NASA Announces 120 Small Research Projects

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."

Comments

Research project #72

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell is that smell coming from the breakroom?

/.'ed or?

[ed.mps]

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.

Every Department of the US has SBIR

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Every Department of the US has SBIR

[korbin_dallas]

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.

Re:Every Department of the US has SBIR

[GuyMannDude]

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

Well this sounds good.

[GreggBz]

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.

Forget NASA .. look at the companies

[OzPeter]

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

about time!

[taupin]

Finally, small projects that might actually be finished!

Re:about time!

[riffraff]

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.

Then write your congresscritter!

[GuyMannDude]

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