The NASA Centennial Challenges: Inspired by the X-Prize, NASA has begun a series of challenges to private inventors with cash prizes for things ranging from extracting oxygen from moon rocks to building better astronaut gloves to improving personal aircraft. Thanks to Congressional approval, NASA will be launching larger challenges of up to $50 million in value, including a new multi-million dollar lunar lander contest. With government space efforts criticized by private entrepreneurs, is this the right direction for NASA?
posted by blahblahblah on May 6, 2006 - 12 comments

Move over X-Prize - in order to win the next big space prize($50 million) one will have to build a spacecraft capable of taking a crew of no fewer than five people to an altitude of 400 kilometers and complete two orbits of the Earth at that altitude. Then they have to repeat that accomplishment within 60 days.
posted by sourbrew on Nov 8, 2004 - 15 comments

Canada's first manned space launch is to be sponsored by an online casino. The Canadian Da Vinci team who is vying for the X-prize gets a surprising boost by an online casino known for their creative marketing strategies. In exchange for the sponsorship, the casino asks that the astronaut-to-be play a game while in mid-flight. Jokes aside, this looks like the perfect partnering of marketing and private space exploration.
posted by phyrewerx on Aug 6, 2004 - 8 comments

UK rocket builder Steve Bennett is working on the worlds first private maned spaceship built by his company Starchaser with the Nova II announced Thursday. The new rocket will be shipped to the United States and dropped unmanned over the Red Lake Drop Zone in Arizona from 14,000 feet to test its landing systems. If successful, a manned test will take place before the summer, making it Britain's first ever manned rocket capsule. The tests will allow the team to move on to building their ultimate rocket, Thunderbird. Starchaser is confident that Thunderbird will blast off into the history books in 2005, netting the company $10 million from the X-Prize. Others say it's suicide.
posted by stbalbach on Apr 3, 2003 - 4 comments