NASA Centennial Challenge Prizes Go Mainstream

[Mark Reiff <markreiff@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

FYI,

"Like to Tinker? NASA's Looking for You"
NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/05/technology/techspecial4/05nasa.html?ex=1301889600&en=ffc70cca831d60ae&ei=5089&partner=rssyahoo&emc=rss

: But he might soon have a chance to join the ranks of the aerospace
: establishment by getting money from NASA and, in his own way,
: helping explore the solar system. To get ready, he is spending
: 60 hours a week on his elevator, which is meant to haul people and
: gear into orbit without a rocket.

: Until recently, the chances that a college senior like Mr. Jones
: would contribute to the NASA space program were remote. Contracts
: belonged mostly to the Boeings of the world. Tinkerers and
: students were kept at the far edge of the periphery. But with
: budgets tightening and the obstacles to human space exploration
: looking more daunting, NASA is enlisting the expertise of
: outsiders.

: For example, the agency is offering 13 contests, which it calls
: Centennial Challenges, that anyone can enter. The prizes range from
: $200,000 to more than $5 million, for building gear as diverse as
: solar sails, lunar excavators and the tiny elevators.

: But more important than the cash prizes, contestants and
: administrators say, is the opportunity to sidestep the traditional
: ways NASA has done business and bring some fresh faces to its
: ranks.

: "With a regular contract, a small group of students like us
: wouldn't have a chance," Mr. Jones said. "This way, anyone with a
: good idea can contribute."

: Mr. Jones hadn't thought much about contests until the X Prize,
: the $10 million competition to get private spacecraft into
: suborbital flight. He was drawn to the idea that entrepreneurs
: could go into space. So when NASA announced its first Centennial
: Challenges, Mr. Jones signed up.

: Competitors in the Beam Power Challenge — which includes the
: elevator component — had to make a two-foot-tall machine powered
: by light or microwaves that could crawl up a 200-foot rubber-
: coated fiber ribbon.  Space enthusiasts hope that such a machine
: — an elevator, of sorts — could one day reach 62,000 miles into
: the sky, delivering people and packages into orbit at a fraction
: of the cost of today's launchings. The winner would be, in effect,
: one of the space elevator's earliest drafts.

: When the contest was held last October, none of the eight entrants
: made it all the way up the ribbon. But Mr. Jones's Snowstar
: machine traveled farthest, all of 20 feet. The hexagonal array of
: solar cells, powering two pairs of rollers that shimmied up the
: ribbon, was judged Most Likely to Win in the 2006 challenge, set
: for August. The prize has been increased to $250,000 this year,
: from $50,000. To win, the climbers must make it up the ribbon in
: less than a minute. So far, 19 teams have signed up, nearly twice
: as many as in 2005.

: Another well-known high-tech contest, the Darpa Grand Challenge,
: also had disappointing results when it started in 2004. The all-
: robot off-road rally, sponsored by the Pentagon's fringe science
: arm, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa,
: attracted dozens of competitors. But none of the vehicles made it
: past the seventh mile of the 150-mile course, largely because of
: navigation problems.

: A year later, five unmanned cars crossed the finish line. That
: included robots from leading universities like Stanford and
: Carnegie Mellon as well as one from the Gray Insurance Company,
: which had no experience in robotics but whose owners had a
: personal interest in the competition.  The Gray team was one of
: the last to enter the contest, and it had a major setback when
: Hurricane Katrina wrecked its New Orleans workshop.

: Nevertheless, it beat out vehicles built by leading computer-
: science researchers and backed by defense contractors. It did so
: well that it has pulled some employees from the insurance side of
: the business, allowing them to focus on the company's new venture:
: robotic cars for the military and other entities.

: "I never thought I'd work in defense," said Paul Trepagnier, a
: software development manager at Gray. "I'm a Tom Clancy fan. But
: that's the extent. I mean, I'm just a programmer in an insurance
: company."

: Many of NASA's contests also center on robotics. The Telerobotic
: Construction Challenge, scheduled for August 2007, requires a team
: of machines to assemble items with minimal human supervision. The
: idea is to let robots, instead of astronauts, build shelters and
: machinery on the moon and Mars. In the Regolith Excavation
: Challenge, set for May 2007, an autonomous machine will have to
: dig through 24 square meters of simulated moon rock. A separate
: Regolith Oxygen competition, scheduled for 2008, will be held for
: robots that can extract oxygen from the stones. Some contests will
: be held annually; others will be one-time events.

: NASA funds robotics research through conventional contracts too,
: and it uses Small Business Innovation Research grants to back
: companies outside the industry's mainstream. But the paperwork
: involved in the innovation research grants, called S.B.I.R.'s, can
: be intimidating.

: "I don't have the grant-writing experience to get one of those,"
: said Matthew Abrams, one of the competitors. "The contest seemed
: like a better deal. And winning something like this can give us
: the credibility and the contacts to go after S.B.I.R.'s."

: The competitions offer economic benefits to NASA as well. The
: contestants, not the space agency, pay for the development. The
: winner of a big technology prize usually spends three times the
: purse value, said Carl E. Walz, a former astronaut who works in
: NASA's exploration systems mission directorate.

: "Typically in R. & D., you pay as you go," Mr. Walz said,
: referring to NASA's outlays for research and development. "You pay
: for failures and you pay for successes. Here, you don't pay until
: someone wins."

: NASA officials say that some of their contractors are worried that
: the contests could undermine their work for the space agency.

: But within NASA, enthusiasm for the challenges seems to be
: growing. The agency announced six more contests in February,
: including $5 million for the first team that can store or produce
: rocket fuel in orbit and $2.5 million for the builders of a
: working solar sail.

: If they win, both Mr. Jones and Mr. Abrams said they hoped to use
: their prize money to enter some of these more complex challenges,
: like the lunar lander competition being held by NASA and the
: X Prize Foundation.

: Gregg E. Maryniak, executive vice president of the foundation,
: said he looked forward to having them enter. "One of the biggest
: reasons to do this is to bring in people outside the existing
: ecosystem," he said.

: "Look, a hundred years ago, a couple of pesky bike mechanics from
: Dayton, Ohio, bested, in effect, the government-funded player, to
: become the first to fly," he added. "That's why you put on these
: things: to attract the bicycle mechanics."

--
Mark Reiff <markreiff@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>


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