>From Dennis May:

Subject: [Starship_Forum] Innovative Propulsion
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2001 11:37:15 -0600
From: Dennis May
Reply-To: Starship_Forum@yahoogroups.com
To: Starship_Forum@yahoogroups.com

I remember reading some year and a half ago that
NASA was funding SBIR [Small Business Innovative
Research] Grants for innovative space propulsion
systems. I haven't heard any follow-up on how
things are going or what systems received awards.
Has anyone heard anything?

Some which might be getting such money include:

The pulsed laser driven spinning mirrored top which
rides atop the beam on plasma "pops".

The small probe which will use solar plasma
pressure interacting with its own artificially
created plasma halo.

I used to evaluate SBIR proposals for the Air
Force but not in this area. The NASA search
for proposals seemed pretty far outside the
original SBIR intent, since innovative propulsion
systems for $50,000 seems like asking a
Lamborghini dealer to take $5 down and $5 a
month.

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/bpp/ is one of the
sites discussing this topic.

Dennis May

Mind you, its amazing what you can do.

A few students recently applied to Boeing for $50,000 to build a
cheap satellite. Boeing liked their idea, but said they'd need
$250,000 and promptly gave it to them.

They spent the money and made the satellite, and its just been
launched, and it works great. Now all they have to do is work out
what to do with the other $200,000! [The university plan to spend
it over the next 4 years].

One of the clever bits they did was use an ordinary metal tape
measure to make a self unfolding antenna. The standard item costs
$50,000. Theirs: $5.

Monart Pon wrote:

>>From Dennis May:
>
> Subject: [Starship_Forum] Innovative Propulsion
> Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2001 11:37:15 -0600
> From: Dennis May
> Reply-To: Starship_Forum@yahoogroups.com
> To: Starship_Forum@yahoogroups.com

> I used to evaluate SBIR proposals for the Air
> Force but not in this area. The NASA search
> for proposals seemed pretty far outside the
> original SBIR intent, since innovative propulsion
> systems for $50,000 seems like asking a
> Lamborghini dealer to take $5 down and $5 a
> month.

You might be better going to the 2CV dealer instead.

> http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/bpp/ is one of the
> sites discussing this topic.
>
> Dennis May
>

--
- Ian Woollard (ian.woollard@...)

"Is a planetary surface the right place for an expanding
technological civilization?"
- Gerard O'Neill

>From Dennis May, responding to Ian Woollard.

Subject: [Starship_Forum] Re: Innovative Propulsion
Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2001 09:04:13 -0600
From: Dennis May
Reply-To: Starship_Forum@yahoogroups.com
To: Starship_Forum@yahoogroups.com

Ian Woollard wrote (11/15):

>A few students recently applied to Boeing for $50,000 to build a cheap
>satellite. Boeing liked their idea, but said they'd need
>$250,000 and promptly gave it to them.

>They spent the money and made the satellite, and its just been launched,
>and it works great. Now all they have to do is work out what to do with the
>other $200,000! [The university plan to spend it over the next 4 years].

>One of the clever bits they did was use an ordinary metal tape measure to
>make a self unfolding antenna. The standard item costs
>$50,000. Theirs: $5.

I am not denigrating the capabilities of
entrepreneurial people to make great gains with
small sums of money. I saw many SBIR projects
which did good work with small sums of money.

My main argument concerns reward versus value.
The largest contract awarded under the
NASA Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project
was under a million dollars and done under
a special congressional bypass of the system.
The rest of the small number of contracts
were between 13K and $120,000. As far as I
could tell most were university projects and
none looked in the least bit promising. What
you aren't seeing is that NASA has gathered
100X this in unseen proposals which are
[effectively] now their intellectual property
for free. The evaluators have expanded their
database of ideas for femto-cents on the dollar.

A wise innovator would not go the route of
give-aways to NASA. We are after all talking
about a technology [if demonstrated] worth
trillions of dollars per year in the long run.
The greatest financial reward you could expect
to gather from involvement in a government
contract of this type wouldn't compare to a
single minute of its value once demonstrated.
Praises will be sung and it will be a great
personal accomplishment but financially it
will be a disaster for you and will only lead
to the further robbery of innovators.

Dennis May