Anousheh Ansari was interviewed on The Space Show recently. She's been involved with a lot of space efforts like her trip to the ISS, so only a small part of the interview is on her work with the X PRIZE Foundation. I think you'll still find it to be an interesting discussion.

The Space Elevator Blog interviews Dr. Georg Treusch from DILAS, which has worked with laser-based beam power teams in the past, and is in discussions with several teams this year. Laser power is expected to be a popular option this year since the competition requirements are much more stringent this time.

The blog also has a post about the Photonics West Exhibition and how it relates to the Space Elevator Games this year.

Update (later in the day): The SE Blog just added a press release from Spaceward on TRUMPF Laser assisting Space Elevator competitors by providing a commercial laser source and related support. Like DILAS, TRUMPF will be at the Photonics West Exhibition.

The X PRIZE Foundation had some fun last Movember raising money for a worthy cause. At first I thought I'd stumbled into the Beastie Boys Sabotage video, but I figured it out soon enough. I'm sure you will too.

X PRIZE Cars gets a new log and website design, and points us to this new video from the X PRIZE Foundation promoting the Automotive X PRIZE.

While watching that video, I noticed this one about the X PRIZE Foundation at the 2008 Detroit Auto Show.

Wired's Geek Dad blog has a post on last year's Astronaut Glove Challenge. The post is based on this article at NASA.gov that tells the Peter Homer astronaut glove story, including some pictures and a video of Peter testing the glove. Here's a quote from the article:

"I definitely think that's something they ought to pursue more of," he said. "I'm not an anomaly. I'm not just one guy out here. There are lots of people like me who have the training, background and experience, and who, for whatever reason, are not in the industry but who are interested in contributing in some way. There are lots of really intelligent people who can contribute in the way that I hope to contribute by bringing new ideas in a way that NASA can take them over and bring them into their programs."

Unreasonable Rocket is posting faster than I can keep up. There's progress using the helicopter platform, and potential for some video from that platform soon. Maybe having gotten so far with the helicopter, they'll think about competing for (or otherwise participating in) the $80,000 International Aerial Robotics Competition?

Meanwhile, SpeedUp diagnoses some noise they've seen in data collected during tests. Supplier fault tolerance is mentioned, and tether testing may be coming soon.

Spaceref posts on the $20,000 NASA Earth/Space Life Sciences Innovation Award. This is for a business plan related to life sciences. The plan should have space and Earth applicability. The Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship and NASA are involved with the competition. The winner is also eligible to compete in the much larger Rice Business Plan Competition. Here's more about the Space part of the competition.

Tom Vander Ark at the X PRIZE Foundation had 3 posts yesterday:

• one pointing to a suggestion in the journal Nature for an energy-related nanotechnology prize
• a post related to biotechnology and energy
• a post on genome sequencing that relates to the genomics X PRIZE

Space Politics posts on some space activist efforts, including the ProSpace March Storm that advocates several positions favorable to commercial space, including the Aeronautics and Space Prize Act. See the March Storm Agenda Update and an earlier post on ProSpace in 2008. Among other points, they state:

We also welcome the introduction of the Aeronautics and Space Prize Act (H.R. 4917), which proposes and aeronautics and space prize program to develop aerospace research and development.

I'm a little worried about this part of the Act:

(2) with the advice of NASA and other agencies as appropriate, to carry out a program for tasteful advertising of commercial products and services in conjunction with the Nation's aeronautics and space endeavors in conjunction with NASA, other agencies involved in aeronautics and space, or independently; and

It seems like this might compete with entrepreneurs, and even prize competitors and alliance organizations running the prize competitions, if they want to get sponsorships. Last year it seemed to me that the Space Act of 2007 that ProSpace supported didn't have this potential disadvantage.

I just got the latest email newsletter from the X PRIZE Foundation. You can sign up for this service at their main home page. I've posted about most of the news there already, so I won't repeat it all. Here's one new, from my point of view, news item:

Dr. Bard Geesaman has joined the Foundation as the Executive Director of Life Sciences. Geesaman is an MD, venture capitalist and entrepreneur who has experience in many areas of the medical industry. In his new role, Geesaman will be responsible for developing, funding and running new prizes in the area of Life Sciences, which will include any cancer, healthcare and genomics prizes.

Not only does this give you an idea of their management, but it also shows what types of prizes they want to offer in the future. Here's some background information on Dr. Geesaman.

Here are a few links related to the Space Elevator Games:

The Space Elevator Reference notes that their SpaceRef On Orbit service includes a Space Elevator forum. One of the contributers will be Ben Shelef from the Spaceward Foundation that runs the games. Other Space Elevator notables will also contribute. Here's the forum and here's a post to get things rolling from the SE Reference's Mark Boucher.

By the way, I already posted about the Space Elevator Games press release a couple days ago, but here's an article on it from On Orbit, just so you can get a sample of that new service.

Universe Today also has a discussion about the Spaceward plans.

Meanwhile, the Space Elevator Blog has a post on the machine that tests the strength of the tethers in the Tether Challenge.

Finally, I already linked to this RLV News post because it fit in with a different topic I was writing about, but it also fits in with this post, so it gets another one. One of the items in the post is about carbon nanotubes, which are (so the scientists and engineers tell me) probably the way to go in the advanced stages of the Tether Strength challenge.

Update (Jan 20): Here are a few more Space Elevator links:

The Space Elevator Blog explains a technical mistake related to tether strength, and tells us about future posting plans.

Tether team Delta-X also clarifies the strength issue.

Climber team USST held a meeting on Jan 8, and plans another Jan 21 (that's tomorrow). Potential new team members are invited.

Lockheed Martin Space Day is supporting the Team America Rocketry Challenge, but is phasing out the Space Day Design Challenges.

At the bottom of this post from Spaceports is the latest step in the progress of a Virginia bill in support of the suborbital point-to-point V Prize.

Unreasonable Rocket gives some insight into their vehicle control by showing some software variable declarations and comments. There's also a pointer (no I'm not talking about code any more) to an automated helicopter article.

Yesterday I posted on Google CEO Eric Schmidt's talk on NASA's anniversary. That was just based on an article I read, but the X PRIZE Foundation's Will Pomerantz was there, and posts a lot more about the talk. There's quite a lot about prizes like Centennial Challenges and the Google Lunar X PRIZE in Schmidt's talk and Pomerantz's analysis. There's also a lot about other important topics, like opening up NASA and making it more responsive to the public using models familiar to companies like Google.

At the end of his post, Will has a number of other notes of interest:

Dr. Bob Richards, the CEO of Odyssey Moon, was on The Hour tonight. Worth watching!

Tomorrow--Friday, January 18th--we'll be presenting the Conrad Award at NASA HQ. It should be broadcast live on NASA TV. I'll post more about this on Tuesday

Also on Tuesday, I'll be speaking at a Congressional Nanotechnology Caucus briefing entitled: "Nanotechnology and Innovation, Commercialization, and Prize Competitions" over in the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Should be fun--hopefully I'll blog about that next Tuesday!

The Pete Conrad Award press release is found in a lot of places - for example, see Earth Times.

RLV News has a post with a number of prize-related pieces, including Will's post. It also links to the fast-paced interview of Dr. Bob Richards that Will mentioned.

Wired Science has more on the Google speech, including a video of part of the speech. You should be able to find the rest of it by clicking on the video and going to YouTube.

From Aero-News.net comes an article about the Coalition for Space Exploration sponsoring the 2008 NASA Means Business competition. The article describes the competition, and this year's particular version of the competition.

Infoworld has an article on a talk by Google CEO Eric Schmidt about NASA's 50th anniversary:

Schmidt praised programs such as NASA's Centennial Challenge, which awards cash prizes to inventors that come up with solutions to the agency's needs. Last year, NASA awarded $200,000 to Peter Horner, an unemployed engineer from Maine, who created a new space glove using a common rubber glove.

Google has sponsored the X Prize Foundation, an organization that runs similar competitions, with an award of up to $30 million for a group that can design and launch a lunar lander with a robotic explorer on board. In many cases, the teams competing for the prize in these types of competitions spend more than the total prize money, but the public awards spur competition, Schmidt said.

"Why would we do this?" Schmidt said. "Because it's fun."

...

"The best way to be lucky is to create more luck," he said. "And the best way to create more luck is to create more at-bats."

Personal Spaceflight notes that a suborbital spaceflight prize has been dropped from a charity auction because of safety concerns.

The Space Elevator Blog posts the latest press release from the Spaceward Foundation on the Space Elevator Games.

The Space Elevator Blog posts the latest press release from the Spaceward Foundation on the Space Elevator Games.