1st Heinlein Prize Awarded

baxissimo writes "The first ever Heinlein prize for Advances in Space Commercialization is going to be awarded to Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, for various activities including his efforts as Founder and Chairman of the Ansari X Prize. The prize is a cool 1/2 million USD plus a few other nifty trinkets -- a gold Heinlein Medallion, the Lady Vivamus Sword (as described in Heinlein's book Glory Road) and a Laureate's Diploma. The award ceremony will be held in Houston, July 7, 2006. This prize has been around a good while (since Heinlein's death in 1988?) with no awardees. Hopefully this will make the existence of the prize a little more widely known, and help spur further developments like the X Prize."

Comments

Space commercialization?

[daniil]

Is this like selling air?

Re:Space commercialization?

[drinkypoo]

"Get on the plane, get on the plane... I tell them FUCK YOU, I'm getting in the plane. Let Evel Knievel get ON the plane!"

The perfect lady

[neonprimetime]

This is a must see ... the Lady Vivamus Sword

Re:The perfect lady

[celardore]

[Insert cutting remark here]

You'd think...

[Cleon]

You'd think with a Heinlein prize, the award would be a giant gold breast. ;)

But on a serious note, I'm glad this prize is out there. Aside from the usual flamewar about private industry versus government-driven research, it seems to me the more people/companies/organizations/entities that are trying to get into space, the faster our species as a whole will get off this rock and start exploring the universe.

Let me get this straight...

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

...this is a prize for offering a prize?

Re:Let me get this straight...

[spezz]

...this is a prize for offering a prize?

Exactly. And now that the first Heinlein prize has been handed out, the first Alfred Bester Award for excellence in the field of distributing the first Heinlein Prize can be given out as well.

The best part?

[dr_dank]

He can yell "front!" at any time and have beautiful women available to do his bidding 24 hours a day. He even gets a fair witness included at no extra charge.

Science Fiction Classics

[loose electron]

Heinlein was one of the Sci-Fi authors that stimulated the imagination, while staying within the bounds (albeit loosely) of "possible" scientific reality.

Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C Clarke, Larry Niven, to name a few.

Heinlein also had some interesting commentary on some "not PC" topics as well:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stranger_in_a_Strange _Land

Do you grok? :)

Re:Science Fiction Classics

[IdahoEv]

while staying within the bounds (albeit loosely) of "possible" scientific reality.

Yes, Heinlein really cared about his science ... and particularly his engineering and orbital mechanics. He actually did the orbital mechanics calculations whenever he mentioned specific figures in a story. (I.E. if he said "We burned at 1.3G for 5 seconds to insert into a station-keeping orbit" it generally meant he had actually done that math.)

However, nearly all of his stories depend on "torchships": ships with nuclear drive engines that have a combination of high thrust and high specific impulse that is extremely unlikely in the real world. The closest thing that has been proposed is Zubrin's Nuclear Salt-water Rocket which uses an aqueous solution of plutonium or uranium salt as both fuel and reaction mass, expelling this radioactive mixture out the back -- and a lot of physicists aren't even sure the NSWR could really work. It does have the charming feature of completely ruining the landscape underneath the launch site, which matches Heinlein's torchships pretty well.

There's a fantastic discussion of all this at a website called The Atomic Rocket, which collects in one place all the useful scientific information about space travel and ship design for anyone who is writing fiction or designing games.

For my money, it's the best damn geek site in the history of the web by a clear margin. (Though you have to be an old-school geek who thinks space is even cooler than computers.) Every few months I get sucked in and read the whole thing over again (and it's huge).

Re:What is it with Heinlein?

[__aaclcg7560]

The problem with extreme left-wing socialistic science fiction is that there's no boobs or underage sex. It's soooo boring. :P

Heinlein was remarkably prescient...

[tpjunkie]

Apart from some of the technical stuff he mentions, check this out (From the wikipedia page): In Solution Unsatisfactory, written in 1940, Heinlein set out the following predictions: in 1941 the US government would start a large-scale secret project, which would make nuclear weapons available for use by the end of 1944 (radioactive dust rather than a bomb - but with much the same strategic implications); the weapon would be used to destroy an Axis city in 1945; this would bring WWII to an end, but start a nuclear arms race between the US and the Soviet Union. (In Heinlein's story, it leads to a new war which the US wins, gaining domination over the whole world but becoming a military dictatorship in the process).

Happy Birthday to Us!!!

[tringstad]

The award ceremony will be held in Houston, July 7, 2006.

The article doesn't mention it, but I assume this date was chosen because it is Heinlein's Birthday.

I know this because it is also mine, and I always thought that was cool.

-Tommy

Re:What is it with Heinlein?

[$RANDOMLUSER]

> his extreme right-wing, dog-eat-dog capitalistic propanganda

Oh, you mean libertarian?

Re:What is it with Heinlein?

[jonored]

Er, not quite so much. That may be one of the more common positions that seem to be advocated by his books, but it is not by far the only one. For instance, "starship troopers" is more about the nature of war and civic duty than about commerce. Also springing to mind are "Stranger in a strange land", which some have suggested was part of the origin of the whole "free love" movement. "The Moon is a harsh mistress" doesn't so much go for capitalistic propaganda as the assertion that paying for what you get is unavoidable, even in a society that tries to obscure it. "Beyond This Horizon" goes farther, with money being considered just a representation of a share in the production of the society.

All in all, my impression is that the primary purpose in the whole set is to get people thinking. Some of the books make Heinlein seem to come from one side; other books make it look like his actual opinion is completely on the other side. The predominant impression I got from them was one of "relationships are important" and "human beings should think". I mean, one of the main themes in "starship troppers" was the idea of formulating a system of morals based on clear and precise reasoning from a set of axioms.