0191 -9067/82/010095-02$03.00/0 Copyright ® 1982 SUNSAT Energy Council FIRST ANNUAL SPACE FOUNDATION RESEARCH AWARDS BEVERLY GOLDSTEIN Extracting and marketing scarce metals from asteroids, developing natural ecosystems to supply oxygen to space habitats, and harnessing solar energy for microwave transmission were among the 1981 award-winning research projects recognized last October by The Space Foundation. The research winners were honored at The Space Foundation's First Annual Awards Dinner held in Houston, October 27th. The finalists received special cash awards totaling $36,500. The Space Foundation, headquartered in Houston, Texas, awards Space Industrialization Fellowships for ongoing studies and National Prizes for work completed to outstanding university and college graduate students whose research topics are germane to the economic acquisition and use of space resources. “The Foundation's mission is to ensure that our country's brightest minds have the funding necessary to help create a future that looks increasingly to space, our new high frontier,” said Foundation president Sam E. Dunnam IV. Applications from researchers throughout the country were received not only from the fields of science and engineering, but also business, law, economics, environmental disciplines, the social sciences and the humanities. “Spurred by the advent of the Space Shuttle,” commented Dunnam, “this year's response and high level of research were particularly exciting — so much so that we created a Special Group Prize for a team of seven from Harvard.” The eight awards were selected from 25 finalists. Winning Space Industrialization Fellowships were • Karla Brasaemle, University of Minnesota, for her work in electrolytic refining of extraterrestrial nickel-iron alloys. • Robert Lewis, Washington University, for his design of a prototype digitally encoded videodisk data storage and retrieval system for low cost disseminating of space data. • Ramon Lopez, Rice University, for his analysis of the impact of argon propulsion upon the upper atmosphere. • Stewart Nozette, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for his study of the separation of intrinsically valuable metals from asteroids. Receiving National Prizes were • David Cooke, Rice University, for his thesis on a self-consistent computer model for the solar power satellite-plasma interaction.
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