Quote:
Originally Posted by Travis Hoffman
I am asking someone in the know like Dave Lavery to post in this thread and verify Billfred's assessment.
It seems clear that there will be no Regional Challenge grants this year, which makes sense, since FRC has not been named as a ROC winner, and they can't specify grants specific to any one robotics competition. A natural question would be then - does NASA expect to fund additional Program Growth and Sustaining Grants to make up for the removal of the Regional Challenge grant funding?
What is most perplexing to me is that the language of Mark Leon's message constantly refers to a singular ROC "winner" that is yet to be determined; however, it is mentioned how in past years, teams from a variety of robotics competitions such as FIRST, BotBall, BEST, VRC, NURC, etc. have received NASA grant support. Is that changing? I'm sure teams who participate in these robotics competitions would appreciate some *official* enlightment regarding the decision status and nature of this new "ROC-CAN" selection process and what it potentially means for them. Getting a general idea of when the official ROC selection will be finalized would also be a plus, if such information is available.
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Travis, have you seen
this? It will probably help answer some of your questions. Particularly section 3.
I am guessing Billfred's assessment is reasonable.
As far as I can tell, probably for contracting reasons, NASA is trying to not play favorites with FIRST. No "Program Growth" grants this year that have historically been FIRST specific, no requirement for grant award winners to submit a Chairman's Award this year, again FIRST specific, etc. This year's NASA grant application seems more generic and open to all the major robotics competitions than I remember in the past.
From what I can gather NASA has reached some sort of contracting issue or limit with the way they have done the grants in the past and are now going through new contracting procedures. I'm just guessing here and have no idea how this is going to play out or effect the future of NASA support for FIRST, VEX, BotBall, NURC, BEST, etc. but hopefully things will be bigger and better for all. I guess we will all find out in early January. The anticipated award date is January 7th. Oddly the CAN has a typo stating January 7th, 2010 but it should obviously be 2011. Hmm, Sure would make for a big anouncement at Kickoff wouldn't it?