“Gentlemen, we don’t have any money, so we are going to have to think.” So said the
physicist Ernest Rutherford, and this phrase seems to have become the motto of what is
probably the world’s smallest - and certainly one of the oddest - space programmes.
The N-Prize, launched in April 2008 by Cambridge scientist Dr Paul Dear, poses a difficult
enough challenge: to launch and track a nanosatellite weighing between 9.99 and 19.99 grams
through at least nine complete Earth orbits.
Two prizes are on offer, each of £9,999.99 - “a nano-Prize for a nanochallenge,”
says Dear. The first, called the ‘SSO’ or ‘Single-Spend to Orbit’ is for a non-reusable
launch system built and operated entirely within the budget - everything that leaves the
ground has to cost under a thousand pounds sterling.
The second, the ‘RV’ or ‘Reusable Vehicle’ prize, allows an unlimited budget, as
long as enough of the launch hardware is recovered to keep the per launch cost below
the thousand pound ceiling.
Dear says that he expects to lose one or both of the prize money pots by the close of the competition
in September 2011.
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The n-Prize Competition
Credit: pictureandword.com
Dr Paul Dear
Photo Credit: MRC Visual Aids Department
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“It’s such a crazy idea that it’s bound to work,” he says. “We’re talking about sending
a matchbox the distance from London to Birmingham, then giving it a shove
sideways. Yes, the distance is vertical, and the sideways shove has to be on the order of
ten thousand miles per hour...”
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