Centennial Challenges

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The Centennial Challenges are NASA space competition prize contests for non-government-funded technological achievements by American teams.

Contents

[edit] Challenges

As of April 2007, seven Challenges have been announced: the Tether Challenge, the Beam Power challenge, the Moon Regolith Oxygen (MoonROx) Challenge, the Regolith Excavation Challenge, the Personal Air Vehicle Challenge, the Lunar Lander Challenge and the Astronaut Glove Challenge. Each of these challenges are being done in collaboration with an outside organization. Further challenges are still being planned.

[edit] Tether & Beam Power Challenge

Main article: Elevator:2010

Both the Tether and Beam Power Challenges are a part of the Elevator:2010 competition to further space elevator and space elevator related technologies. The Elevator:2010 competition is operated by a partnership between Spaceward Foundation and the NASA Centennial Challenges, and were the first two challenges announced on March 23, 2005.

[edit] Tether Challenge

This competition, presents the challenge of constructing super-strong tethers, a crucial component of a space elevator. [1] The 2005 contest was to award US$50,000 to the team which constructed the strongest tether, with contests in future years requiring that each winner outperform that of the previous year by 50%. No competing tether surpassed the commercial off-the-shelf baseline and the prize was increased to $200,000 in 2006.

The 2007 the prize money was raised to $500,000 USD for this competition.

[edit] Beam Power Challenge

This is a competition to build a wirelessly-powered ribbon-climbing robot. The contest involves having the robot lift a large payload within a limited timeframe. The first competition in 2005 would have awarded US$50,000, US$20,000, and US$10,000 to the three best-performing teams, meeting the minimum benchmark of 1 m/s. However, no team met this standard, with only two teams climbing under beam power. This prize also increased to $200,000 in 2006, but no team was able to accomplish the full set of requirements.

In 2007 the prize money was raised to $500,000 USD for this competition.

See Elevator:2010 for more information on the Tether Challenge, and the Beam Power Challenge as well as other challenges related to space elevator technologies.

[edit] Moon Regolith Oxygen (MoonROx) Challenge

This head-to-head competition will reward US$250,000 for the system capable of extracting 2.5 kilograms of oxygen from 100 kilograms of artificial lunar regolith in 4 hours or less[2].

[edit] Astronaut Glove Challenge

This competition rewarded US$250,000 at a competition in November 2006 to the team which constructed the best-performing astronaut glove [3]. The basic idea for the competition was first proposed in Rand Simberg's Transterrestrial Musings blog[4].

The first competition took place May 2 and May 3, 2007 at the New England Air Museum at Bradley International Airport, Windsor Locks, Connecticut. NASA offered a total of $200,000 for the team that could design and manufacture the best astronaut glove that exceeded minimum requirements. An additional $50,000 was offered to the team that best demonstrated Mechanical Counter Pressure gloves [1]. The $200,000 prize was awarded to Peter K. Homer, an engineer from Southwest Harbor, Maine [5]; the $50,000 prize went unclaimed and will rollover until it is claimed [6].

[edit] Suborbital Payload Challenge

Announced at the XPrize Cup Expo, this challenge will be run by the X PRIZE Foundation once the NASA authorization bill has passed and the purse size has been allocated. This will be the first prize where the purse is over $250,000. The goal is to achieve suborbital altitudes that provide enough linger time for the kind of microgravity research NASA needs.

[edit] Vertical Lander Challenge and Lunar Lander Challenge

Also announced at the XPrize Cup Expo and run by the XPrize Foundation, this prize is for a VTVL (vertical take-off, vertical landing) suborbital rocket that can achieve the altitudes and launch energies that are equivalent to what would be needed for a lunar lander. The former requires 50 meter minimum altitude, horizontal distance of 100 meters, flight time of 90 seconds, and landing on a smooth surface and return, after refueling to its original location. The more aggressive Lunar challenge increases that to 180s of flight time and landing on a rocky surface. The VLC has a first prize of $350,000, while the LLC has a first prize in excess of this. For 2006 at the Wirefly X PRIZE Cup, Armadillo Aerospace was the only team able to compete. Their vehicle "Pixel" completed one leg of the trip on its third try but crashed shortly after takeoff on the return, leaving all prizes unclaimed.

[edit] Other proposals

The Challenges have not been finalized. Candidates include:

Challenges will be organized into one of four categories: [7]

  • Flagship Challenges: "To encourage major private space missions," these are expected to be multi-million dollar prizes for more major goals, such as robotic lunar landers or human orbital spaceflight.
  • Keystone Challenges: "To address technology priorities"
  • Alliance Challenges: "To leverage partnerships," contests organized in collaboration with non-government partners
  • Quest Challenges: "To promote science, technology, engineering and math outreach"

[edit] Origin

The Centennial Challenges are based on a long history of technology prize contests, including the Longitude prize (won by John Harrison), the Orteig Prize (won by Charles Lindbergh), the Ansari X PRIZE (won by Scaled Composites), and the DARPA Grand Challenge (won by Stanford University in 2005 and Carnegie Mellon University in 2007). A key advantage of prizes over traditional grants is that money is only paid when the goal is achieved. A 1999 National Academy of Engineering committee report [8] recommended that "Congress encourage federal agencies to experiment more extensively with inducement prize contests in science and technology". A 2003 NASA Space Architect study, assisted by the X PRIZE Foundation, led to the establishment of the Centennial Challenges. The prize contests were named "Centennial" in honor of the 100 years since the Wright brothers' first flight in 1903.

As a federal agency, NASA has one of the federal government's three largest procurement budgets. The Energy Department (DOE) and the Defense Department (DOD) round out the trio. With the subsequent proposal in Congress of "H Prize" funding for breakthroughs in hydrogen fuel-related technology [9], the Department of Energy is poised to join NASA and DARPA's Defense Department in fortifying this paradigm shift favoring a growing quantity of technology experimenters who might otherwise be neglected by traditional government contractors and federal procurement officials.

[edit] See also


[edit] See additionally

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://www.elevator2010.org/site/competitionTether2005.html
  2. ^ http://www.fsri.org/space_research_Moon_ROx.htm
  3. ^ http://www.astronaut-glove.us
  4. ^ http://www.transterrestrial.com/archives/005525.html
  5. ^ http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/01/magazine/01nasa-t.html
  6. ^ http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/070504_astronaut_glove_win.html
  7. ^ http://exploration.nasa.gov/centennialchallenge/cc_challenges.html
  8. ^ http://www.nap.edu/catalog/9724.html
  9. ^ http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/01/24/41211.aspx

[edit] External links

[edit] Official (NASA)

[edit] News

[edit] Unofficial (non-NASA)

[edit] News

[edit] Opinion