The Launch Pad: 3/1/09

Some Awesome Fan Art of SpaceShipOne (and Two) and WhiteKnightTwo

3/06/2009 05:17:00 PM

Check out these renderings of SpaceShipOne (WhiteKnight in the background):

and WhiteKnightTwo carrying SpaceShipTwo

Both pieces are by Mark Hennessy-Barrett.... Thanks for sending those in!

#FFD Friday Funday Exoplanet Naming Madness

3/06/2009 04:15:00 PM

Leave it to the nerds to come up with planet names like "Mr. Gassypants" or "Fantasculus" or "Pluto." Today we held a little naming and voting experiment in honor of tonight's launch of the Kepler telescope, which will (with any luck) discover Earth-sized planets beyond our solar system.

Our experiment yielded (at most recent count) 2,997 votes on 162 suggestions from 59 people, not bad for a Friday Funday! Here are the top ten exoplanet names, as determined by your votes:

Sagan - Submitted by TaviGreiner

Hawking - Submitted by joebarone

Isis - Submitted by LunarMark

Kepler - Submitted by Rob

Gagarin - Submitted by joebarone

Asimov - Submitted by Cariann

Laika - Submitted by William James Pomerantz, Esq.

Yuri - Submitted by joebarone

Serenity - Submitted by Gonz0

Heinlein - Submitted by CaitPenn

AEXA, Agencia Espacial Mexicana

3/05/2009 01:37:00 PM

En las últimas semanas he tenido la oportunidad de integrarme un poco al grupo detrás del proyecto para la realización de la Agencia Espacial Mexicana. La verdad que me parece algo increíble y deseo profundamente que Mexico logre hacer de este proyecto una realidad. Por lo que tengo entendido, la Agencia Espacial Mexicana será un organismo de carácter técnico especializado, encargado de coordinar, impulsar y fomentar todo lo relacionado con la investigación, exploración y utilización del espacio exterior como patrimonio de la Nación.

En uno de los comunicados me entere que en el Senado de la República de Mexico ha iniciado el periodo de sesiones ordinarias y se encuentran debatiendo temas importantes como este. Se espera que dentro de las próximas semanas retomen el tema de la creación de la Agencia Espacial Mexicana, en el cual el presupuesto de inicio solicitado es de 21 millones de pesos. Lo importante a notar y lo que muchos no saben es que durante el gobierno de Aldofo Lopez Mateus, México tuvo una Agencia Espacial conocida como La Comisión Nacional del Espacio Exterior. La comisión llevo a cabo los primeros lanzamientos de cohetes en los años 1958 y 1960 lo que en ese entonces parecía un sueño inanalizable . Desafortunadamente esta Comisión no salió adelante y muchos de los científicos Mexicanos tuvieron que irse a otros países para ejercer sus carreras.

El Video a continuación es un reportaje en el Noticiero Televisa del canal 2 (Mexicano), donde el reportero Leonardo Ferrera, ha iniciado una serie de reportajes sobre el desarrollo espacial en México y la importancia de la creación de la Agencia Espacial Mexicana.

La verdad es que de dentro de mas avanzamos en el tema de la exploración del espacio, mas colaboración se va a necesitar entro los diferentes países del mundo. Esto ya no es una cuestión entre Rusia Y los estados Unidos. En los últimos años además de los avances en de la Agencia Espacial Europea ( ESA) hemos visto a países como Brasil, Japón China Y la India avanzado terriblemente encuanto a la exploracion espacial. No me cabe la menor duda que en los años siguientes muchos más países participaran y avanzaran más en el tema. Me gustaría terminar el escrito de hoy deseándole la mejor suerte a este grupo de ingenieros y científicos Mexicanos para la realización de esta nueva Agencia.

Robot of the Week: Toyota's Trumpet Playing Robot

3/04/2009 05:40:00 PM

In a moment of writer's block this afternoon, I received an instant message from my boss informing me of the proper spelling of Dromeceiomimus. Which led me to contemplate the possibility of learning about a new dinosaur every day (and in fact you can follow my personal Twitter account to do just that). Which ultimately led to my discovering Robot a Day, which sadly does not have actual robots. Eureka! I can post about a new robot every day on The Launch Pad! Well, I think it's best to take it slow at first, so I present to you a new column: Robot of the Week.

This week's robot is one of my all-time favorites, the Toyota Partner Robot. Originally intended as a companion robot, the coolest feature of this particular humanoid is its ability to play the trumpet. A set of two pneumatic bladders in its mouth continuously change internal pressure to adjust embouchure and play a variety of pitches. It can even play vibrato.

A Stevie Wonder classic:

And that's not all: Toyota has developed several similar robots to form an entire marching band!

Note that the drums looks alarmingly like Rock Band. Also I'm fairly sure that he'll go through a phase in the late 2070s where he experiments with tape splicing, and by the 2080s he'll look something like this:

The Cheapest Space Exploration You Can Buy

3/03/2009 03:38:00 PM

Riddle me this....

A subscription to Netflix costs $5-15 per month

A movie rental on iTunes costs $4

The average cost of cable is almost $60 per month.

But live video from the surface of the Moon? Free.

We value, above all else, the power of the content created by the Google Lunar X PRIZE to inspire and energize a new generation of space enthusiasts, and distribute these media free of charge. If you value the content as much as we do, why not make a donation? Using Tipjoy you can give as little as 1 cent. And it costs a fraction of what you're already spending to watch that totally awesome Dane Cook movie that your boyfriend was raving about (like, OMG!).

If you're a Twitter user, just enter your info below to donate.

Or if you don't do that whole newfangled Web2.0 thing, you can try some old school donation methods.

All donations are tax deductible, and go toward Google Lunar X PRIZE education and outreach programs. And when we touch down on the surface of the Moon, you can lean over to your friend and whisper "I helped with that."

From the Archives: The Story Behind the Conrad Awards

3/03/2009 01:27:00 PM

Back before the Launch Pad existed, I blogged over on the main X PRIZE Foundation website. I was definitely a beginning blogger (not that I'm an expert now), and between not knowing what exactly to do, not having too much time to write, and not having any co-authors, the content on that blog wasn't enough to generate the kind of traffic we see here on the Launch Pad.

That said, there are a few posts there that I still like. I've picked out a few favorites, and I'm going to reproduce them here (not all at once, don't worry). So, fans of the old "Pomerantz Report" (I was never sure where that name came from... why not "Pomer-rants" or something?) can probably just skip these posts. But if you are relatively new here--well, forget what I just said! This is fresh material!

A few months before we launched the Archon X PRIZE for Genomics, I joined Peter Diamandis at a lecture being given by Dr. J. Craig Venter, an X PRIZE Foundation Board Member who was very influential in the creation of the Genomics prize. Dr. Venter was talking about sequencing and about the future of genomics—something I actually find quite interesting (my first published paper, oddly enough, was on a technique for extracting RNA from soil samples to identify the microbial organisms within). His talk also touched on extremophiles and the fact that life on Earth exists essentially everywhere we’ve looked, regardless of temperature, pressure, exposure to sunlight, et cetera. It was a fun talk.

Afterwards, there was a lively question and answer session. About halfway through, a woman in the audience asked Dr. Venter about those extremophiles. She began her question by saying: “I was quite interested in what you said about extremophiles, because, you see, when my husband walked on the Moon…”

As you can imagine, my head nearly popped off when I heard her say that. It’s simply not a statement that comes up in conversation very often—“when my husband walked on the Moon.” Amazing.

That woman turned out to by Nancy Conrad, whose husband, Pete Conrad, visited the lunar surface on Apollo 12, and brought back samples from the old Surveyor 3 probe that later proved to have viable microbes on them—and incredible story in its own right. Luckily for me, Peter knew Nancy already, so when the event ended, we made a beeline for Nancy and he introduced me.

Throughout the course of that day, Nancy and I talked about the possibility of combining her efforts with ours to create some sort of award that would encourage people, especially young people, to think about space in ccreative and entrepreneurial ways. We left that event charged with excitement about making something happen.

Shortly afterwards, I introduced Nancy to Josh Neubert. Josh is a stellar team member here at X PRIZE, who has run our New Mexico office for the last several years, and who has developed a truly phenomenal educational program associated with the Cup almost single-handedly [Update: Josh has since left X PRIZE to work on the Conrad Awards full time]. I know that this idea was in good hands with Josh, and he quickly clicked with Nancy to further develop the idea. I’ve asked Josh to write here to talk about where the idea went from there:

In our tag team of a story I was introduced to Nancy sometime in the spring of 2007. My first impression was “Wow! This woman has some amazing fire in her!” … I guess you have to in order to be the wife of an Apollo astronaut. We quickly found that her fire fit perfectly in with our X PRIZE Cup team and led us to some very interesting ideas very quickly. We didn’t really know much of what we wanted to do at first. As Will mentioned, we just wanted a program that would help get young people jazzed about space in creative and entrepreneurial ways.

Initially we wanted to tackle everything out there. And in our realm of space exploration we all know that there is a LOT out there. So we quickly had to narrow our focus a bit. It was key to use momentum that the X PRIZE Foundation has already built. Ideas were thrown around considering everything from doing a youth version of the Lunar Lander Challenge, to just doing another innovative company challenge, to doing a “create something neat” challenge. After several months of iterations we settled on doing a two part challenge that was left fairly wide open. Our challenge question was “Design an innovative concept to benefit the personal spaceflight industry within the next 50 years.” We planned to do both a student and professional version of this challenge, but quickly realized that we did not have the capability to take both on at first. Given that a professional version would be more tricky to arrange, and that the real goal was to get youth excited about spaceflight, we decided to focus on the student version of the challenge.

The X PRIZE Cup provided a truly unique opportunity to connect students directly to the industry through this award. This provides the real bread and butter for everyone. I remember one conversation with Nancy where I don’t think I could get a word in edgewise for almost 15 minutes because she was so excited about the possibilities for students. Luckily I was just as excited myself and that’s when we knew we were onto the right idea.

Over the next few months we refined our rules and began the process of getting the first “Pete Conrad Spirit of Innovation Award” out to the public. With 25 entries we were able to find ten finalists who all had amazing submissions, and were all thinking of completely different ideas. At the X PRIZE Cup in October, our ten finalists were able to present their concepts to the industry and general public. By the end of the event three great teams were chosen as our first second and third place teams.

As part of their award, the winning teams were given a trip to Washington, DC, to be recognized at NASA's headquarters in a ceremony that was broadcast on NASA TV and attended by the Deputy Administrator and Associate Administrator Doug Comstock. That event was largely coordinated by Becky Ramsey here in our DC office. Becky came to the X PRIZE Foundation from NASA HQ, so she was the perfect one to help us plan a great event for the students. She's also the best person to tell the rest of the story!

Even though we had announced the winners at the X PRIZE Cup in October, we decided we wanted to extend the Conrad Award program into a year-round activity. To help us kick off 2008, we invited the top three teams to Washington, DC to unveil a traveling exhibit.

Here’s the thing – the NASA Headquarters building in downtown DC is about as far from futuristic as you can get. It’s just another beige office building in a city full of them. But inside that building are a bunch of people who truly believe in their mission. Part of that mission is to inspire kids to pursue careers in science, math, technology and engineering, and these people work very hard at creating opportunities for students to experience what it might be like to work for the space industry.

The Innovative Partnerships Program, led by Doug Comstock, has been generous with both time and financial support, attending the X PRIZE Cup and putting together last week’s event, and supporting the Conrad Award with grant money that went to the winning students’ schools. Other NASA officials, including Deputy Administrator Shana Dale, also showed their support by attending and speaking.

This kind of active engagement gets the attention of teachers and schools. Students get it, too, but usually it’s the teachers who see a project like this first and encourage their students to get involved. One of our goals for 2008 is to get the Conrad Spirit of Innovation Award in front of more teachers and help them get their students involved.

The four students I met last Friday are among the best and brightest. I expect great things from them in the not so distant future. And I look forward to meeting more students just like them in 2008!

If you haven't already, surf on over to the Conrad Awards website and cast your vote for the current crop of finalists!

Join our Team: Google Lunar X PRIZE is Hiring.

3/02/2009 03:35:00 PM

The Google Lunar X PRIZE is hiring! We are looking for a talented and driven person to lead our education and outreach programs. You can read all about it here. But don't take my word for it, just ask Rovey.

Carnival of Space #92 Sideshow!

3/02/2009 01:56:00 PM

It seems that in the course of my Friday afternoon, which came at the end of an Insane Week®, I inadvertently published The Carnival of Space #92 without many of the links that had been submitted. I want to stress that this was due entirely to some errors in email, and that neither Fraser nor myself had any intention of leaving anyone out. As CCP pointed out every carnival needs a sideshow. There are so many great articles, I would highly recommend spending some time with this list. Without further ado, I present to you The Carnival of Space #92 Sideshow.....