Google Lunar X Prize competition feels the heat from Shanghai

Markus Bindhammer heads China's only Google Lunar X Prize team known as Team Selene. He is a German engineer based in Shanghai and he is not shy about sharing his views about the conduct of the competition.

The winning team in this competition could walk away with $20 million or more.

This week Bindhammer let everyone know that his patience is being tried again. He quoted directly from the MTA 3.0 which is the latest version of the so-called Master Team Agreement. Here are a few excerpts from a post on his team blog -

"X PRIZE Foundation employees and their families may neither participate in, nor have a financial interest in the Google Lunar X PRIZE TEAMs or CRAFTs. Officers and Trustees of the X PRIZE Foundation must comply with the Foundation’s Conflict of Interest policy, which requires that they disclose possible conflicts and recuse themselves from any relevant deliberations or decisions regarding the development of PRIZEs under development or offered by the Foundation in which they may have a direct or indirect financial interest."

Bindhammer wrote that, "nobody seems to care about that Naveen Jain serves on the Board of the X PRIZE (Foundation) and is at the same time the primarily backer of Moon Express, one of 28 GLXP competitors."

He continued -

"While the still legal binding MTA 3.0 also states:

"Teams shall publish a minimum of one blog per week to an XPF-designated website. Teams shall post a minimum cumulative duration of forty-five minutes of video per calendar quarter. Teams shall post a minimum of 3 substantively different videos per month.

"and there is a clear procedure in case of non-compliance

"If your team fails to meet one or more of these requirements, we have instituted a 3-stage process in order to help your team get back on track. First, if your team was out of compliance during the past quarter of the calendar year, you will receive a letter stating that your team has 30 days to take corrective action to come into compliance with the requirements of section 6.3.2. If your team remains out of compliance after those 30 days, you will receive a second letter informing you that your team is suspended from the competition. While suspended, your team will not be included in X PRIZE Foundation public relations announcements, events, etc. (though information about your team will remain available on the Google Lunar X PRIZE website during the suspension). Your team will then have 30 days to take corrective action to come into compliance with the requirements of section 6.3.2. Failure to do so will result in expulsion from the competition.

"several teams violating the paragraph over many months without any consequences. One team even tries to circumvent the paragraph by using a blog robot."

He concluded -

"You may now ask if it make sense to carry these things to the public. It makes sense, because the breeding ground for such wheelings and dealings is exactly secrecy and exclusion of publicity."

You can read Bindhammer's entire post - "More rumble in the Google Lunar X Prize jungle" - here

http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/lunar/teams/selene/blog/more-rumble-in-the-google-lunar-x-prize-jungle

Disclaimer - I have assisted Bindhammer in the past in the preparation of his Team Selene posts, but I have not done so lately. I have also assisted other GLXP teams. Team Selenokhod in Russia requests my assistance most frequently.

Susmita and Amaresh have much more than Mars on their minds

Susmita Mohanty and Amaresh Kollipara have much more than Mars on their
minds. Together they created Earth2Orbit (E2O) which is described as
India’s first private space start-up. It is headquartered in Mumbai
with offices in Bangalore, San Francisco and Vienna where Dr. Barbara
Imhof oversees E2O's European operations. The team wants to start an
office in Tokyo too.

Placing small satellites in orbit appears to be E2O's primary mission -
at least that is how I perceive E2O after reading the company brief
where Section 2.1 - "International Launch Brokering" - clearly states
that "E2O serves as an 'integrated business window' to ISRO’s marketing
arm, ANTRIX and offers international clients primary and secondary
launches onboard the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). The
advantage the PSLV has over its competitors includes greater launch
frequency and competitive pricing. ANTRIX also offers discounted
pricing for universities and non-commercial missions. "

Satellites with a full launch weight well under 2000 kg are best suited
to ride aboard the PSLV which is why India is developing and promoting
its GSLV program to ultimately lift larger satellites into orbit. An enhanced PSLV-XL version which was used to launch ISRO's 1400kg-plus GSAT-12 satellite last month also took ISRO's Chandrayaan-1 aloft on its lunar mission.

"We offer satellite clients turnkey services that include: launch
procurement, launch quote negotiations with ANTRIX, contract
management, satellite testing, integration, logistics management,
launch and post-launch mission support. We also offer them ancillary
launch hardware such as orbital deployers (also known as separation
mechanisms or satellite dispensers)" the E2O brief added.

Here you see that E2O is much more than some sort of PSLV gatekeeper
and it is positioning itself to be a full service provider to "New
Space" sector companies. And this raises another critical question as
well.

Would Mohanty be a strong candidate to take charge of ISRO?

I am inclined to think so. At least she should be given her turn at the
helm. Take a moment to read her recent Gateway House commentary - "A
Tale of Two Rockets" - which she penned earlier this year and you can
perhaps understand how I formulated my viewpoint in this instance.

See

http://www.gatewayhouse.in/publication/gateway-house/features/tale-two-
rockets

Would the new launch pad at SHAR have gone much more quickly if she was
running the show? Would ISRO be further down the road in general? These
and other questions cannot go unmentioned.

"Theoretically, ISRO is capable of building and launching five to six
PSLVs per year. But for the past few years, it has barely launched two
a year. This is most likely because our national priorities precede any
commercial intent. While this may seem appropriate, commercial intent
can be pursued in parallel and does not have displace priority
missions. As a nation, we have an opportunity to articulate and pursue
commercial dominance of the international launch market as part of the
mission of our space programme" she wrote.

Consider carefully the final two recommendations that she made - out of
a total of 11.

"(10) Bet on young entrepreneurs and new companies

"As it did with IT, the Indian government needs to create a business
environment to nurture a new breed of entrepreneurs that will go out
and privatize the space sector and compete in the international market.
Breakthrough innovation almost always comes from new entrants, rather
than existing corporations that are weighed down by entrenched business
models and legacy cost structures.

"(11) Think in 50 to 100 year cycles, not in 5 to 10 year cycles."

"India needs vision as much as it needs an outward-looking, even
aggressive, space policy. India needs to think long term while creating
a commercial roadmap for space," she concluded.

There is no doubt that she sees the big picture and she has a talented
and yet tiny team to assist her besides. Kollipara with his MBA from
Columbia University is keen and competent to run the numbers. He is a
regular at the annual "Space Investment Summit" and compliments Mohanty
well. We caught up with him just after he spoke at the "New Space 2011"
conference.

He admitted that nobody from E2O was attending the 25th Annual Small
Satellite Conference in Utah this week. An awkward situation no doubt
given that this event is held each year at Utah State University and
attracts hundreds of researchers as well as staff members from
government agencies both military and civilian and aspiring New Space
entrepeneurs.

"No. We usually attend every year...but this year we have some
interesting projects that require us to engage in client discussions
this week" said Kollipara who serves as E2O's San Francisco-based CEO -
USA while Mohanty serves as CEO - India.

I would estimate that half the crowd in Utah this week would welcome a
chance to talk to E2O about how best to obtain a ticket to ride aboard
the PSLV.

"ISRO will have to make it attractive for private companies to enter
the satellite manufacturing and launch business. Only then can we hope
to bring down the launch prices further as has been demonstrated by the
new California based company SpaceX. The Obama administration has
radically reformed their national space policy letting private
companies like SpaceX take the lead in developing low-cost, reliable,
and efficient space transportation options for the American space
programme" a recent E2O memo stated. "This will allow American
launchers to compete with the low cost launchers from Russia, India and
China. India needs to get its act together and consider significant
changes to its space policy if it wants to create a thriving space
industry. And by ‘industry’, we mean not just companies that supply
parts to ISRO, but also companies that can go out and capture a chunk
of the 160 billion dollar international market."

E2O has been pursuing its objectives since 2008 and the time has come
for E2O to initiate a more aggressive campaign.

Upcoming UN-SPIDER conference in Beijing will examine role of satellites in Japanese disaster

In late November, experts will gather in Beijing for the United Nations International Conference on Space-based Technologies for Disaster Risk Management. Shirish Ravan is playing a key role in organizing this upcoming session. He is in charge of the Beijing office of the UN Platform for Space-based Information for Disaster Management and Emergency Response (UN-SPIDER)which is part of the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA).

"The recent Japanese tsunami has alerted us to the fact that even the most prepared country can also be heavily impacted. Therefore, we have decided to focus more on space-based information preparedness and the challenges in providing rapid mapping products," said Ravan. "We are in discussions with our regional support office, the Asian Disaster Reduction Centre, to plan a joint workshop in order to share the lessons learned by Japan in terms of preparing and distributing various information products quickly. We hope this will be useful for all Asian countries that are exposed to the risk of tsunamis and earthquakes."

Ravan hails from India's Maharashtra State, and after he earned his Masters degree in Environmental Sciences, he completed his Doctorate
at ISRO's Institute of Remote Sensing. Prior to arriving in Beijing, Ravan coordinated the UN opium monitoring project in Afghanistan, a job that involved oversight of massive amounts of remote sensing data.

The UN-SPIDER Beijing office is a global office which is attempting to promote and vastly increase the use of space-based information in disaster
management throughout Asia. Besides Ravan, the Government of China has assigned two experienced operational staff to this small office, and one other staff member handles program support.

Because Asia and the Pacific region are so prone to all kinds of disaster -related risks, and because many countries in the region have limited access to space-based information - or no space capabilities whatsoever - with the exception of China, India, Japan, Korea and Thailand, all efforts to enhance the use of satellite technology in this regard are important.

"Due to this peculiar nature of this region, there are many initiatives for disaster reduction and emergency response by the UN and other organizations. Our presence in the region allows us to collaborate well with these organizations," said Ravan. "Institutions in China
possess excellent capabilities in using space technology for disaster
management and they are ready to offer their services to developing
countries. UN-SPIDER is building partnership with these institutions
to roll out these benefits to our member states."

The UN-SPIDER's major initiatives in Asia and other regions are well-funded. These include various technical advisory missions.

"We will go to a country upon their invitation. Typically, these are 5 days missions where our expert group visits the country under UN-SPIDER leadership. We meet heads of all stakeholder organizations involved in disaster management and look into issues related to disaster management plans, policies, data, coordination, institutional arrangements etc," said Ravan. "We conduct one-day workshops involving all stakeholders. The host government can then act on the recommendations provided by the mission experts to boost disaster management efforts involving space technology."

Recent missions visited Bangladesh, and Sudan (part of a Horn of Africa initiative)- and one to Sri Lanka is planned. A partnership developed with National Disaster Reduction Centre of China (NDRCC) is yielding positive results.

"We are also working closely with the Centre for Space Science Technology for Asia and the Pacific which is based in Dehrdaun,India. This is one of the five regional centres affiliated with the UN for capacity building in space technology. We have planned a one-month course (9 April to 4 May 2012) on Space Technology Applications in Disaster Risk Reduction. The course is designed based on the needs we identified through our technical advisory missions," said Ravan.

UN-SPIDER will sponsor officers from the countries that are working
closely with UN-SPIDER to attend this course. Many more such capacity
building programme will be planned with different partners in the
region. Ravan and his team are expecting 200 disaster risk management and
space-technology experts to participate in the upcoming session in Beijing.

More information on the United Nations International Conference on
Space-based Technologies for Disaster Risk Management -
“Best Practices for Risk Reduction and Rapid Response Mapping” is available at -

http://www.un-spider.org/conference-beijing-2011