Aug 01
Three GUARANTEED Ways to Fail at Department of Defense SBIRs The Department of Defense has just released the third and final round of small-business research contract topics for 2011. I will be studying them for interesting research opportunities (and maybe some weird ones), but in the meantime, here is the first installment of my long-promised …
Jun 28
Part 1: In Which I Explain My Tardiness and Then Deliver a Teaser For the past week or so I have been working on a series of SBIR articles based on an interview that I did with my former project manager at Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR). The articles took longer to write than I expected, …
May 08
It’s not a secret that I love the Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) program. At some point I’ll write a bit more on the history and motivation of the SBIR program, but the short version is that SBIR grants and contracts foster radical and risky innovation… stuff that is more likely to come from a …
Apr 23
Once upon a time, in the land of Georgia, there existed a tiny little program called the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts, or “NIAC.” NIAC was not directly concerned with shuttles or satellites or space-stations. NIAC was about the future, and by “future” I mean the far future. I mean “Antimatter Driven Sails for Deep-Space Missions.” …