. Send us a message on Twitter! Got some thoughts on forming a team? Put your thoughts on the forums! Have a great T-shirt design for our new store? Send us the image on Pownce, or upload it to the Facebook group. Whatever your medium, whatever your passion, we want to hear from you. Join the revolution!
7/29/2008 08:00:00 AM
A short while back, Jeff Krukin of Google Lunar X PRIZE team STELLAR asked via blog post "Where Are the European Teams?". Right around the same time, Mike blogged here on the Launch Pad with a detailed look at what the numbers tell us about the geographical distribution of potential and current Google Lunar X PRIZE teams.
Seeking to probe further into the question Jeff raised using the numbers Mike published as a key data set, I went to two of my best resources for thoughts and opinions about all things Euro-Space, Pierre-Damien and X PRIZE alum Nicolas Peter. Pierre-Damien should already be familiar to readers of the Launch Pad; readers of the old Pomerantz Report may remember seeing Nicolas appear on a post there a while back.
I posed a few questions for them to consider. What followed was a fun conversation that I'm going to break into two chunks. Please feel free to send in questions you'd like to see in the second portion!
Without further ado:
WJP: Is the distribution of potential teams within Europe what you would expect? If not, why might that be? Specifically, are you surprised that the UK (47) is so much higher than France (14) or Italy (18)? Why might that have happened?
NP: Those are cool stats, but I have a question: do you correct for double entries from a particular entity, such as university? What is the total per country in Europe then?
WJP: No, we don't correct for those. Often, we don't have the information to do so. And in some cases, there may actually be multiple potential teams working in parallel within a given entity, especially when that entity has multiple physical locations, so we'd be in danger of over-correcting if we tried, given our limited information.
NP: I am not surprised that there are a limited number of expressions of interest in France, due to the structure of the higher eduction system there. We have limited opportunities in our schools for engineers to have access to a multi-disciplinary space curriculum, as would be needed to put together a complete team. Another factor might be the lack of support from professors, as well as the language barrier--something not to belittle, especially for France and Italy. I know that the Google Lunar X PRIZE was presented at the UK Space Conference, which may partially explain the large number of inquires from the UK. But again, you need to look not only at inquiries but also at actual teams, and take into account that the current Italian team represents so many different institutions within Italy.
PDV: I agree that what matters in the end is the number of fully registered team and not only the requests for the registration materials. For example, the student competition hosted in France during the team summit involved teams from five different countries: in preparation for that, team members would have done everything a registering team would have done, including completing the online form as a potential team, and that's probably reflected in these numbers. That's a case where even though the numbers show an increase in the number of registration requests from a country, it doesn’t mean there are actually more potential teams... at least not yet! So, seeing the relatively small numbers of teams in some European countries as compared to others, I would tend to think this breakdown is more the result of personal influence than the culture of the country.
WJP: Is the gap between the USA and the next country on the list--India, which has only about 15% as many potential teams thus far--what you would expect? If not, why might that be?
NP: I am not surprised to see such a strong lead by the USA, as space studies are well spread through the country, and also due to the impact of the regional NASA centres and key space industrial hubs like the Denver region. Furthermore, the strong history of links between industries and enterprises is one of the historical strength of the national innovation system of the US. Favorable intellectual property rights in the US probably also play a big part.
PDV: I am not surprised to see the US having many more potential teams than any other country. First of all, the X PRIZE Foundation is an American foundation, and while there has been an extensive effort to reach a worldwide audience (holding the Team Summit in France, et cetera), the media coverage has been much more important in the US than anywhere else. Additionally, the US higher education system allows teams to rely on students, as we see with teams like Astrobotic. I am stunned to see the huge research budgets in some universities here in the US, which allow students to be part of great projects (such as University of Arizona in the Phoenix mission). In France, there is a much bigger emphasis on theory and calculation than on hands-on experience.
More importantly, US culture has always been inspired by risk-taking ventures and competition: most American people's ultimate goal in life is to create their own company, while in France, this ultimate goal would instead consist in having a secure, life-long job with a reasonable workload. In addition, things like donations to your university, fundraising, and angel investors are common in the US, while extremely rare in France, if they exist at all. Not to mention how easy it is to actually start a company in the US comparing to other places, and how taxes and regulation also differ!
To me, the strong US lead in the number of potential and current teams is a result of all of this. However, I strongly believe there is enough room for a several more European teams!
NP: I have been underlying for quite some time that there is a definitive internationalization and globalization of space affairs in the post-cold war era, with involvement not only being restricted to the historical "space club." Your numbers demonstrate this! There are now more and more hubs of space activities and the Google Lunar X PRIZE is underlying this trend.
I think the more translations you have available, the better. It would be great to have as much information as possible available in French, Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, and Russian.
PDV: It is amazing that there has been such a fantastic level of interest from so many countries! Of course, translations are always good to reach the population, but I think any group seriously thinking of forming a team would speak English enough not to need translations. A good way to widen the geographic distribution would be to reach international media, and not only focusing on US-centric media. Organizing events outside the US is also a great way to increase public awareness of the Google Lunar X PRIZE worldwide.
Stay tuned for Part II, and please feel free to pose potential questions in the comments.
7/28/2008 04:00:00 PM
Hmm, well, I suppose I'll let you form your own opinion of this comic...
7/28/2008 12:46:00 PM
Well, now that the dust has settled a little, here are a few choice bits from various media about the White Knight 2 rollout this morning in Mojave...
Wired Science
WhiteKnightTwo is a dual-hull quad-engine aircraft roughly three times larger than the original WhiteKnight. WK2 employs a different tail construction, using a cruciform instead of the WK's "T" style. The engines and cockpits are also located in different areas compared to the original WhiteKnight.
WK2 is the world's first all-composite full-sized aircraft. Everything apart from the engines and landing gear is constructed from ultra-lightweight composite materials. Even the newly patented flight control cables are made from carbon fiber.
SPACE.com
"This is a big airplane," said Scaled Composites founder, Burt Rutan, and Chief Technology Officer and Chairman Emeritus of the company. "It is not an inappropriate claim to say this is the largest all-composite airplane," he told SPACE.com.
Gizmodo
- WhiteKnight and SpaceShipTwo can launch higher in altitude than the first ships, but the SpaceShip can't grab enough atmosphere any higher than the previous launch point, so can't go as high this way. So they drop the SpaceShip payload at the same altitude.
- As far as bases go, after New Mexico, they'll open a spaceport in Sweden, and they're talking to Spain and the Far East.
- Who can go on this? Because its suborbital, we can make the flight only 2-3Gs instead of 5Gs and so older people like Sir Richard's parents, Stephen Hawking and others are going to try going.
- Food? Their solution is not feeding you at all. Probably for vomit concerns.
7/28/2008 09:00:00 AM
This morning, Virgin Galactic debuted its new carrier aircraft, White Knight 2 (aka Eve) to a select group of space industry folks and media. This craft will carry SpaceShipTwo to its launch altitude.
Stay tuned here for updates from the White Knight 2 rollout event. We'll be posting media and info as we get it.
Video: MSNBC
More after the jump....
Image: Virgin Galactic
Image: Stan Honda / AFP - Getty Images
Image: Stan Honda / AFP - Getty Images
Images: Xeni Jardin - via Flickr
Xeni Jardin's Twitter stream, live from the rollout event.
Images: ijustine - via Flickr
Images: Wired Science
Images: Gizmodo
Video: Rob Coppinger
Images: AP/Yahoo!
Video: NewVoyageNews/YouTube
Images: Dave Bullock/Wired.com
Images: Jeff Foust via Flickr
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