Friday, July 03, 2009

Prize Roundup: July 2-3, 2009 (Part 2) - Rocket Racing Financing, Masten LLC Plans, MiniSpaceWorld, NewSpace 2009 & Prizes, Prometheus Update, SF

The picture is from the NSS Space Settlement art calendar - July. Notice the flag - and related to that, I'll be celebrating the July 4th holiday tomorrow, so you get 2 prize roundups for the price of one today.

Masten Space tests - RLV News - This includes videos of recent tests and a note about Masten plans with respect to the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge.

Rocket Racing League Closes Multi-Million Dollar Financing - MarketWire press release:

The Rocket Racing League® today announced the closing of a $5.5 million dollar financing round, ensuring the next phase of development of the league. It also announced the appointment of a new President & CEO and the commencement of manufacturing activities for its next generation Rocket Racer®. ... July 2009 also marks the kick-off of the manufacture of the League's next generation Rocket Racer, an advanced design based upon the current ships already built, flown and FAA-certified in 2008, in a collaborative partnership with Armadillo Aerospace of Rockwall, Texas and Velocity, Inc., of Sebastian, Florida.

MiniSpaceWorld Design Contest - This is a new competition entry in SpaceHack:

The MSW Design Contest is a contest open for participants worldwide about imagining various parts of MiniSpaceWorld, a lively scale model exhibit about spaceflight and astronomy. Participants shall create a high-level content design including a theme description, map and graphical representations.

Here's a link to the MiniSpaceWorld contest itself: MiniSpaceWorld Design Contest - Overview

Sturgeon & Campbell Winners - Science Fiction Awards Watch
Locus Award Winners - Science Fiction Awards Watch

Here are some of the NewSpace 2009 events and speakers related to space prizes and awards:

A.C. Charania
Ken Davidian
Peter Diamandis
Art Dula
Jonathan Goff
Nicole Jordan
Michael Mealling
Bob Richards
Paul Spudis

Friday, July 17th: Space Elevator Day (including a session specifically on "Spaceward and the Elevator Games")

Monday, July 20th: GLXP Discussion (presumably with some of the above speakers with connections to the Google Lunar X PRIZE)

Heinlein Business Plan Competition
Finalists Selected for the Heinlein NewSpace Business Plan Competition - As I mentioned in an earlier post, this includes teams in, or with history in, other space prize competitions. I mentioned Flagsuit, LLC and Next Giant Leap. I didn't mention Aeronautic Enterprises because I didn't know about them, but this should give a hint:

http://teamprometheus.org/movies/2009/07/prometheus-makes-finals.html -

Aeronautic Enterprises/ Team Prometheus made the finals of the New Space Fronter Foundations Business Plan competition ... We will be launching a large rocket on the 11th and I will go to the NASA AMES Reasearch center for the New Space Convention 2009 on the 16th ...

Team Prometheus has been posting a lot more than that. Here are some. Don't be intimidated by the number of posts because most are short, a lot of it is imagery, and it's all iteresting.