X PRIZE PRESS RELEASE

The race for the $2 million Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge (NGLLC) incentivized prize purse, funded by NASA and presented by the X PRIZE Foundation, is coming down to the wire.

As the competition end date (Oct. 31) draws near, teams will descend upon the Mojave Desert in a head-to-head showdown to compete for portions of the remaining $1.65 million prize purse. Officials have confirmed that at least $1.15 million will be awarded this year to a minimum of two of the four NGLLC teams. This will be the largest incentivized prize awarded by the X PRIZE Foundation since the 2004 Ansari X PRIZE competition.

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NASA Picks Turbojet For TBCC Engine Test
Aviation Week

RaNASA has selected a Williams International high-speed turbojet as the turbine element of its Turbine Based Combined Cycle (TBCC) engine test rig, which will be used to evaluate technologies for potential future two-stage to orbit launcher concepts.

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"We are not amused."

The extremely wealthy Queen of England thinks that orbital space travel is a too pricey these days:

The Queen told former prime minister Jean Chretien she found the price tag for billionaire clown Guy Laliberte’s recent extra-terrestrial adventure to be excessive.

“She said she would not have done it and she found the price a bit expensive,” Chretien said Tuesday, shortly after being awarded the Order of Merit by the Queen during a private ceremony at Buckingham Palace.

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Rocketplane Global’s snake bitten efforts at launching a suborbital tourism business have taken another curious turn.

When we last left the story, Rocketplane had laid off most of its employees, abandoned its base in Oklahoma for Wisconsin, and needed in excess of $100 million just to get to the first flight of its prototype.

This week, it emerged that the company is selling tickets for its non-existent space plane in an Austrian discount supermarket:

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SPACE FLORIDA PRESS RELEASE

Today, NASA and Starfighters, Inc. announced the signing of a formal Space Act Agreement enabling Starfighters, a private aerospace company that operates high performance fighter aircraft, to fully utilize the Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF) to conduct flight operations providing commercial space flight training, support research and development, test and engineering for the benefit of the emerging commercial space industry, and to otherwise advance aerospace and space-related technology in Florida.

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Accused spy Stewart David Nozette in India.

The Indian space agency has began to clam up about accused spy’s Stewart David Nozette’s visits to the country as part of his work on the Chandrayaan-1 lunar probe. The Deccan Herald reports that ISRO is now stonewalling requests for more information:

When contacted, agency spokesperson S Satish said: “I have consulted the concerned department but that information cannot be divulged as it is classified.”

The silence comes amid speculation that India is the “Country A” named in the government’s indictment against Nozette. Although Nozette was arrested for allegedly trying to sell secrets to an undercover FBI agent posing as a representative of the Mossad, there are suspicions that he might have been already spying for “Country A.”

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Ares I-X on the pad awaiting its October 27 launch. Ares may have the shortest lifespan of any rocket in history.

There were a number of key takeaways from the Augustine Commission’s press conference today:

• The Ares I can be built, but it will take so long (until 2017) that it makes no sense to build it;
• Extending space shuttle operations beyond next year would delay the debut of a successor vehicle by years;
• The commercial sector is sufficiently advanced that it can handle orbital operations, leaving NASA to concentrate on missions beyond Earth orbit;
• Moon landings are not the only option for human mission;
• Going to Mars directly makes no sense financially or technically;
• NASA Administrator Charles Bolden needs the authority to be able to restructure the agency to maximize efficiency and to be held accountable in the same way as a CEO of a company would be for results.

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CSF PRESS RELEASE

The Commercial Spaceflight Federation welcomes the strong support for commercial human spaceflight expressed by the White House’s Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee, also known as the Augustine Committee, which released its final report today. The Augustine Committee endorsed the creation of a Commercial Crew program to develop commercial capabilities to transport crew to the International Space Station, with a baseline NASA investment of $3 billion, to include multiple competitors and human-rating of an existing reliable launch vehicle.

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Northrop Grumman posts 3Q dip but lifts outlook
Associated Press

Northrop Grumman Corp. said Wednesday earnings for the third quarter were hurt by higher pension costs, but solid revenue and a tax break pushed results well past analyst estimates. The maker of military aircraft and defense electronics also lifted its profit outlook for the year.

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NewScientist has an interesting interview with XCOR CEO Jeff Greason, who also served on the Augustine Commission. An excerpt: Which cutting-edge technologies should NASA develop first? The very first element would be a technology for the handling and storage of propellant in space. If we had such a “gas station” it would significantly change the game in terms of what you could do: it would let you launch a much […]

Accused spy Steward David Nozette in India.

Justin Elliot at Talking Points Memo looks into accused spy Stewart David Nozette’s dealings with India. Nozette was co-investigator for a NASA experiment that flew aboard India’s Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter.

A curious section in the criminal complaint suggests that there was a foreign country — identified only as “Country A” — to which Nozette may have passed information. And there’s circumstantial evidence suggesting one “Country A” candidate is India….

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