Richard Branson and then-Gov. Bill Richardson. (Credit: Douglas Messier)

By Douglas Messier
Parabolic Arc Managing Editor

Forbes has released its annual list of the world’s billionaires. There are a record 1,426 individuals with an aggregate net worth of $5.4 trillion in the world. The table below shows the tiny handful of this group — nine individuals — who are currently or have been previously involved in space projects.

The nine individuals are collectively worth $104.7 billion, with the bulk of that worth ($86 billion) coming from four individuals. Only one member of the group — Canadian Guy Laliberte — has been to space, flying to the International Space Station aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in 2009. He is not known to have been involved in any space projects since returning to Earth.

Richard Branson and Elon Musk are the billionaires most prominently connected with space travel in the public’s mind. This is interesting because of the disparity in results between their two companies. SpaceX has launched its Falcon rockets 10 times, with the last seven successfully placing payloads into orbit. Earlier this week, one of the company’s Dragon freighters docked with the International Space Station.

Thus far, Branson’s connection with space has been as much a matter of hype as actual accomplishments. After more than eight years of development, the brash British billionaire hasn’t gotten SpaceShipTwo above 51,000 feet, and never under its own power. That situation is set to change later this year as the suborbital craft begins powered test flights.

After Musk, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has been the most successful billionaire space investor. He backed SpaceShipOne, which became the first privately-funded vehicle to reach space in 2004. He subsequently sold the rights to the technology to Branson and donated the the ship to the Smithsonian Institution, managing to turn a profit on his investment.

Allen is now backing an even more ambitious effort, Stratolaunch Systems. The company is building a massive carrier aircraft that will air-launch satellites into space. His primary partner in the venture is Scaled Composites, the same company that built SpaceShipOne.

Jeff Bezos is the most secretive billionaire space investor on the list. Despite becoming much more open over the past year, we still don’t know all that much about Blue Origin, which is developing crewed suborbital and orbital spacecraft. It would be interesting to know how much the project has cost, and how much Bezos has invested personally.

Google Co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and Chairman Eric Schmidt have backed a private race to the moon through the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize. Twenty-three teams around the world are competing to land a rover on the moon and travel 500 meters by the end of 2015 to win the competition.

Page and Schmidt are backing a new venture, Planetary Resources, that aims to mine asteroids for profit. They are joined in that effort by H. Ross Perot, Jr., whose more famous father once ran for President.

Brin has put a $5 million down payment on a future space flight with Space Adventures, the company that has seven seven tourists to ISS. No flight has been scheduled yet.

Credit: Golden Spike Company

By Douglas Messier
Parabolic Arc Managing Editor

With human flights beyond Earth orbit not expected to occur for at least eight years, the private sector is increasingly eying deep space for a series of ambitious robotic and human missions for both adventure and profit.

Nine programs are currently underway that include robotic and human landings of the moon, human flybys of the moon and Mars, the mining of the moon and asteroids, and even a settlement on Mars. Backers of these initiatives include the X Prize Foundation, Google and its executives, and the world’s first space tourist, Dennis Tito.

The table below show the deep space initiatives now being pursued by the private sector.

Commercial Lunar and Deep Space Programs
	Companies/ Teams	Mission/ Goal	Key Personnel & Backers	Technology	Schedule
	Planetary Resources	Asteroid Mining	Peter Diamandis, Eric Anderson, Chris Lewicki, Tom Jones, Larry Page, Eric Schmidt, James Cameron, Charles Simonyi, K. Ram Shriram, Ross Perot, Jr.	Arkyd-100 Arkyd-200 Arkyd-300	2013 or 2014 (first launches)
	Deep Space Industries	Asteroid Mining	Rick Tumlinson, David Gump, Steven Covey, John Lewis, Mark Sonter, Geoffrey Notkin	FireFlies DragonFlies MicroGravity Foundry	2015 (first launch)
	Angelicum, Astrobotic, ARCA, Barcelona Moon Team, Euroluna, FREDNET, JURBAN, Independence-X, Moon Express, Omega Envoy, Part-Time Scientists, Penn State Lunar Lion Team, Plan B, Selenokhod, SpaceMETA, Synergy Moon, Team Indus, Team Italia, Team Phoenicia, Team Puli, Team SpaceIL, Team Stellar, White Label Space	$30 Million Google Lunar X Prize	X Prize Foundation, Google, 23 Private Teams	Lunar landers and rovers	Prize expires Dec. 31, 2015
	Space Adventures & Energia	Space tourism flight around the moon	Eric Anderson	Modified Soyuz transport	NLT January 2017
	Inspiration Mars Foundation	Human flyby of Mars	Dennis Tito, Taber MacCallum, Jany Poynter, Jonathan Clark	Possible Falcon Heavy & Dragon	January 2018
	Shackleton Energy Company	Human mining of the moon	James Keravala, Bill Stone, Dale Tietz	TBD	2019
	Mars One	Human settlement on Mars	Bas Lansdorp, Arno Wielders, Bryan Versteeg, Suzanne Flinkenflögel, Norbert Kraft, Eiso Vaandrager, Marieke Wagensveld	Mars habitats	2023 (Human landing on Mars)

All but one of these projects aim to produce concrete results no later than 2020, which is the year before NASA is set to send astronauts beyond Earth orbit on its new Orion spacecraft and SLS booster.

Most of these projects are American initiatives with some foreign participation. The space tourism trip around the moon partners the U.S.-based Space Adventures with Russia’s Energia and makes use of modified Soyuz hardware. The Google Lunar X Prize includes 23 teams around the world, eight of which are based in the United States.

The Soyuz trip around the moon involves one pilot and two customers paying $150 million each. To date, Space Adventures has announced that it had one client committed and was searching for a second one.

Six of the ventures are purely commercial in nature. The Google Lunar X Prize is funded by a for-profit company but run by the non-profit X Prize Foundation. Many of the competitors are commercial entities. The Inspiration Mars Foundation, which aims to send humans on a trip to the Red Planet, is also a non-profit group.

Of the three companies focused on extraterrestrial mining, Planetary Resources has the deepest pockets. Google Co-founder Larry Page and Chairman Eric Schmidt are both multi-billionaires while K. Ram Shriram and Ross Perot, Jr. is worth an estimated $1.6 billion and $1.4 billion, respectively. Charles Simonyi and James Cameron are millionaires.

Mars One is a European-led initiative that would put a small colony on the Red Planet in 2023. It is relying on being able to sell the broadcast rights to the project to cover the $6 billion cost.

Updated on March 9 to include Mars One.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and NASA Administrator Charles Bolden at SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif. (Credit: NASA)

WASHINGTON (NASA PR) — NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk will discuss the first contracted cargo resupply flight to the International Space Station during a Google+ Hangout from 1-1:30 p.m. EDT Friday, Oct. 5. The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and its Dragon cargo spacecraft are scheduled to lift off at 8:35 p.m., Sunday, Oct. 7 from at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

Bolden and Musk will talk about the flight, which will be the first of 12 contracted for NASA by SpaceX to resupply the space station. The SpaceX flights under the Commercial Resupply Services contract will restore an American capability to deliver and return significant amounts of cargo, including science experiments, to the orbiting laboratory — a feat not achievable since the retirement of the space shuttle.

Followers on Twitter may ask a question in advance of or during the event using the hashtag #askNASA. On NASA Facebook and Google+, a comment thread will open for questions on the morning of the event. To join the hangout, visit the NASA’s Google+ page:

http://plus.google.com/+NASA

The Dragon will be filled with about 1,000 pounds of supplies. This includes critical materials to support the 166 investigations planned for the station’s Expedition 33 crew, including 63 new investigations. The Dragon will return about 734 pounds of scientific materials, including results from human research, biotechnology, materials and educational experiments, as well as about 504 pounds of space station hardware.

For information about the space station, research in low Earth orbit, NASA’s commercial space programs and the future of American spaceflight, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/exploration

For more information about SpaceX, visit:

http://www.spacex.com

MEDIA ALERT

Join visionary Peter H. Diamandis, M.D.; leading commercial space entrepreneur Eric Anderson; former NASA Mars mission manager Chris Lewicki; and planetary scientist & veteran NASA astronaut Tom Jones, Ph.D. on Tuesday, April 24 at 10:30 a.m. PDT in Seattle, or via webcast, as they unveil a new space venture with a mission to help ensure humanity’s prosperity.

Supported by an impressive investor and advisor group, including Google’s Larry Page & Eric Schmidt, Ph.D.; film maker & explorer James Cameron; Chairman of Intentional Software Corporation and Microsoft’s former Chief Software Architect Charles Simonyi, Ph.D.; Founder of Sherpalo and Google Board of Directors founding member K. Ram Shriram; and Chairman of Hillwood and The Perot Group Ross Perot, Jr., the company will overlay two critical sectors – space exploration and natural resources – to add trillions of dollars to the global GDP. This innovative start-up will create a new industry and a new definition of ‘natural resources’.

The news conference will be held at the Museum of Flight in Seattle on Tuesday, April 24 at 10:30 a.m. PDT and available online via webcast.

WHEN:

Tuesday, April 24
10:30 a.m. PDT

WHO:

• Charles Simonyi, Ph.D., Space Tourist, Planetary Resources, Inc. Investor
• Eric Anderson, Co-Founder & Co-Chairman, Planetary Resources, Inc.
• Peter H. Diamandis, M.D., Co-Founder & Co-Chairman, Planetary Resources, Inc.
• Chris Lewicki, President & Chief Engineer, Planetary Resources, Inc.
• Tom Jones, Ph.D., Planetary Scientist, Veteran NASA Astronaut & Planetary Resources, Inc. Advisor

WHERE:

Charles Simonyi Space Gallery at The Museum of Flight
9404 East Marginal Way South
Seattle, WA 98108

EDITOR’S UPDATE: Just to clarify something that wasn’t clear in the original post. I’m guessing this is an extraterrestrial mining firm based on the name of the company and the description in the media alert:

The company will overlay two critical sectors – space exploration and natural resources – to add trillions of dollars to the global GDP. This innovative start-up will create a new industry and a new definition of ‘natural resources’.

If it’s not mining, I don’t know what else would fit that description. I really don’t think it’s solar power satellites, although you can manufacture them out of extraterrestrial resources. Diamandis has hinted in the past that he’s looking at asteroid mining. And Lewicki’s involvement certainly points to something related to surface operations on other worlds.

We’ll see next week. Should be an exciting announcement.

Elon Musk has made his first appearance on the Forbes list of the world’s billionaires. The 40-year-old entrepreneur has landed at 634 on the list with an estimated net worth of $2 billion.

Musk has developed the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon vehicle to send cargo and crew to the International Space Station. His company, SpaceX, has received money under NASA’s COTS  (for cargo) and CCDev (crew) programs. He is also reported to have invested up to $100 million of his own funds into SpaceX.

In addition to his involvement with SpaceX, Musk is a trustee of the X PRIZE Foundation, whose space competitions include the Ansari X Prize, the Google Lunar X Prize and the Northrup Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge.

The South African-born entrepreneur also runs two other companies, the electric car producer Tesla Motors and SolarCity, which provides solar energy systems.

Developments in these other two businesses are what fueled Musk’s leap onto the Forbes list of billionaires, according to the magazine. Last October, Forbes estimated that he was worth $680 million.

His electric car company, Tesla Motors, saw a 30% increase in its stock price year over year through Feb. 14, 2012. Tesla stock noticeably jumped after the early February 2012 unveiling of the Model X, which will go into production in 2013. Musk’s  29% stake in Tesla is worth just over $1 billion.

Then there’s SolarCity, a company that designs, finances and installs solar panels and systems. Musk owns a fourth of the company, founded and run by his cousin Lyndon Rive. SolarCity is expected to file an S-1 soon with the intent of going public. The IPO, to be underwritten by Goldman Sachs, aims to value the company at $1.5 billion. At the end of February, SolarCity announced an institutional funding round led by Silver Lake Kraftwerk, including fellow billionaire Nicholas Pritzker. The round raised $81 million.

The biggest wildcard component in Musk’s fortune is his two-thirds stake in SpaceX. The company has already racked up billions of dollars in government and commercial contracts for nearly 40 rocket launches through the year 2017. SpaceX has focused on building reusable rockets (government-built rockets are one-use disposable models), with the end goal of drastically decreasing the cost of space travel. Musk has hinted at a public offering for the company in 2013.  He hired former Broadcom finance executive Bret Johnsen as SpaceX Chief Financial Officer in May 2011. Johnsen is expected to prepare the company for an IPO.

Together, Musk’s stakes in SolarCity and SpaceX are worth $1 billion.

A look at other billionaires who are involved in the space industry is below.

As you can see, the United States is the nexus of entrepreneurial space. Four members of this list are Americans, Musk is a South African immigrant to the United States, and Branson is a British billionaire who is having his suborbital space plane built in California. Laliberte is Canadian.

Branson has the most expensive privately-funded space project to date, with development costs for the WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo vehicles expected to reach almost $400 million. Most of that money is being put up by Aabar Investments, a firm owned by the Abu Dhabi royal family. Branson also convinced New Mexico to custom build Spaceport America from which SpaceShipTwo will fly at a cost of $209 million.

It’s not clear just how much Allen is investing in the Stratolaunch project, which will build an enormous aircraft that will air-launch payloads using a smaller version of Musk’s Falcon 9 rocket. The Microsoft billionaire has refused to provide an exact amount.

Brin is involved in space two ways. His company is sponsoring the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize, which is a private race to land a vehicle on the moon. He also has put down a $5 million deposit with Space Adventures to fly into space. His Google co-founder, Larry Page, is a trustee of the X PRIZE Foundation.

Jeff Bezos is funding the mysterious Blue Origin company, which is building suborbital and orbital vehicles in the Texas desert. It’s unclear how much Bezos has invested in the company. NASA has provided Blue Origin with funding under its CCDev program.

But, none of that can prepare you for Google X — the Mountain View company’s ultra-secret research lab. And what sorts of futuristic things are they dreaming up over there? Dinner plates that can transmit what you’re eating to your social media network. (Mac and cheese! Yum!) Lots and lots of robots that can collect all sorts of information and go to work for you. (Even George Jetson never had it so good!) Driverless cars. (Really?!) And that dream of every cheap access to space proponent, the space elevator.

So says The New York Times in an entertaining article published on Sunday. The story puts an interesting Google twist on the space elevator, seeing it as more than just a system for hauling cargo into orbit.

For example, space elevators, a longtime fantasy of Google’s founders and other Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, could collect information or haul things into space. (In theory, they involve rocketless space travel along a cable anchored to Earth.) “Google is collecting the world’s data, so now it could be collecting the solar system’s data,” Mr. Brooks said.

That makes sense. Google’s whole business model is collecting information and making billions off it. Why not embed sensors into the elevator that can look far out into space.

Take a look at the story. It’s a good read.

“The facts of the matter are that the MTA [Master Team Agreement] is nothing more than a one-sided ‘legal framework’ to benefit the X PRIZE Foundation and Google while placing an unreasonable burden on the teams. The agreement is egregiously one-sided, overly burdensome, oppressive and unconscionable,” Team Mystical Moon wrote in a blog post.

The post goes on to list a series of grievances concerning the competition, including “unconscionable” requirements concerning media and intellectual property rights and alleged conflicts of interest involving the X Prize Foundation’s Board of Trustees.

Consequently, the X PRIZE Foundation (and Google) refuses to address the following issues:

1. The X PRIZE Foundation (and Google) are in BREACH of the “legally binding” MTA Version 3.0.
2. The Media and Intellectual Property Rights requirements are unconscionable.
3. Exhibit B (and other ridiculous requirements) are extremely oppressive, overly burdensome and totally unnecessary to achieve the TRUE goals and objectives of the competition.
4. There exists a serious “Conflict of Interest” issue with the Trustees of the Board, employees and incestuous long-term relationships with the X PRIZE Foundation.
5. The Dispute Resolution process (Version 3.0 MTA Exhibit A Section 9) is totally without merit.
6. The MTA is full of “caveats” that allow XPF the “option” to “at its discretion” make “decisions” that are “not-so-black-and-white.”
7. The unprofessional, unethical and bad faith behavior of the management and employees of the X PRIZE Foundation needs to stop.

The MTA [PDF] gives the X Prize Foundation and Google all of the media and many of the IP rights to the mission. Eligible teams will receive a share of the revenues after all expenses and a management fee are deducted.

At least a half dozen teams, several of which are serious contenders, have discussed dropping out of the $30 million competition before launching their missions unless changes are made in these provisions. The teams believe they can make money off their flights without the prize money and that they can do better controlling their own rights.

Mystical Moon’s blast is a response to a recent blog post titled “About the MTA…” by recently appointed GLXP Senior Director Alexandra Hall. In that post, Hall explained that the MTA exists to “define what needs to be done to win the competition(s) and to provide a legal framework for that.”

The agreement between the X PRIZE Foundation (“X PRIZE”) and Google that was signed in 2007 includes a number of stipulations about how the competition is to be run along with the requirements for winning the prize(s). Then there are specific requirements that relate to X PRIZE and Google’s goals for the promotion of the space economy and the inspiration of the next generation of scientists and engineers through this competition. Executing on these goals requires agreement on related items such as logo, media tracking, and approval rights. There are also important requirements involving liability (working with rockets tends to raise this issue!) and not very exciting things like the reporting requirements from X PRIZE to Google.

All of these items, which are in the agreement between Google and X PRIZE, were the basis behind the requirements that have then been put into the MTA that teams have to sign up to in order to participate in this prize.

Hall sidestepped the key complaints about media and IP rights while focusing primarily upon GLXP’s enforcement of blogging requirements by the teams. That approach didn’t sit well with Team Mystical Moon, which wrote:

Furthermore, we can never get an honest answer from either the X PRIZE Foundation or Google as to the source of many of these ridiculous requirements. The X PRIZE Foundation has often stated that they flow from their agreement with Google but refuses to share that agreement with the teams. And recently, Google has also side stepped the issues by refusing to reply when asked this very question.

Meanwhile, Tiffany Montague, director of space initiatives for Google, publically [sic] makes a vague and ambiguous statement while refusing to answer the question altogether:

“Montague added that the MTA was an agreement between X Prize Foundation and the teams. I asked her whether controlling the IP and media rights was a condition of Google funding the prize, a question she did not answer.”

Therefore, the X PRIZE Foundation and Google continues to play “Ring Around the Rosy” with the teams regarding these matters. It is very obvious that after nearly 4 years neither entity intends to address the issues but rather will continue their legal tactics to “bully” the teams and attempt to force these requirements down their throat.

Montague made those comments during a panel discussion last month at the NewSpace 2011 conference. She insisted that Google was sponsoring the prize because of its founders’ desire to expand the frontiers of space, that the company expected no return on investment from the competition, and that it didn’t need the money or the publicity.

If true, it raises the obvious question of why the foundation and Google need that much control. A source connected with the X Prize Foundation told me that the media and IP requirements were a condition of Google funding the prize. This person told me that most of the revenues will go to Google, and that neither the foundation nor Google expect very much in revenues.

The conflict of interest charge refers to X Prize Foundation Trustee Naveen Jain, a tech millionaire who is chairman and co-founder of Moon Express, one of the competitors for the Google Lunar X Prize. Hall addressed that issue in an earlier blog post:

For non-employees of the X PRIZE Foundation, such as Trustees and Supporters, there are also strong conflict of interest rules. As Cristin Dorgelo stated in response to a commentator raising the issue about an X PRIZE Foundation Trustee who was also involved with a Google Lunar X PRIZE team, there are disclosure and recusing requirements which mean that anyone who has an interest in a competing team has to leave the room when the Google Lunar X PRIZE is discussed. Trustees and supporters with interest in teams in our competitions have no access to insider information or any influence on operational decisions.

We’ll see where this goes. Sometime in the next three years, one of the GLXP competitors will launch a rover to the moon. Whether they will still be competing for Google’s prize money remains to be seen.

• Google Lunar X Prize Master Team Agreement Version 3.0 (in force)
• Google Lunar X Prize Risk Management Guidelines (in force)
• Google Lunar X Prize Master Team Agreement 3.2 (proposed with changes indicated from Version 3.0)

(Note: Click on the image on the page that appears to get to the document.)

Rules for the private moon race are still being revised. Teams have had trouble moving ahead due to the uncertainty. Deadlines have been pushed back. And there is deep frustration among competitors over the X Prize Foundation’s efforts to monopolize nearly all of the media and intellectual property (IP) rights from the contest.

The competition’s original goal – to launch a new industry by demonstrating that lunar exploration can be done quickly and cheaply by the private sector – has become lost in a complex process that has left everyone frustrated. The focus at times seems to be less on flying the missions than on who will profit from them.

The key problem is the still-unfinished Master Team Agreement (MTA), a binding document that includes the rules for the competition. The MTA has involved years of discussion, in large part because of the complexity of negotiating a set of rules with 29 teams that will satisfy laws in the many different nations from which they hail. As negotiations have dragged on, the document has ballooned from 12 to 67 pages.

The complexity of these negotiations shouldn’t be underestimated. The discussions have been complicated by the growing number of teams that have signed up over the years at ever rising costs. Initial teams paid a $10,000 registration fee. The fee was subsequently raised to $30,000 in 2009 and to $50,000 for teams that joined after July 1, 2010. The competition closed to new entries at the end of last year.

But, that isn’t the only problem. A key point of contention has involved media and intellectual property (IP) rights. The MTA gives the X Prize Foundation nearly total control over these rights once teams commit to a launch, a fact that has caused much consternation among the competitors. Images, video, lunar data and other content are governed by these restrictions.

According to MTA version 3.0, which is currently in force but is subject to future revision, the teams own the IP rights to the spacecraft and rovers they produce. For the most part, anyway:

Subject to the provisions herein, which provide XPF with the Media Rights, Team owns all rights in and to all of Team’s Intellectual Property associated with the design, manufacture, and operation of Craft, secondary vehicles, and subsystems. Specifically, XPF makes no claim to the rights in and to all or any of a Team or Team designee’s Intellectual Property associated with the design, manufacture, operation of and the data collected by the Craft, secondary vehicles, and subsystems on the surface of the Moon, except in such cases where said Intellectual Property relates to or includes the story of the Competition, the Competition Media, the data required in this Agreement as part of the Mooncasts, or the names, trademarks, copyrights, logos, insignias or similar Intellectual Property of XPF, Google, or other Competition partners, contractors, or collaborators.

The X Prize Foundation has carved out an exception, saying that it can assert claims “in such cases where said Intellectual Property relates to or includes the story of the Competition, the Competition Media, the data required in this Agreement as part of the Mooncasts.” In essence, the foundation can claim rights if the IP is essential to its role in the competition, which it owns completely.

The media rights break down into two main time periods:

• Registration Interval: the time period between a team’s acceptance into the competition and the acceptance of its notification of a launch attempt.
• Post-Registration Interval:  the time between the notification of launch attempt through successful completion of the prize requirements on the moon and the awards ceremony.

During the Registration Interval, the X Prize Foundation has the non-exclusive right to exploit any media content produced by a team. However, once a team enters the Post-Registration Interval, it is effectively working for the X Prize Foundation and signs over nearly all of its rights to the non-profit group:

XPF shall own, and therefore have the exclusive right to Exploit, all Post-Registration Content. If XPF does not Exploit the Post-Registration Content in a given medium, however, XPF will, in good faith, consider any written proposal by Team to do so.

Each party considers the Post-Registration Content to be a work made for hire for the benefit of XPF. If for any reason the Post-Registration Content would not be considered a work made for hire under Law, in consideration of the obligations and monies described herein, Team does hereby and agrees to assign, convey, and transfer to XPF, its successors and assigns, the entire right, title, and interest in and to the Post-Registration Content and all Intellectual Property Rights therein, and in and to all works based upon, derived from, or incorporating the Post-Registration Content, and in and to all income, royalties, damages, claims, and payments now or hereafter due or payable with respect thereto, and in and to all causes of action, either in law or in equity for past, present, or future infringement based on such Intellectual Property Rights, and in and to all rights corresponding to the foregoing throughout the world. To the extent that Team or a third party owns or controls (presently or in the future) any Intellectual Property rights that were not created in connection with the Competition, but that may be necessary for XPF’s exercise of the rights assigned or granted to it pursuant to this Agreement (“Related Rights”), Team agrees to and does hereby grant to XPF, or will cause to be granted to, at Team’s cost and expense, a worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable right and license to Exploit any such Related Rights to the extent necessary to enable XPF to exercise all rights assigned or granted to XPF under this Agreement.

If the Post-Registration Content is subject to 17 U.S.C. 106A or any similar Laws, Team hereby irrevocably waives and agrees not to assert all rights under such section and irrevocably appoints XPF as its Agent to assert on Team’s behalf Team’s moral rights or any equivalent rights regarding the form or extent of any alteration to the Post-Registration Content (including, without limitation, removal or destruction) or the making of any derivative works based on the Post-Registration Content, including, without limitation, photographs, drawings or other visual reproductions of the work, in any medium, for XPF’s purposes.

Team shall not Exploit any content generated during the Mission Interval, Bonus Mission Interval, or Award Ceremony Interval, including, without limitation, content unrelated to the Competition, that would interfere with XPF’s efforts to Exploit the Competition Media.

As it determines in its sole discretion, XPF will release certain limited rights to Team to allow such Team the ability to recruit and activate Team sponsorships, participate in online social networking such as blog posts, provide short video news releases, communicate internally to Team, perform Team engineering work, and recruit Team employees or investors. Additionally, each Team may request audio, video, written, or photographic material releases from XPF for such purposes; such requests will not be unreasonably denied. XPF may, from time to time and at its sole discretion, release a license to Team for use of limited Competition Media if XPF determines that such Competition Media will not be Exploited by XPF. In addition, when requested, XPF will generally permit Team to license Competition Media that comprises scientific or engineering data to third parties where such license will not interfere with XPF’s right to Exploit Media Rights as permitted by this Agreement. Any grants or rights made pursuant to this paragraph are subject to the execution of a separate agreement between the parties.

Team understands and agrees that XPF may sublicense any or all of its rights in any of the content described herein, including, without limitation, its Media Rights and Post Registration Content to third parties, including , without limitation, Google.

Under the MTA, teams must ask the X Prize Foundation for the right to use content that they produce on their own missions, but only for non-commercial use:

XPF shall have the right, exercisable in its sole discretion, to sell, assign, license, transfer or other otherwise Exploit its rights and title in and to such audio, video, photographic, or other material in any manner. Team shall retain the right to request royalty-free usage of such material as is pertinent to their own involvement in the Competition for the purposes of video news releases, internal Team communications, Team engineering work, Team employee or investor recruitment, or similar non-commercial purposes; such requests shall not be unreasonably denied. If XPF requires use of any Team Intellectual Property not covered by the grants of rights herein in its production of media content or for advertising or promotional purposes, XPF shall submit a request to Team for permission to use such materials for such purposes of producing media content or educational materials related to the Competition. Team agrees not to unreasonably withhold, condition, or delay approval for XPF to use Team Intellectual Property for production of media content or educational materials related to the Competition, it being understood that such approval would be withheld reasonably if it were to unduly interfere with Team’s revenue generation, agreements with financiers or customers, or trade secrets. Furthermore, Team agrees not to unreasonably withhold permission for advertising or promotional use related to the Competition. Team shall use best efforts to respond to such requests within ten (10) business days.

The main exception to the X Prize’s ownership of Post-Registration Content involves the Interim Moon Interval, which is defined as “any period of time after the conclusion of the Mission Interval [successful completion of GLXP requirements] when Team and its Crafts are engaged in activities on the surface of the Moon that are unrelated to any aspect of the Competition, as determined by XPF.”

The teams get to keep ownership of the Interim Moon Interval content; however, they must “grant XPF the perpetual, sublicensable, worldwide, irrevocable, royalty-free, non-exclusive right to Exploit the Interim Moon Interval Content in any manner and media now known or hereafter created, including, without limitation, for purposes of promotion or marketing.”

Successful teams will get a share of the net revenues from any content sales after the X Prize Foundation deducts its expenses and overhead fee:

XPF shall share with Teams the Total Net Media Revenue. For purposes of this Agreement, “Total Net Media Revenue” means gross revenues actually earned and irrevocably received by XPF in connection with the Exploitation of the Media Rights less any and all costs, fees, charges, and expenses associated therewith, including, but not limited to, all financing, development, and production costs and fees; interest; a two and one half percent (2.5%) overhead fee; residuals; as well as promotion, marketing, advertising, and distribution expenses, costs, commissions, and fees; and all deferments and third party participations, as all computed, accounted, and paid in accordance with XPF‘s standard policies for projects of the relevant type, and shall be subject to any agreement entered into by producer with any financier, distributor, or other third party.

After the expenses and fees are deducted, the X Prize Foundation will distribute revenues to the teams in accordance with their performance. The table below shows how net revenues will be distributed according to various possible outcomes of the competition.

The X Prize Foundation keeps the largest single percentage of the net revenues in all circumstances. And that is after it has recouped all of its costs and paid itself a 2.5 percent overhead fee from the gross revenues. Depending upon how the foundation calculates its expenses, there could be a lot or a little left over to distribute to the teams.

Exactly who is responsible for all the unpopular provisions in the MTA is uncertain. Some sources say the fault lies with the X Prize Foundation, which has tried to monopolize media rights for competitions it has run in the past.

Others say that pressure has come from Google, which has put up $30 million in prize funds. Google is in the business of controlling access to the world’s information. The company has a project to digitize every book on the planet regardless of whether the copyright holders agree or not. Thus, it works best for the X Prize Foundation to control as many of the rights as possible and then sub-license them for a low fee to Google, which made the moon race possible in the first place.

The other major problem has the inability to finalize the rules. The X Prize Foundation released MTA version 3.0 in January, intending it to be the final binding document. The foundation said it was not planning to make any further revisions in the MTA, nor would it accept any comments from the competitors suggesting changes.

However, at least three teams – identified by one source as Moon Express, Next Giant Leap and Astrobotic – objected to some of the terms, especially those relating to IP rights. The X Prize Foundation decided to reopen the agreement to changes but, according to multiple sources, neglected to inform all the other competitors.

You can imagine the surprise on April 15 when the foundation send out MTA version 3.2 with revisions that tightened media provisions and muddled the IP rights. The teams were given two weeks to sign it as written or be booted from the competition. After protests, that deadline was moved back one week due to the Easter holiday.

On May 3, there was a teleconference between X Prize officials and representatives from eight teams – Team FREDNET, Rocket City Space Pioneers, Astrobotic, Next Giant Leap, Team Puli, Omega Envoy, Penn State Lunar Lions, and Selenokhod. X Prize officials agreed to consider the concerns and decide whether any further modifications were required. In the meantime, the competition would continue to operate under the MTA 3.0 agreement released in January. The issue might be discussed at a team summit set for late July at NASA Ames Research Center if it is not resolved before then.

One wonders how things got to this point. How did a seemingly simple idea turn into something so complicated and bureaucratic? Why is it beginning to resemble so many government space projects that have gone before it? These competitions are supposed to be different.

The X Prize Foundation was inspired by the Orteig Prize, a $25,000 competition to fly across the Atlantic that was won by Charles Lindbergh in 1927. Michael Doornbos recently visited the Air & Space Museum’s archives to find out how hotelier Raymond Orteig did things back in the day:

The entire competition was outlined in detail on 3 pages of typed text. Actually that’s a little bit of a stretch because the third page was just a list of judges and addresses of people to contact.

The competition credited with kicking off an entire industry was very simple and fit on two pages.

• Pay the National Aeronautic Association a registration fee of $250 (about $3250 in 2010 dollars)*
• Cross the Atlantic Ocean without stopping in an airplane
• Win $25,000

Oh, and you didn’t have to give the rights and revenue from any media events afterward to Mr Orteig. In fact, the rules specifically say:

No part of the Entrance Fees is to be received by Mr Raymond Orteig, the donor. All amounts received will be applied toward payment of the expenses of conducting the competition.

Yes, it was a simpler time. Fewer lawyers. Simpler laws. Few media options. But, still…. The point of the Orteig Prize, and its Google backed descendant, is about helping to launch a new industry. When did it become about who can squeeze the most money out of the competition?

It’s an excellent question that the X Prize Foundation isn’t answering these days. When I asked X Prize Foundation spokesman Michael Timmons for input on this post, he responded, “We have no comment at this time.”

Google Lunar X Prize’s Team Selene said it will withdraw from the global competition to land a rover on the moon over what it calls unacceptable and unilateral changes in the Master Team Agreement (MTA) and bullying tactics by the X PRIZE Foundation (XPF). A second team, Mystical Moon, has invoked a dispute resolution clause in its agreement, while other competitors are also reported to be upset over the changes and what critics view as efforts by the foundation and Google to exercise excessive control over the competitors.

In a note posted today on the GLXP website, Team Selene leader Markus Bindhammer wrote:

Hereby we inform the XPF that we will not sign the new amendment. In our opinion the XPF had enough time to settle down the final MTA. The MTA drafts were discussed intensely and the announcement of the final MTA was delayed several times. If we sign a contract we sign a contract and this is not an ordinary one. Every change can jeopardize the project, and we are talking here of millions of USD the teams have to invest. To change the MTA again and give teams only two weeks time to send the new MTA back with the extortive [sic] attempt “Per the cover page of the MTA, if we do NOT receive signed copies of this amendment by the above-mentioned deadline, we will disqualify your team from the competition and will refund your registration fee”, can not be the right way. What protects the teams, that the MTA will not be updated again, then with maybe not only minor changes? If there were any legal concerns from the sponsor Google after the final MTA was signed, the XPF has to bear the responsibility and not the teams.

We will bring this breach of agreement to the attention of our lawyers and media contacts. We will use the refund of the XPF to join and support another GLXP team or use it for a non GLXP private space related project to sponsor!

The precise nature of changes in the revised agreement,which was sent to teams on April 15, are unclear. It has taken years to hammer out the MTA, in part because of the international nature of the competition. The lack of a final MTA and the uncertainty over the rights have made it difficult for teams to approach sponsors because they don’t know what they can offer the backers.

Members of several other teams have told Parabolic Arc previously of their dissatisfaction over what they view as efforts by the X PRIZE Foundation and Google to exert excessive control over media rights and other matters.  In his note, Bindhammer indicates that the teams believe they had signed a final agreement but that Google insisted upon subsequent changes for legal reasons.

In a post on the GLXP site, Mystical Moon wrote that the new agreement had been “substantially modified” from the MTA version 3.0 the team had signed when it registered for the competition in early February. The team also said that some of the changes involved blogging and video requirements:

On April 15, 2011, instead of meeting their MTA contractual commitments to the registered GLXP teams (Teams), XPF sends out an email (after COB Pacific) containing a substantially modified new version (3.2) of the so-called “Final and Legally Binding” MTA. In that email, XPF demands that the Teams sign the NEW MTA in an unreasonable time frame (2 weeks in the middle of holidays) without allowing any opportunity for recourse or rebuttal. Moreover, XPF attempts to exercise its willful demands with the threat to “disqualify” the Teams from the competition; as if the Teams had committed a wrongful act. Furthermore, XPF unilaterally attempts to simply change their contractual delivery dates in the new “unexecuted” version (3.2) of the MTA agreement on their very due date; as if the legally binding, mutually executed version 3.0 MTA no longer exists.

XPF then follows these actions, within days, with another threatening letter to Mystical Moon accusing the team of being “currently out of compliance with the blogging and video posting requirements of the Google Lunar X PRIZE competition. . . as stated in the Master Team Agreement (Section 6.3.2: Blogging and Video).” However, the requirements stated in their letter do not reflect the language in the mutually executed version 3.0 MTA but rather the modified language in the “unexecuted” version 3.2 MTA. Mystical Moon finds XPF’s actions disconcerting, disingenuous and in violation of the terms of the executed version 3.0, legally binding, Master Team Agreement.

Mystical Moon, which in another post decried “bully” tactics, has exercised its right to appeal the terms of the agreement. When I inquired as to the status of that effort, I received an email saying that the team would not comment for the record and that the X PRIZE Foundation is demanding that teams maintain confidentiality over this issue.

I have inquiries into both the X PRIZE Foundation and Team Selene for more information about this issue. I will update the post as it comes in.

Richard Branson

Forbes has put out its list of the world’s 1,210 billionaires, a half dozen of whom have ties to the New Space community.

All six billionaires are males from North America and Britain with a combined net worth of $77.4 billion. The most prominent of them — Richard Branson — has the second lowest net worth of the group. His company, Virgin Galactic, is undertaking the most expensive New Space project to date at a cost of more than $400 million.

I could not find Mansour bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the Abu Dhabi sheikh who invested $280 million in Virgin Galactic through Aabar Investments. Forbes listed him as having a net worth of $4.9 billion in 2009, but he does not appear this year.

How much Jeff Bezos has spent on Blue Origin is secret, along with almost everything else about his suborbital New Shepard vehicle. Last week, SwRI’s Alan Stern said that the five U.S. suborbital companies represented more than $1 billion in investment. It’s likely that Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin make up the bulk of that funding, given their billionaire backers. Armadillo Aerospace, Masten Space Systems and XCOR don’t have nearly that much funding.

Neither Elon Musk, who is backing SpaceX, nor Robert Bigelow, whose Bigelow Aerospace is developing private space stations, appears on the list. I also could not find Dennis Tito, the NASA engineer turned investment guru who became the first space tourist 10 years ago.

The Forbes list includes 1,210 billionaires with a net worth of $4.5 trillion, the highest totals ever. So, there are a lot of potential investors out there to tap. The step is to actually fly into space. Do that, and this list could get a lot longer.

A P3 Navy aircraft with Hangar One at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. (Copyright 2009: Douglas Messier)

A consumer watchdog group called (of all things) Consumer Watchdog has issued a report focusing on Google’s allegedly close relationship with the federal government. One of the issues they have raised involves Google’s $1.3 million per year lease of space at Moffett Field, which is under the control of NASA Ames:

One of the most visible signs of Google’s clout, the report said, is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Moffett Airfield, near Google’s world headquarters. When a deal between NASA and top Google executives to use the base was first disclosed in 2007, it called for only four jets to use the base.

But newly released government records show that the Google executive fleet has now grown to six jets and two helicopters, while at least 40 Google employees hold security badges at the base and all of the planes are supplied with Department of Defense jet fuel.

Key excerpts from the report dealing with Google’s flight operations out of Moffett:

In July 2007, Schmidt persuaded NASA to do a side deal with a company called H211, which is controlled personally by Schmidt along with Sergey Brin and Larry Page. The Google execs promised to allow NASA to outfit H211’s aircraft with scientific equipment to study global warming and greenhouse gases. H211 now pays $1.3 million annually in return for the right to fly private planes in and out of the base. This spring, the contract was quietly extended by NASA to 2014, documents show.

Google doesn’t get any special bargain on the lease. According to the HangerTrader.com, a classified advertising hangar service, Google is paying as much as one and a half times the average asking price for a hangar rental per month, as the NASA Ames lease with H211 agreement states they paid from August to September $226,731.48 for their hangar rental of 65,513 sq ft. This figure is almost as much as Google would have to pay all year to rent hangar space at two of California’s premier airports, San Jose and San Francisco. NASA notes that rental rates are subject to a variety of factors, including comparable rates at the San Jose and San Francisco airports, gross weight of the aircraft, and other considerations. Tim Murray of Atlantic Aviation, based out of the San Jose Airport, provided a quote for two Gulfstream Vs at a total average cost per year of $358,440. At the San Francisco Airport, Signature Flight Support’s Jay Singh provided a quote of $2.25 a sq/ft for two G5s – that averages close to $486,840 per year, which is far less than what Google pays currently, even when taking into account their Boeings 767-­?200 and 757.

The extraordinary aspect of the deal isn’t the money, it’s the fact that only certain organizations with a very good reason get access to Moffett.

“Not everyone can nor should use this airfield,” says the NASA policy. “NASA has specific criteria to determine who can partner with us and whether they may use their aircraft at Moffett. All requests by a private entity undergo a rigorous review process and every request must demonstrate a relationship to NASA missions.”

But the claim that NASA obtains substantial hard?to?obtain scientific data in return for hosting Google’s executive jets is hard to sustain. As reported in 2008, NASA engineers discovered they could not easily modify the company’s largest aircraft, a Boeing 757,
to hold scientific equipment. So in 2008, H211 arranged to obtain an experiment fighter plane, called the Alpha Jet, that could be rigged to collect data for atmospheric investigation project known as Cal-Nex.

But documents show the project ran into problems last year when H211 was denied Pentagon permission to land its jet at Miramar air base in San Diego. A schedule of six Cal—Nex aerial research programs from April to July 2010 does not include any Google aircraft. In addition, a June 25, 2010 email by NASA scientist Laura T. Iraci discloses that the jet had yet to undergo NASA’s Airworthiness and Flight Safety Review. Iraci also discusses how NASA is “starting small” with the new jet, attaching “very small self contained environmental censors.”

NASA’s public relations office did not respond to questions about Google’s contribution to Cal-Nex but a brief summary of the project by Iraci can be found here:

http://o3.arb.ca.gov/research/calnex2010/Afternoon/LauraIraci.pdf

Flight data obtained from the Flightaware.com web site and other sources show that the Alpha Jet is not used nearly as often as the company’s three Gulfstream V planes or the Boeing 757 and 762. Some of the Alpha Jet’s flights have been as short as 6 minutes (on April 7, 2010) and 11 minutes (on July 18, 2010). Lately, H211 has been able to block Flightaware from releasing data on the travels of the three Gulfstreams – notwithstanding the oft-repeated commitments of Google leadership to transparency in all things (particularly politics and government). Fortunately, a volunteer army of aviation buffs around the world, known as plane spotters, often manages to catch the Google fleet in action.

The flights tracked by Consumer Watchdog leave little question that Google’s leadership is living out the lifestyles of the rich and famous courtesy of Uncle Sam.

Air Google flights in pursuit of less scientific objectives include:

–On May 13, 2010 an H211 Gulfstream V departed Moffett at 11:30 at night, headed for the Nice-Cote d’Azur airport in southern France. That week, Google held an event for advertisers at the nearby Cannes Film Festival. On the night of May 18, CEO Eric Schmidt attended a party for Mick Jagger in Cannes. On June 26, an H211 Gulfstream V flew from Mountain View to Nice-Cote d’Azur for a second time.

–On July 9, the company’s Boeing 762 took off for Tahiti where a near-total solar eclipse was visible on July 11. Among the sun worshippers were billionaire co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The 762 and a Gulfstream V returned to Tahiti on July 15, according to flight records, presumably to pick up straggling Googlers.

–Last January 3, an H211 Gulfstream V flew overnight from the Caribbean island of Tortola to Mountain View, according to flight data. In December 2007, an H211 Gulfstream was spotted in Tortola for the wedding of Larry Page at mogul Richard Branson’s privately owned Necker Island.

–On January 7, a Gulfstream V flew from St. Maarten, another resort island, to Mountain View. An H211 Gulfstream also landed in St. Maarten in February 2008. The same Gulfstream was photographed again in St. Maarten on April 27, 2009.

Two years ago, the Mountain View Voice editorialized about “the NASA-Google connection,” saying “If NASA just wants the money, and doesn’t really care about ‘scientific experiments,’ it should dispense with the pretense.” (Mountain View Voice, December 7, 2008). NASA officials say that they are examining whether Moffett Airfield is “an under-utilized asset” that should be sold off. Such a sale could save NASA millions of dollars a year in maintenance costs and open the airfield to other private aircraft.

It turns out the scientific research is basically a fig leaf so that NASA can justify doing deals with private companies. NASA’s Moffett leadership also claims that the agency does research on environmental conditions in San Francisco Bay aboard a 246-foot long zeppelin airship that’s parked at Moffett. But the craft happens to be owned by Airship Ventures Inc., a private company which charges $495 per person for one-hour tours of the Bay aboard their zeppelin. The company’s board includes Silicon Valley investor Esther Dyson, who has various ties to Sergey Brin and his wife Anne Wojcicki. (Both Dyson and Google are investors in Wojcicki’s genetics company 23andMe.)

While these deals are unusual, they’re not totally unprecedented. A firm named Zero Gravity (http://www.gozerog.com) also has a deal with NASA to use Moffett.

However, one NOT for profit outfit, Humanitarian Air Logistics, has so far been unable to obtain access to Moffett even though the group is clearly a charity. Strangely, Documents show that when the group asked NASA to use the field, NASA insisted the group obtain permission from the nearby city of Mountain View even though it did not impose a similar requirement on H211. The City of Mountain View declined to get involved.

According to a 2007 memo by the chief of NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett, Pete Worden, “Not everyone can nor should use this airfield. NASA has specific criteria to determine who can partner with us and whether they may use their aircraft at Moffett. All requests by a private entity undergo a rigorous review process and every request must demonstrate a relationship to NASA missions.”

One person with knowledge of the matter said a complaint regarding alleged favoritism toward Google has been filed against Ames with NASA’s Inspector General based on the different treatment received by H211 And other applicants.

NASA apparently charges the Google executives a better rate for supplies of jet fuel than is available from private suppliers. While the Defense Department charges H211 market rates for fuel, it does not collect any state or local excise taxes on the sales, according to the fuel contract between H211 and NASA. That means H211 pays less than full freight–unless H211 voluntarily turns over these tax payments to the state of California.

Read the full report.

The Soyuz -- soon to fly again with billionauts aboard!

Pop the corks! Light up those Cubans with $100 bills! And order that Beluga caviar by the ton!

Yes, prospective billionauts around the world are celebrating today. They will soon have rides into orbit, thanks to a new deal between the Russians and an American space tourism company:

Space Adventures, the only company that has provided human space mission opportunities to the world marketplace, announced today the conclusion of an agreement with the Federal Space Agency of the Russian Federation (FSA) and Rocket Space Corporation Energia (RSC Energia) to commercially offer three seats on the Soyuz spacecraft bound for the International Space Station (ISS), beginning in 2013.

These seats will be made available through the increase of Soyuz production, from four to five spacecraft per year. Each flight will be short duration, approximately 10 days, and will contribute to the increase of launch capacity to the ISS.

So, who’s going to be flying? Google co-founder Sergey Brin has already put down a $5 million deposit on a flight. This is spare change for Brin, whose personal worth is an estimated $11 billion.

The Google co-founder, in fact, just purchased the 194-foot (59.2-meter) super yacht Senses from Kiwi businessman Sir Douglas Myers for a reported $46 million. The vessel features an 39-foot wide owner’s suite, five guest cabins, helipad, fitness center, jacuzzi, bar, and a luxurious interior finished by famous French designer Philippe Starck. The super yacht was previously available for charter at $259,000 – 280,000 per week.

Space Adventures says there is plenty of interest from others in Soyuz seats.

“Since Guy Laliberte’s mission, there has been an increase of interest by private individuals, organizations and commercial entities seeking ways to access the space station,” said Space Adventures Chairman Eric Anderson. “We have been speaking with these parties about science, education and multi-media programs and hope to make some major announcements in the coming year.”

Laliberte, who founded Cirque du Soleil, said that reported $35 million he spent for a ticket paid itself back many fold in publicity. My guess is that if Google adds some “science, education and multi-media programs” to accompany the flight, this will be an investment well worth making.

Space Adventures isn’t saying how much tickets will cost, but prices have been rising steadily since Dennis Tito paid $20 million (or possibly $12 million) to become the first space tourist almost 10 years ago. My guess is that tickets are probably now up in the $45-50 million range, which is roughly what a super yacht costs these days.

The Isle of Man Government (www.spaceisle.com) and the X PRIZE Foundation (www.xprize.org) are pleased to announce the fourth Google Lunar X PRIZE Team Summit will be hosted on the Isle of Man on October 4-5, 2010 during the United Nations declared World Space Week.

Senior executives from many of the twenty-two teams competing for the Google Lunar X PRIZE will come together to interact directly with representatives from Google and the X PRIZE Foundation, industry experts and Space Isle representatives from the Isle of Man. Each of these teams is striving to claim a share of the US $30 million prize purse money by becoming the first privately funded team to send a robot to the Moon that can travel 500 meters and transmit video, images and data back to the Earth.

Over the course of the two day summit, the teams will present the progress of their missions, discuss the competitions rules and judging procedures and discuss how to best serve the educational mission of the competition while working on their lunar robots. Teams will also meet with key officials and space companies that operate on the Isle of Man, who will provide information and advice to help the teams. Team members and other experts will also take time to visit with local high school students to teach them about the exciting careers that await those who apply themselves in subjects such as science, engineering and mathematics. To celebrate World Space Week, summit attendees will attend a reception and star-gazing in the historic Castle Rushen, Castletown, which dates back to the 13th century.

“We are incredibly excited for this event,” noted William Pomerantz, the Senior Director for Space Prizes at the non-profit X PRIZE Foundation. “The Google Lunar X PRIZE has a great deal of momentum now, with an incredible roster of teams and with major agencies such as NASA stepping up to become customers of our teams. We’re happy we could hold this summit during World Space Week and in a location like the Isle of Man, which truly represents the new era of innovative space commerce.”

The Isle of Man’s Minister for Economic Development, Allan Bell MHK, commented, “It is a great honor for the Isle of Man to be selected to host the Google Lunar X PRIZE Summit. The Government has a very pro-space orientation and we are committed to helping the space industry flourish. For example, our track record of being at the forefront of new industries resulted in the Isle of Man successfully bidding to host the International Institute of Space Commerce, fending off competition from major cities across the world.” This Summit will further underscore how the Government of the Isle of Man works closely with private sector initiatives and technological innovation to foster the international commercial space sector.

NASA PRESS RELEASE

NASA’s first Information Technology (IT) Summit will bring together government and industry leaders to explore the outer reaches of information technology.

The summit, which takes place August 16-18 at the Gaylord National Harbor in Maryland, will gather 750 participants and more than 100 expert presenters with themes on collaboration, social networking, innovation, infrastructure, operations and IT security and privacy.

Speakers include:

-     Walt Disney’s Vice President and General Manager Walt Disney Imagineering-FL Jack Blitch
-     Google Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf
-     Dell Services Chief Innovation Officer Jim Stikeleather
-     Symantec Chief Technology Officer Mark Bregman
-     Inspirion CEO Misti Burmeister
-     Gartner Vice President and Fellow in Research David W. Cearley

“This summit is an opportunity for the public and private IT sectors to cross-pollinate,” said NASA Chief Information Officer Linda Y. Cureton. “I strive to make NASA’s IT the best in government. We can learn from the latest in the private sector while sharing our own innovations in cloud computing, green computing and other cutting-edge areas.”

The summit’s theme is “Together We Can Make NASA IT Stellar!” For more details, visit:

http://www.regonline.com/ocio