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NASA Announces 120 Small Research Projects

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the and-wifi-by-2017 dept.

eldavojohn writes "NASA's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) has released a list of the winning businesses that submitted research proposals in 2006. This is the second phase of a three phase award system and NASA has announced the winners. If you click on any of the projects, there is an interesting writeup of the proposal and technical abstract."

41 comments

  1. Research project #72 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    What the hell is that smell coming from the breakroom?

  2. /.'ed or? by ed.mps · · Score: 2, Informative
    first link:
    http://sbir.gsfc.nasa.gov/SBIR/sbir2006/phase2/awards/2006topic.html

    Forbidden
    You don't have permission to access /SBIR/sbir2006/phase2/awards/2006topic.html on this server.
    --
    !sig
  3. 2006??? WTF, it's end of 2007 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Gotta love the speed of bureaucracy.

  4. Every Department of the US has SBIR by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    You know that every department of the US has SBIR/STTR proposals and are required to spend a certain percentage of their budget on this. They have sponsored a lot of cool projects in the past, and hopefully will continue to do so. I don't get what is so special about NASA's this time around. Most of the projects for all of the different departments are technologically interesting or clever. If you haven't, go search all of the projects that they have funded in the past, it spurs the imagination if nothing else.

    1. Re:Every Department of the US has SBIR by korbin_dallas · · Score: 3, Interesting

      There was a real boon of these in the late 1990s. By 2006 they were mostly gone.
      At least the DoD ones we looked at/for. What used to take us weeks to look over were down to 5 or 6 listings.

      By the 3rd phase you were supposed to be in a position to turn these R&D tasks into real commercial products.

      One was even Cheneys little betting scheme, Predictive Markets.

      --
      They Live, We Sleep
    2. Re:Every Department of the US has SBIR by d12v10 · · Score: 1

      There still are a lot of these. There's always DoD money to go around, you see...

    3. Re:Every Department of the US has SBIR by GuyMannDude · · Score: 2, Informative

      There was a real boon of these in the late 1990s. By 2006 they were mostly gone. At least the DoD ones we looked at/for. What used to take us weeks to look over were down to 5 or 6 listings.

      I don't know what the hell you are talking about. The 3rd round of 2007 DoD SBIRs closed last month and there were hundreds of topics. The only thing I can guess is that either you were looking at a specific agency that typically doesn't release many topics (e.g., National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency) or you were looking at a rare round in which there were few topics. But the Army, Air Force, and Navy always release tons of topics. I've never seen a SBIR round that only had 5 or 6 total listings. I'll be the first to admit that competition for these awards is very fierce, but that's a separate issue from the number of total topics.

      GMD

      --
      watch this
    4. Re:Every Department of the US has SBIR by korbin_dallas · · Score: 1

      Must have been one of those rare rounds, as we often looked at Army, AirForce and Navy listings.
      And yeah, most of them were very well populated.

      --
      They Live, We Sleep
    5. Re:Every Department of the US has SBIR by khallow · · Score: 1

      One was even Cheneys little betting scheme, Predictive Markets.

      I have no clue how you've come to associate predictive markets with Vice President Cheney. These predate the G. W. Bush administration by a considerable margin. For example, stock options are predictive markets. Insurance is a predictive market. Options come from the early 20th century, I think, and insurance is centuries old. More recently we have pure examples of predictive markets. These predate the Bush administration by years. For example, the Iowa Election Market was created sometime in the 80's. The Foresight Exchange was created in 1994. The Hollywood Stock Exchange was created in 1996.
  5. Well this sounds good. by GreggBz · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Whenever there is a space story on slashdot, we get comments pining for the privatization of spaceflight. I wish for that also, but I'm pretty pessimistic about it. The financial reward for exploring space is nill. There is no sustainable business model for sending people into space, yet. The viability of commercial communication satellites has given birth to an industry there, but don't expect LEO cruises from United Airlines anytime soon.

    So, stuff like this that touches the private sector is always good. Government contracts can keep a small private R&D company in business. Enabling technological competition is a good idea as long as it's done without prejudice. All the problems that were proposed are specific concise things, which is good in that it eliminates the bureaucracy of a large complex project. NASA may have it's problems, but I feel fine spending my tax dollars on this.

    1. Re:Well this sounds good. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You dismiss "LEO cruises", but I believe, for foreseeable future, the only area that makes sense for private enterprise in manned spaceflight is space tourism. Sure, it'll only be for the wealthy for quite some time, but air travel started the same way.

      As for other manned spaceflight, there's little business value seen in advancing fundamental science, and that's pretty much all manned spaceflight does now. When (if) someone discovers a valuable process that can solely be done in space by human hands, then private enterprise be able to justify the risk/expense of spaceflight. Until then, I expect it to stay in the hands of relatively wealthy governments.

    2. Re:Well this sounds good. by lessthan · · Score: 1

      see, the whole privitized space race is a problem. as another poster has pointed out, there is currently no money in it. that means that without the goverment to step in, the only people who will step up and take off are the rich/unhealthy-obsessed. is that what us space nuts want?

      --
      Space Shuttle was a program that strapped humans to an explosion and tried to stab through the sky with fire and math
  6. Forget NASA .. look at the companies by OzPeter · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Here is a list of 25 companies that look like they are doing fun things with tech. Its a job seekers dream.

    --
    I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
  7. about time! by taupin · · Score: 3, Funny

    Finally, small projects that might actually be finished!

    1. Re:about time! by riffraff · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I used to work for a company at JSC that got SBIR's. I used to think the same thing, but what happens is that even if a project is canceled, they use all the information learned from the project to further other projects. So even projects that aren't "finished" are at least useful.

      Usually.

    2. Re:about time! by phaggood · · Score: 1

      My small enterprise (sole prop) won an SBIR from the US Dept of Ed to create a method for teachers to better utilize data in the classroom to drive instructional design. Unfortunately, I didn't win the second phase, but I did parlay the l33t java skills I gained in the effort for a new gig in Ann Arbor.

      As soon as I get all the code cleaned up, I hope to upload it to Sourceforge.

  8. Then write your congresscritter! by GuyMannDude · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So, stuff like this that touches the private sector is always good. Government contracts can keep a small private R&D company in business. Enabling technological competition is a good idea as long as it's done without prejudice. All the problems that were proposed are specific concise things, which is good in that it eliminates the bureaucracy of a large complex project. NASA may have it's problems, but I feel fine spending my tax dollars on this.

    Disclaimer: I work for one of the companies that won two awards listed on the website.

    If you like the idea of your tax dollars going to smaller companies, then please let your congressional representative know! The SBIR program has been targeted in recent years by lawmakers who feel that it's a waste of money. Just as worrisome, in the last month they managed to fast-track the passing of a bill letting a "small" company owned by a venture capital firm compete for SBIR dollars. The whole point of the SBIR program was to provide funding for small, innovative firms that didn't have deep pockets.

    The SBIR program has become very competitive in the last few years and it's not surprising that big-money is looking for ways to grab that away from smaller, independent companies. If you like the idea of your tax dollars supporting lean, innovative companies, please let your rep know. The SBIR program is a valuable source of funding to allow small companies to develop technology that will let them one day compete with the sluggish, established behemoths (e.g., Microsoft).

    GMD

    --
    watch this
    1. Re:Then write your congresscritter! by sconeu · · Score: 1

      Having worked in the past for a company whose lifeblood was SBIR, all I can say is the following:

      [AOL]Me Too![/AOL],
      and
      MOD THIS GUY UP!

      --
      General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
    2. Re:Then write your congresscritter! by CraftyJack · · Score: 1

      I also worked for a company whose lifeblood was SBIR, and that never sat quite right with me. My impression is/was that the SBIR program was supposed to be a transitional thing for a small company with a great new idea - not a constant source of cash flow for a company that has gotten good at cranking out SBIR proposals. In my eyes, SBIR mills like the guys in NH are gaming the system. Look through the award archives, and you'll notice that some of the multiple award winners have been at this for quite a while. If the concepts aren't headed for Phase 3, SBIRs can become a dangerous dependency for a small company. They're "proposal crack".

    3. Re:Then write your congresscritter! by bzipitidoo · · Score: 1
      I too have worked for a company that did SBIR's. The system has a number of problems. The company would've liked to grow more but was limited by SBIR rules-- too much growth and they'd no longer qualify for the 'S' part. I saw a certain amount of corruption as well. It's not just bigs that have a monopoly on corruption. One proposal I saw was obviously cooked so that only a particular research team could qualify. They didn't even have anything innovative, all they claimed was a particular way of image recognition that had overspecified the particulars, and wasn't very good having already been tried and improved upon years ago.

      Quite a few SBIR requests were fantasy and ignorance. To succeed at those, one would have violated the laws of thermodynamics and changed civilization as we know it. Once, looking for ones to do with data compression, I found just one. They wanted Quantum Data Compression, and not just a theoretical method to do it but an actual device. I thought about it: step 1) invent quantum computer that scales up 2) profit! 3) heck with the quantum data compression, already made your billions. Even saw one that made the evening news-- a proposal to research the possibility of Star Trek style teleportation beaming.

      --
      Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
    4. Re:Then write your congresscritter! by SpectreBlofeld · · Score: 1

      If you like the idea of your tax dollars going to smaller companies

        I'd rather the government not give my money to any company.

        If you have too much to spend, government, and I know you do, give it back, please.

    5. Re:Then write your congresscritter! by Kartoffel · · Score: 1

      Agreed. (Disclaimer, I'm NASA employee who happens to review the occasional SBIR proposal).

      The SBIR program also helps support professors and grad students. Associate faculty can incorporate as a small business and win funding that helps them make ends meet as researchers and educators. Many phase 1 projects are roughly the size of 1 or 2 masters' theses, ideal for a small "business" consisting of a PI/professor and a few grad students. I know a few people who wouldn't have been able to make it through school without this program.

    6. Re:Then write your congresscritter! by lenski · · Score: 1

      Ordinarily, I tend toward agreement with this sentiment. However, not completely. My responses are:

      A single government worker (classical civil service worker) is simply a "one person nano-company" and in a strictly academic sense, the government would always be giving your money to private interests.

      (as expressed very well elsewhere in this thread) SBIRs are intended to help exactly the correct class of company: People who are not Big Contractors. There is a substantial body of evidence that great innovations tend not to originate in organizations that have large investment in the way things are.

      SBIRs are not big funding contracts. Phase I contracts are not sufficient to fund more than a fraction of a person, phase II contracts while better are not usually sufficient to fund the starting of a line-of-business.

      SBIRs are, especially recently, very competitive with many companies submitting proposals for each topic. The fact is that money is getting very tight. I do not know the overall statistics, but the ratio of funded proposals to submitted proposals is very small. The companies who include SBIR in their business processes are working *very* hard for that money, and from a taxpayer's perspective, I think it's a great deal.

      My disclaimer: I had refused several opportunities during a 30-year career to work in defense contracting, preferring to work in private industry. That was, until 2004 when a small company in my neighborhood hired me to help with their Linux/C++/controls development for a phase II SBIR.

      My observation of that process is that SBIR, while being an imperfect process, is an excellent way to use taxpayer money to get ideas and work funded very efficiently.

    7. Re:Then write your congresscritter! by Kartoffel · · Score: 1

      If you have too much to spend, government, and I know you do, give it back, please.

      The SBIR process is how we give money back. Would you rather we just gave money to random people in the parking lot at Wal Mart?

    8. Re:Then write your congresscritter! by giminy · · Score: 1

      Disclaimer: I work for one of the companies that won two awards listed on the website.

      If you like the idea of your tax dollars going to smaller companies, then please let your congressional representative know! The SBIR program has been targeted in recent years by lawmakers who feel that it's a waste of money.

      Disclaimer: I used to work for a government agency that awarded numerous SBIRs. I reviewed proposals, met with the small businesses owners, etc.

      For the most part, SBIR awards go to companies that win a lot of Phase 1 and Phase 2 awards, and then never commercialize a thing. The companies just go on to win more Phase 1 and Phase 2 awards ($100k and $750k, respectively). Companies have little motivation to do more than this, because a team of four or five people can pull down a handful of phase 1 SBIRs (pretty much they just have to write a whitepaper at the end, and the quality I saw was low -- the type of thing that I could write in a solid week if was in my field), or 1-2 Phase 2 SBIRs in a year, and can make a very good life for themselves by doing very little work.

      In the lovely world of government contracting, there simply isn't much we could do to stop this sort of behavior -- I wasn't, for example, allowed to weight proposals based on the company's past SBIR experience, or even on the CVs of the folks that were proposed to do the research. Either the SBIR process has to change a lot, or I do think that it should go away -- the money isn't big, I realize, but the way that it is set up now, it is ripe for abuse at the expense of taxpayers.

      $.02,
      Reid

      --
      The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
    9. Re:Then write your congresscritter! by giminy · · Score: 1

      I'd like to reply to myself with an excerpt from the SBIR award contract, just to highlight one of the other big problems: SBIR data rights.

      " (1) Each agency must refrain from disclosing SBIR technical data to outside the Government (except reviewers) and especially to competitors of the SBC, or from using the information to produce future technical procurement specifications that could harm the SBC that discovered and developed the innovation."

      So, essentially if I pay a small business for phase 1 and phase 2 research, and then they don't continue on to commercialize it, I (as the government agency) cannot use their research for anything. So I pay $850k, get a whitepaper, maybe a prototype, and then I'm not allowed to use either if the company decides not to go in on phase 3. It's a great deal for small businesses, but a horrible deal for the government when it encounters greedy little companies (of which there are many in the SBIR world).

      Some kind of contractual obligation to attempt commercialization after phase 2 would be nice, and if the company doesn't go for it, .GOV should get the rights to the research (IANAL and I have no idea how this could be enforced). Just my thought as one that was once on the other side of the fence...

      Reid

      --
      The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
  9. Re:Reserach project for Slashdotters by megaditto · · Score: 1

    You need to log in, I guess.

    I know, it's a real PITA, this new discussion system.

    --
    Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
  10. Fuel, Energy, Power by Ira+Sponsible · · Score: 1

    NASA's JPL has announced that they've synthesized a Liquefied Chuck Norris Round-House Kick (LCNRHK). While they admit it's not quite as powerful as the real thing, three gallons of LCNRHK would be sufficient to launch the Space Shuttle into orbit.

    --
    1.Netcraft confirms:In Soviet Russia all your base welcomes a beowolf cluster of CowboyNeal overlords. 2.? 3.Profit!!1!
  11. And Military by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


    applications to advance the commercial interests of this thug.

    I hope this helps the criminal indictment and the extraordinary rendition to The Hague.

  12. Horrible website by boris111 · · Score: 1
    Seems all the abstracts on NASA's site are ass-backwards. . They have the NON-NASA application mixed up with the NASA Applications.

    POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS Electrospray gettering may be applied to Building HVAC "Collect-To-Protect" applications for counter-terror protection, home HVAC use, automotive ventilation filtration applications, airplane air filtration, and submarine air filtration to name just a few commerical uses.

    POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words) Spacecraft and spacesuit environmental particulate and hazardous chemical and biological species mitigation will be of paramount concern on future Moon missions and possible Mars exploration. The electrospray gettering technology can be used to continuously remove particulate and chemical species listed in NASA's SMAC list as well as aerosolized biological species, offering all the advantages of conventional electrostatic filtration methods but devoid of any ozone production and at far lower power requirements. NASA's technology taxonomy has been developed by the SBIR-STTR program to disseminate awareness of proposed and awarded R/R&D in the agency. It is a listing of over 100 technologies, sorted into broad categories, of interest to NASA.
  13. NASA's tech tree does not lead to Warp Drive by Mingco · · Score: 1

    Once again, NASA rejects the plans to build the world's first warp nacelle. Each year, I fight through this bureaucratic red tape. I swear, at this rate, I won't be able to launch a warp vessel until 2063!

  14. Re:Reserach project for Slashdotters by JazzLad · · Score: 1

    It took me almost a whole 30 seconds to figure it out (including the time it took to logout). Decrease your threshold to -1 & change threaded to flat. Then you can see everything even if you are too lazy to sign in :P

    //oh, that's cool - there's an MP3 option for the captcha, nice!

    --
    "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
  15. Finally equality...? by sc0ob5 · · Score: 1
    From the article - "The SBIR program is a highly competitive, three-phase award system. It provides qualified small businesses - including those owned by women and the disadvantaged - with opportunities to propose unique ideas that meet specific research and development needs of the federal government."

    So previously women and the disadvantaged couldn't propose ideas to the federal government?

  16. Project #121 by PPH · · Score: 1

    Handy pocket-sized units conversion chart.

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
    1. Re:Project #121 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's easy,

      1000 milligrams = 1 gram = 1/1000 of a kilogram
      1000 millilitres = 1 litre = 1/1000 of a kilolitre
      1000 millimetres = 1 metre = 1/1000 of a kilometre

      10 cubic millimetres of water ~= 1 gram ~= 1 millilitre

      Where's my grant?

    2. Re:Project #121 by PPH · · Score: 1
      Don't forget important physical constants on the flip side. For example:


      c (speed of light in a vacuum) = 1.8 * 10^12 furlongs per fortnight

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
  17. Re:2006??? WTF, it's end of 2007 by Kartoffel · · Score: 1

    "2006" means the initial SBIR proposals were submitted in 2006. How do I know this? I happen to review SBIRs for NASA.

    This announcement was for phase 2, which means they've already passed the first 6-12 months of phase 1, and been reselected for additional funding.

    The window for submitting SBIRs closes just before the end of the fiscal year. Let's say, September 2006 was the due date for submittals. Then add about a month for review and selection, and a bit longer for contract negotiation. Actual phase I 2006 SBIR research began around January 2007. Add 6-10 months more for the businesses to complete phase I, and here we are announcing the programs that have made it on to phase 2.

  18. Your info is outdated by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I don't know how long ago you were reviewing SBIRs but, yes, things have changed a lot. Your first message complains that you weren't allowed to judge a proposal based on the qualifications of the technical staff and their past performance. The current SBIR evaluation criteria is 3-parts: a) is technical merit, b) is qualifications of staff, and c) is potential commercialization. You can read more here. In regards to your second post about SBIR Data Rights, those expire after five years. So you and everyone else gets to use it after five years after the end of contract, regardless of whether they commercialize it or not. You can read more here.

    " (1) Each agency must refrain from disclosing SBIR technical data to outside the Government (except reviewers) and especially to competitors of the SBC, or from using the information to produce future technical procurement specifications that could harm the SBC that discovered and developed the innovation."

    This quote does not appear anywhere on the SBIR solicitation website. Where did you get it from?

    1. Re:Your info is outdated by giminy · · Score: 1

      When I reviewed (~2 years ago) it was for the MDA (they weren't my employer, just the sponsors of the SBIR and needed my organization's mindshare to review stuff). We were told specifically not to judge the qualification of staff even though it was an evaluation criteria because the staff proposed is non-binding. That is, the company's inclusion of particular people's CVs does not mean that those people have any obligation to actually take part in the actual work. By SBIR standards, this is (or at least, was) okay, which strikes me as wrong. Potential commercialization is rather a moot point as well, and we were told to chiefly ignore it by the sponsors. The idea for this part is that a small business that is just starting out will not have a clear commercialization plan lain out yet. So long as they acknowledged that they would need help making business/government customer contacts, they were golden.

      SBIR data rights have indeed changed somewhat as I am just finding out. This case is particularly interesting. Still, five years? That's an awfully long time to wait for the data rights. Not nearly as bad as a 20 year patent, but still pretty bad for research that .GOV paid for...

      It is a delicate balance, I realize. On the one hand you want to encourage small businesses to get into this thing and thrive and get the government's work done, but on the other hand you don't want to get screwed if the small business decides to take the money and run. All too often I saw just that, though: the abusive side to the contracts...companies with a hundred phase 1 and a dozen or so phase 2 awards under their belt, but with no phase 3s.

      Reid

      --
      The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,