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August 10, 2008 - By Amanda Stiles
As Will mentioned a few days ago, I just finished my time here at the X PRIZE Foundation. It's been a truly fantastic experience and I wanted to share some of the most exciting details with you!
Although I already gave some insight earlier on what it's like to work for the Google Lunar X PRIZE, I wanted to tell everyone what to expect if he/she happens to have the great chance to work for the X PRIZE as well.
August 8, 2008 - By Amanda Stiles

Did a pretty fun experiment today asking folks what songs they would add to a mixtape about the Moon. From that I built this fun MUXTAPE. Of course, there are a million songs about the Moon, as Will points out in the instant message quote below. Why not make your own MUXTAPE and leave it in the comments!

william.pomerantz@gmail.com
GTalk
So many Moon songs.
"The Moon" - Cat Power
"Moon Beats YEllow" Gorky's Zygotic Mynci
"Moon Dreams" - Miles Davis
Moon Mist - Duke Ellington
Moon on My Shoulder - Lyle Lovett
Moon Song - Bob Schneider
Moonglow - Duke Ellington
Moonlight Bay - Beatles
Moonlight in Vermont - Willie Nelson
Moonshadow - Cat Stevens
Moonshiner - Cat Power.
That's just from the M section on my ipod!
others...
Another Moon - Meat Puppets
Bad Moon Rising - CCR
August 8, 2008 - By Amanda Stiles
The NASA Co-Lab, a group out of NASA Ames that looks for innovative ways for NASA both to outreach to the community and to collaborate with individuals outside of NASA's own employee and contractor base, holds a cool series of public events called "Luna Philosophie". Pretty much without fail, I am interested in the topics they discuss, but unable to attend in person.

The last Luna Philosophie featured a guest speaker -- Doug Comstock. I've gotten to know Doug relatively well through the NASA Centennial Challenges program, which falls under the Innovative Partnership Program (IPP) office, which Doug runs. In my opinion, IPP is running some of NASA's best, most important projects--but is also among the most-overlooked sections of NASA, by Congressional appropriators, at least. Doug and his team are doing great things both to carry forward the success of the various IPP programs and to raise the public awareness about them.
August 7, 2008 - By Amanda Stiles
Here are the most recent entries in our Google Lunar X PRIZE T-Shirt Design Competition:






August 7, 2008 - By Amanda Stiles
We've just released a new KMZ file that lets you explore the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge right from your laptop. Fly around to visit the teams all over the world, or check out the locations where they test fly all of their vehicles.

If you've got any good placemarks you'd like to see here, let us know! We'll be updating this feed as new content becomes available (don't worry, the content will refresh itself automatically, so no need to redownload). Stay tuned for more information about how the webcast of the challenge on October 24 and 25 will work.

You can download the file here.
August 6, 2008 - By Amanda Stiles
Team Phoenicia, one of the newly announced Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge teams, just posted an introductory blog. Worth reading for those of you eager to learn more about our newest crop of LLC teams.

I'll paste their complete first post below, but after that, you're on your own! Worth adding to your blogrolls...
Welcome to Team Phoenicia's blog!

We're dusting everything off for our fun and games PR wise. Multiple people have probably paid call on our oh-so-quiet blog. It's not because we wanted to be quiet. it is merely because we had to. There are some rules with regards publicity and announcements by the X PRIZE Foundation. This is merely so that everyone is coordinated with regards to the talking heads, etc.

So what are we doing?

We are attempting to aim for the Google Lunar X PRIZE.
August 6, 2008 - By Amanda Stiles
As previously mentioned here on the Launch Pad, our friends over at Space Florida recently co-hosted an event for a potential pan-Floridian Google Lunar X PRIZE team called Omega Envoy. I wasn't able to attend the event myself--I was at Oshkosh at the time--but I got a quick recap of the event. Here's what I learned:
August 6, 2008 - By Amanda Stiles


Step right up!

Got a creative streak in you? Can't believe that the Google Lunar X PRIZE doesn't have any awesome T-Shirt designs? Want to be famous? (OK, you might have to settle for semi-famous, unless of course you send a rover to the Moon).

Enter the Google Lunar X PRIZE T-Shirt Design Competition, and you could win a gift certificate to our new store, featuring YOUR DESIGN!

Vote for Google Lunar X PRIZE, and all your dreams will come true.

Hurry, contest ends August 19!
August 5, 2008 - By Amanda Stiles

We've just released a new KML file that lets you explore the Google Lunar X PRIZE right from your laptop. Fly around to visit the teams all over the world, or check out the Allen Telescope Array from our preferred partner SETI Institute.

If you've got any good placemarks you'd like to see here, let us know! We'll be updating this feed as new content becomes available (don't worry, the content will refresh itself automatically, so no need to redownload). Stay tuned for geoblogs and maybe geotagged images as well!

Go here to download the KML.
August 5, 2008 - By Amanda Stiles

Yesterday marked the end of an era here at the X PRIZE Foundation. Pierre-Damien Vaujour, intern extraordinaire and occasional blogger here on the Launch Pad, finished up his last day at X PRIZE.

Pierre-Damien came to us by way of Supaero and the European Space Research and Technology Centre, and brought not just a knowledge of lunar missions and the European community but also a wonderful and fun personality to our team. We enjoyed working with him.

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