Slashdot Mirror

Clark Lindsey at HobbySpace has some detailed suggestions for how NASA's shuttle budget could be re-tooled to promote the growth of private space industry, and still accomplish NASA"s human spaceflight goals. He advocates sending the remaining shuttles to museums, purchasing launch services first from the Russians, at least through 2004 when new commercial launchers should be available, and investing in the suborbital RLV industry mentioned in this space review article.

Good ideas there... any chance of it happening?

This probably is a very pessimistic estimate. For somewhat more optimistic outlook, see Private Space Development Timeline Mind you Elon Musk of SpaceX is planning to launch his semi-reusable Falcon in January, 2004. That is, to orbit. Some other companies, like Microcosm and SpaceDev are on track to launch their low-cost orbital vehicles in quite near future too. If and when X-Prize is won, the efforts ( sub ~million per launch manned suborbital ) and current "cheap" launcher builders will converge and it isnt unreasonable to expect a couple million range manned orbital launches in this decade. Given some competition and general revitalization of industry, expect new high-tech technologies and materials to be employed real fast after initial proofs of concept, thus bringing the price down even further. Imagine, a million dollar orbital trip that could be won on lottery.

Those incidents you refer to were all several years ago. Starchaser has definitely improved its reputation since then, for its three recent major accomplishments in the last 24 months have all been positive:
37-ft. Nova rocket blasts off!
Churchill liquid engine test success
Nova II capsule test drop success
The next few months will be very exciting. Starchaser plans to integrate all three of the above accomplishments in one project: the manned launch of the Nova rocket -- outfitted with the new Churchill engines -- carrying the Nova II capsule as payload!

I mean, has Armadillo actually started constructing a rocket that can lift three crew members to 62.1 miles altitude, return safely, and do it again within two weeks??

For more pictures of the vehicle, go here. For an article about the drop test, go here.

But I must note that Scaled Composites will probably fly their vehicle to suborbital altitute before Armadillo does. John Carmack, leader of the Armadillo Aerospace team, posted some comments about his progress and schedule.

I believe that the Starchaser team are well-advanced on constructing the Thunderbird rocket that will attempt to win the prize late this year

I mean, has Armadillo actually started constructing a rocket that can lift three crew members to 62.1 miles altitude, return safely, and do it again within two weeks??

For more pictures of the vehicle, go here. For an article about the drop test, go here.

But I must note that Scaled Composites will probably fly their vehicle to suborbital altitute before Armadillo does. John Carmack, leader of the Armadillo Aerospace team, posted some comments about his progress and schedule.

I believe that the Starchaser team are well-advanced on constructing the Thunderbird rocket that will attempt to win the prize late this year

RadioCom Screen Image

To further increase the signal-to-noise, here's a couple of links (look at Oct. 17 & 18 entries) with a little more detail on the funding deal...

Stuffed up the html Sorry ... the link I ment to give in my last post was http://www.hobbyspace.com/Music/music3.html#Natura l

There is a scripture in the bible talking about how the heavens sing paises to God.

I never really understood what it ment until one day I found out that the stars actually make music. How? Well I assume you of you know that stars don't just release visable light they also release UV/IR and ... that's right radio waves. We can't actually tune into them down here on earth(the atmospehe scatters the waves) but from what I've been told in space you can listen to it fairly well. Theres a fair bit of information about it. Different stars have different sounds some of it sounds sureal.

Just thought I'd give a different prospective.



Nathaniel Brown

There's quite a difference between "their next flight could be their last" (emphasis added) and "if you don't lose at least one during testing, you aren't pushing hard enough" (again, EA). The former means that the job is risky, the latter, suicidal (that is, I interpret his meaning to be, "If one aircraft isn't lost, then we're not being risky enough").

Other notes:

1) I wasn't responding to Timothy, rather HobbySpacer, the article's submitter. At least, that's how the quotes lead me to read it.
2) I don't think that this person presumed that this statement was only meant for unmanned flights; the link included in this comment was for the X-15, which did have a fatal disintigration, as memorialized in the link he gave.
3) I didn't mean to suggest that I thought this vehicle was manned. I was responding to his comment about the X-15.

Sorry if I ruffled any feathers; I guess I wasn't sufficiently clear.

Of course, this is all new age type aesthetics. Some folks may be uncomfortable with this.

another possibly useful space hobby page with multimedia stuff is here

So maybe Hemos can replace his collection.