Rice Alliance and Heinlein Trust Announce Space Flight Competition and $25,000 Research Grant
A flight to space and $25,000 grant will be presented to the winner of the Microgravity Research Competition at the Rice University Business Plan Competition Awards Banquet on April 18
HOUSTON – Feb. 2, 2009 – The Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship (Rice Alliance) along with the Heinlein Prize Trust and Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) have announced a new competition for researchers wanting to pursue experiments in space. The competition offers a $25,000 prize and transportation to and from Low Earth Orbit for the winning experiment aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft mission, planned for November 2009. Removing gravity offers new understanding of biological and physical processes, and the Microgravity Research Competition will reward an innovation that uses microgravity to advance biotech, nanotech, combustion, metallurgy, and other fields. The deadline for proposal submission is March 20, 2009.
The Microgravity Research Competition is open to all U.S. universities and non-profits organizations along with their industry partners. The winner of the competition will be announced at the Awards Banquet for the 2009 Rice Business Plan Competition on April 18. The winner will have the ability to witness in person the launch of their project into Earth orbit aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft. NASA recently selected Falcon 9 / Dragon to transport cargo to the International Space Station.
“SpaceX is excited to offer our Dragon spacecraft as a platform for in-space experimentation services to mainstream researchers,” said Elon Musk, SpaceX CEO and CTO. "We plan to fly ‘DragonLab’ missions starting in 2010 for this express purpose,” Musk said.
“We very pleased to participate in this important competition,” said Brad Burke, managing director, Rice Alliance, host of the Rice Business Plan Competition, “because of the important role of commercializing the promising technology research and innovations”.
In space, there is no gravity-induced convection, sedimentation, hydrodynamic shear force, hydrostatic pressure, or mass transfer, according to the competition announcement. Experiments in microgravity can reveal novel mechanisms fundamental to cell processes, disease processes, and the adaptation of living systems to changes in physical forces, it said.
“Decades of demonstrations have shown that the microgravity of space provides a unique window on biological and physical processes,” said Art Dula, Trustee of the Heinlein Prize Trust. “Because of substantial recent funding by NASA and the private sector, access to microgravity will soon be more commonplace. This opens an incredibly exciting opportunity for the research community,” Dula said.
The announcement, available a www.labflight.com, provides an overview of microgravity's practical applications and details on the competition. Proposals can be submitted online and are due on March 20, 2009.
About Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship
The Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship is Rice University's flagship initiative devoted to the support of entrepreneurship. The Rice Alliance's mission is to provide entrepreneurship education and to support the commercialization of technology innovations and the creation of new companies in the Texas and Houston region. Since its inception in 1999, the Rice Alliance has assisted in the launch of more than 230 new technology companies, which have raised more than half a billion dollars in early stage funding. Of these, approximately 30 companies have been launched based on technology developed by Rice faculty and researchers and licensed from the Rice Office of Technology Transfer.
Unique among many entrepreneurship centers, the Rice Alliance was formed as a strategic alliance of three schools at Rice University: the George R. Brown School of Engineering, the Wiess School of Natural Sciences and the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management.
In 2009, the Rice Alliance was named the Outstanding Specialty Entrepreneurship Program for technology entrepreneurship in the U.S. by the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship and the Houston’s Greatest Economic Development Ally award granted by the Greater Houston Partnership.
In 2008 and 2007, Rice University was recognized as having one of the top 25 graduate entrepreneurship programs in the U.S. by The Princeton Review and Entrepreneur magazine (No. 16 in 2008). In 2007, the Rice Alliance was recognized as the No. 1 university entrepreneurship center in the U.S. for enterprise creation by the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers. www.alliance.rice.edu
About Heinlein Prize Trust
The Heinlein Prize Trust is a non-profit foundation which promotes the commercial uses of space. It provides financial prizes to commercial space entrepreneurs, enhances public awareness of commercial space, and uses space to inspire students about opportunities of the next frontier. The Trust is a legacy of Robert and Virginia Heinlein; Robert Heinlein is one of the most popular American science fiction authors and is often called the “dean of science fiction writers”. For more information, see www.heinleinprize.com.
About SpaceX
Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) is developing a family of launch vehicles and spacecraft intended to increase the reliability and reduce the cost of both manned and unmanned space transportation, ultimately by a factor of ten. With the Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 vehicles, SpaceX offers highly reliable/cost-efficient light, medium and heavy lift capabilities for spacecraft insertion into any orbital altitude and inclination. In addition, the Dragon spacecraft provides Earth to LEO transport of pressurized and unpressurized instruments, cargo, and crew, including resupply to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2010.
SpaceX was recently awarded a Cargo Resupply Services contract by NASA. The $1.6B contract includes 12 flights between 2010 and 2015 with a guaranteed minimum of 20,000 kg to be transported to the ISS.
Founded in 2002, the SpaceX team now numbers over 650, with corporate headquarters in Hawthorne, California. For more information, please visit www.spacex.com.
