The Wirefly X PRIZE Cup is an outdoor space exposition hosting several competitions for some major prizes (including over $2.5 Million from NASA) for space related technology. The event is being held on October 20-21, 2006 (see here for details) at the Las Cruces Airport in New Mexico. It will be a great educational event with rocket launches, NASA exhibits, jets, and more. To help promote the event I have been helping put together some space-related Google Earth content. The first part of the content (more will be released over the next few days) is a showcase of 3D Space Models for Google Earth. If you follow the link you will see over a dozen different rokets, space stations, satellites and more in 3D. The models were mostly developed by many people in the Google Earth Community forum for 3D Models.
The X PRIZE Cup is the continuation of what was started by the Ansari X PRIZE – a $10 Million prize won by Burt Rutan with Space Ship One. The whole idea behind the X PRIZE, which was conceived by my friend Peter Diamandis, is to help encourage further development of space travel – and its working!
About Frank Taylor
Frank Taylor started the Google Earth Blog in July, 2005 shortly after Google Earth was first released. He has worked with 3D computer graphics and VR for many years and was very impressed with this exciting product. Frank completed a 5.5 year circumnavigation of the earth by sailboat in June 2015 which you can read about at Tahina Expedition, and is a licensed pilot, backpacker, diver, and photographer.