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Planetary News: Space Policy (2005)NASA and Spaceward Foundation Announce First Centennial Challenges Prizes24 March 2005 NASA and a new partner, the Spaceward Foundation, announced today that they would be awarding cash prizes totaling $400,000 for four space technology competitions to develop space tether and wireless power technologies. These will be the first prizes awarded under the space agency's Centennial Challenges program. The concept behind the Centennial Challenges is to advance the state of space science technologies, and the program is adopting a traditional prize approach, effectively championed by the X-Prize which made headlines all over the world last year by awarding $10 million to Burt Rutan and Scaled Composites for successfully building a suborbital spacecraft and twice flying it to space and returning it safely. The X-Prize was based on the [Raymond] Orteig Prize that Charles A. Lindbergh won by becoming the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean in May 1927. "The goal here is to stimulate creative, new thinking, and this may work," said Louis Friedman, Executive Director of The Planetary Society. The first two Centennial Challenges competitions will focus on the development of lightweight yet strong tether materials for space tethers, and the advancement of wireless power transmission technologies which together will go toward building a space elevator. The Tether Challenge centers on the creation of a material that combines light weight and incredible strength. Under this challenge, teams will develop high strength materials that will be stretched in a head-to-head competition to see which tether is strongest. The Beam Power challenge focuses on the development of wireless power technologies for a wide range of exploration purposes, such as human lunar exploration and long-duration Mars reconnaissance. In this challenge, teams will develop wireless power transmission systems, including transmitters and receivers, to power robotic climbers to lift the greatest weight possible to the top of a 50-meter cable in under three minutes. The winners of each initial 2005 challenge will receive $50,000. A second set of Tether and Beam Power challenges in 2006 will be more technically challenging, the release stated. Each of those challenges will award purses of $100,000, $40,000, and $10,000 for first, second, and third place. NASA's Centennial Challenges prize program "promotes technical innovation through a novel program of prize competitions to tap the nation's ingenuity to make revolutionary advances to support the Vision for Space Exploration and NASA goals," according to the official agency release. The program is managed by the space agency's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate. The Spaceward Foundation is "a public-funds non-profit organization dedicated to furthering space science and technology in the public mindshare and in educational curriculums," according to it website, and is the driving force behind a project called Elevator 2010, a project to build the first space elevator. No one was available at the Spaceward's Mountain View, California headquarters or at NASA headquarters today to offer any more detail about the quid pro quos of the new agreement. |
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