Google Lunar X PRIZE Complete Teams RSS Feed

SYNERGY MOON's Randa Milliron Comments on Shuttle Demise

randa — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 20:00:59 -0800

Randa Milliron, Interorbital Systems CEO and CoFounder/ SYNERGY MOON's Launch Provider, comments on Space Shuttle Program demise:
http://www.technewsworld.com/rsstory/69294.html

Rover orientation algorithms

Pavel Sharov — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 13:16:45 -0800

Our partners at Veliky Novgorod State University's Laboratory of
Innovative Radio Systems have developed an alpha version of Moon rover
software.

This computer vision software interfaces with dual cameras for
stereovision as well as a laser scanning tool for obstacle detection. It
will help our rover travel autonomously on the lunar surface.

In the near future, we plan to equip our rover with additional sensors
including an accelerometer, and inclinometers along with an odometer to
accurately measure how far our rover travels.

http://picasaweb.google.com/selenokhod/RoverPrototype2#

Team moves into Planetary Robotics Lab

Astrobotic — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 10:24:16 -0800

The ground floor of the new Gates-Hillman Center for Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon is devoted to the 5,000 square foot Planetary Robotics Lab. The PRL includes a 3,000 square foot high bay with computer controlled crane for engineering and experimentation, along with workrooms for fabrication of robots and their components.

While the Gates-Hillman building was opened for most uses in fall 2009, move-in to the PRL took place last week as the last of the construction company gear and furniture staging areas cleared out.

How Many Super Bowl Ads Would a Moon Mission Cost?

Andrew Barton — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 02:51:48 -0800

With the Super Bowl coming up tomorrow White Label Space did a quick check on the price that advertisers are paying this year for a 30 second timeslot during one of the most watched sporting events in the world. According to this CBS news piece, the answer is $3 million. (Note also the interesting discussion about trademark ownership at the end of the news piece.)

Wow! It costs $1 million per 10 seconds of Super Bowl air time.

Now, our team's cost engineers have predicted that our Google Lunar X PRIZE mission will cost around $50 million. That's equal to 500 seconds (8.3 minutes) of Super Bowl ad time, or about 17 standard length ads.

Of course, just like the Super Bowl and other high profile international competitions, our Mooncasts will clearly show the logos of our sponsors on our Rover and Lander as they go about their business on the field of play.

May the best team win!

Space Tourists

Bogdan — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 08:40:43 -0800

This year's winner of the Sundance World Cinema Documentary prize for Directing is Christian Frei's SPACE TOURISTS

«For its masterful and poetic approach to a complex story of history,
humanity and fantasy - taking place between earth and space…»

Protagonists: Anouseh Ansari (space tourist) and Dumitru Popescu (ARCA team leader)

http://www.space-tourists-film.com

Communication strategies

Euroluna — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 07:08:59 -0800

Title: Communication means and ways.

At the last Team summit, the issue of communication came up again, and it was emphasized that a significant part of the GLXP competition is to communicate about what we are doing, participating in the online life and generate output for the various media.

Two main channels are mandatory:
1. YouTupe, through regular video output from the Teams
2. GLXP Blog, through weekly blogging.

Other channels are of course considered and recommended, like twitter and Facebook.

Euroluna has now been active on all these 4 media for more than a year, with mixed results.

Our best results are with the YouTupe videos. We have, as of end January 2010, uploaded 24 videos, which has had a total
of 5503 video views and 1015 channel views. Perhaps one of my knowledgeable readers could explain the difference between these two numbers ? Should I add them ?
We have 17 subscribers, which might mean that these people gets an email, when we upload a new video ?

Anyway, we consider this a success, and worth building on!

Our other excellent result are with Twitter. Twitter is easy to use, and I have send perhaps 70 short messages to around 80 followers in the past year or so. I continue to get more people following what I write on this channel. I have to add, that I use it sparingly, as can be seen from the statistics of around 1 message per week. That is in a certain sense for philosophical reasons: I think it is a misuse of the channel to send out 10 messages per day. I prefer to have some news or some point to make, not just to increase the "noise" level, by writing every day.

With Facebook, my personal experience has been mixed. I do have a Facebook account, and Euroluna has a different one. However I use it mostly as a reading media, which give me some news about my friends.

And I still have not found out how to use all the facilities, and the possibilities.

Our website, euroluna.org, gets updates directly from twitter, as long as the applet works, which it does most of the time.....

I have also managed to put some of the twitters directly on to Facebook, but it goes to my page, not to the Euroluna page. That could probably be changed, by a Guro. Suggestions welcome.

Startting just the other day, Euroluna Facebook can now be added as a Fan page, which may give some additional benefits. Time will tell. If you read this, and has a Facebook account, please become a fan of Euroluna, then I can see the statistics!! :)

For the blogging, which we are now relaunching with a series of updates, the experience so far is not so positive. The GLXP blog pages are not intuitive to use, and the attack on the site in the fall, made it impossible to login to write a blog for a while. I am sure that GLXP send some information about how to bypass the problem. However when things like this does not work, they end in my "to do later, when I have more time" box, which tends to become permanent storage... :)

So it was only on the last Team Summit, that I got back to the login page (Thank you for your help, Amanda!!), to actually get to a point where upload of a blog again became possible.

In addition, I have to add, that we have had no feedback from any reader of the blog, I have seen no statistics of readers, or any other indications if what I write is ever read ;)

So as opposed to Twitter and YouTube, I simply do not yet know, if anyone is in there!!

"Is there anybody in there ?" [pink floyd]

So what about the future:

My personal view of the communication strategy for the future, all the be subject to a critical review by our press expert, Signe, is that we will continue with what we know is working, i.e. YouTube and Twitter. I will continue to twit more or less once a week, and also send a twit when we have a new blog or a new video.

In this way we should reinforce and link the 3 medias, which have significant different audience and scope.

For Facebook, for me the situation is not clear, time will tell.

Let me add, that I have also made an experiment with Google Wave, and got a public wave up and running. We also made a very successful use of a private Wave for our internal Master Team Agreement discussion. However, then the fact that one has to be on-line all the time, came in the way. :(

As an example of this, let me just add, that I am writing this at the LAX airport, waiting for a plane, and that I am not online.

For next week, a blog with a bit more on the Team Summit results is planned.

We are also considering to distribute the blog writing over the Team, asking Søren, Tor, Erik and others to contribute for instance once per month! I have not yet told them, but maybe they will read this blog!! :) ;) If any of them read this, or gets to know it without me or Signe having to tell them directly, the prize is a beer!! :)

And with this, I shall sign off for now, and upload to the blog, next time I have the chance, and see if I get any reactions!!! :)

Palle

PS: Oh, and by the way we made a new video:

Chasing the Dream

Next Giant Leap — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:03:53 -0800

Wow, what a week.
- President Obama's FY2011 budget was unveiled on Monday - BIG changes to NASA ( read why this is not a bad thing: http://bit.ly/cVRlw2 )
- Our partner, Sierra Nevada Corp. won a $20 million CCDev contract to work on Dreamchaser: http://bit.ly/cNwznD
- Monday and Tuesday were spent at JPL with our fellow GLXP teams attending the team summit. It was an absolute pleasure working together with our fellow teams and the XPF staff!

Exhausted but excited by all that's going on!

Chris, Peter and Michael at JPL

Google Lunar X Prize, Day One Summit.

Bogdan — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 11:17:10 -0800

The first day at NASA's JPL during the Google Lunar X Prize Summit. The X Prize teams learned about NASA's planetary missions from the people that designed and operated the spacecrafts.

Google Lunar X Prize Team Summit

Bogdan — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 11:03:52 -0800

ARCA Team will participate at the Google Lunar X Prize Team Summit, at NASA - Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, on February 1-2, 2010.

On the Flight Path

Next Giant Leap — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 10:34:00 -0800

The MIT student team has uploaded a new video. A compilation of flight test highlights from the early days of powered vehicle tests to controls gains tests in October 2009.