Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Prize Roundup: SketchUp Contest, FundingPost Pitch, ChallengePost, Lunar Challenges, Elevator Update

Links: Picasa Street View, Cool Screen, ArcExplorer Earth, SketchUp Podium Prize - Google Earth Blog:

SketchUp Podium Contest Winner - SU Podium is a third-party plugin application for Google SketchUp that lets you create photo-realistic renderings from SketchUp scenes. They held a contest recently and the winner got featured in this SketchUp Blog post. Pretty cool how the winning artist created the scene.

@pkhomer (Peter Homer - "Astronaut Glove Guy") - I entered the @fundingpost Pitching Across America competition! Info at: http://www.FundingPost.com - wish me luck!! Please RT!

@AlanStern - 1st meeting of the next-gen Suborbital Applications Researchers Group today! Wondering what Van Allen's V-2 science panel hoped for in 1946.

@wikkit (Ben Brockert of Masten Space Systems) - Static tested rev 3 aluminum engine today. Nine 4 second runs and one 20 second firing, to make sure it's working well. Ran really nice.

Armadillo's Level 2 LLC attempt coming soon? - Personal Spaceflight

Here's a look back at QuakeCon 2009, "4 Days of Peace, Love, and Rockets". You may recognize someone there in the pictures.

Another Long Day. - Unreasonable Rocket

@Bob_Richards - A group of @SingularityU students won “Best Money Making App” in Yahoo iPhoneDevCamp Hackathon http://bit.ly/gpj6X - The link is to a Singularity University blog post titled "5 Tips to Winning a Hack-a-thon Competition". That post has a link to the competition itself, too.

@glxp - Kudos to Excalibur Almaz, which includes several people who work with / advise Google Lunar X PRIZE team @OdysseyMoon: http://bit.ly/1OYM8

Future Visions, Near and Far Sighted - Photonics.com - The MoonBots competition is part of the story at NIWeek 2009.

Mark Bentley - Team Scientist of White Label Space - White Label Space

Briefs: Space elevator update; Space elevators in Japan - RLV News

Status Update, August 2009 - LaserMotive

Here's an interesting ChallengePost: SU/ISU Lunch Bot at NASA:

Design and build (for under 10^4 - $10,000) an unmanned 'lunch getter robot' than can successfully navigate the yellow line/obstacle course that joins the Arthur C Clarke hall to the Peter Diamandis Hall, collect a lunch, and return it safely and quickly to the Arthur C Clarke Hall for consumption and upload a video/photo report to the web or Youtube. The robot should be unmanned, and operate udner its own power and control without human control/intervention.