[SpaceProgram] Very good news from discussion with the DARPA 100YSS program manager tonight

[cole santos]

Its a little more selective in its space project categories than the
100yss. But instead of pursuing a particular project, it would be nice
to just redistribute the money with our own micro grant process for
the exact same RFP requirements. So the global hackerspace
organization could hold contests on projects related to the RFP and
distribute prizes to winners. We could start small with RFI contests
with a few 100 bucks or so for the best idea for a particular
technology track followed for an RFP to match the winning RFI. We
should leave weapons out for liability purposes (explosives and
firearms requires federal and state licencing and they should just get
their own DARPA grant if they are organized enough to get one of
those) unless it is a non leathal weapon (microwave, foam, whatever)
or a combat enabling tech such as augmented reality HUD. I think that
the platform category should however be included in our global
hackerspace consortium challenges with the space stuff. Many makers
are already making UAV and FPV aircraft, blimps, balloons, boats,
tracked vehicles, and other craft.

On Fri, Jan 6, 2012 at 12:45 PM, Luke Weston <reindeerflotilla at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's worth noting that DARPA contributes to heaps of cutting-edge
> fundamental research that has no direct, obvious military value. Heaps
> of civilian scientists at universities across the world are happily
> involved in valuable civilian basic science and technology research
> that attracts funding from DARPA and occasionally other DOD agencies
> such as the Army Research Office, and they're certainly not just
> building weapons or building better bombs or anything like that.
>
> Well known examples would include the DARPA Grand Challenge for
> autonomous vehicle research, and a lot of quantum computing and
> quantum communications research, for example a lot of the research
> done by the universities affiliated with the ARC Centre for Quantum
> Computer Technology in Australia (http://www.cqc2t.org/), as well as
> this for example:
> http://news.vanderbilt.edu/2010/11/new-initiative-to-develop-a-system-that-controls-prosthetic-limbs-naturally/
>
> Cheers,
>  Luke
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