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This is something that I care about a lot, and all I have to say is that if it matters to you, do something about it:

http://www.seds.org/ - Students for the Exploration and Development of Space
http://www.nss.org/ - National Space Society
http://www.yurisnight.net/ - Yuri's Night, the international space party
http://www.xprize.com/ -X-Prize Foundation
just to name a few...

or of course if you're young enough and willing to work a civil servants salary:
http://www.nasa.gov/about/career/index.html

-Brian

Not to karma whore, but the list of X Prize contenders can be found here. I looked at a few of the web sites and none of them seem to have anything to say about todays accomplishment. It might not be fair to judge these teams by their websites, but I looked at some of the team's websites and many of them appear to be quite lame. I have difficulty taking a team seriously that has a completely lame website. Maybe one of you who is not as sleepy as me can finish what I intended to do which is to get some idea of the future plans of the other X-Prize contenders now that the prize has been won.

It's officially won, if that will stop you sweating:

SPACESHIPONE WINS THE $10 M ANSARI X PRIZE

(apologies if slashcode mangles the above link)

Minor correction, the X-Prize is not government sponsored.

I would hope that it would take on more the flavor of the old time passenger cruise lines of the late 19th & early 20th Centuries. Still, once space travel starts to really emerge, it is going to be a very capital intensive business. Almost all of the capital that Wall Street & other exchanges can dig up is going to help fuel this next economic expansion.

I predict that over the next 15-25 years you will see Wall Street (especially once the X-Prize has been won) get into space in a major way. You will see the whole dot Bomb thing happen all over again, unfortunately, with fly-by-night companies that do little but promise the Moon (this time in a more litteral fashion). Some companies are going to emerge and become very successful, but many others are going to take a whole lot of money from people and throw it down the drain.

If the X-Prize team list is an indication with over 26 different teams listed, once it has been proven to be a practical business you will see many others jump into the business. Companies like Boeing, Airbus, and Thiokol (all companies you seemed to miss) are more than likely going to come in and join the party as well. They all have some sort of rocketry/avaition experience, deep pockets, and an aire of respectability when they start producing spacecraft.

In this regard it would be more like the P.C. industry, where it started in a bunch of garages and small industrial parks, where several millionaires arose from relatively modest beginnings. In this case we have a few "modest" millionaires who are perhaps going to turn this into billions.

As someone already pointed out, it says that the ship has to return safely, not the passengers.
Nope. Rule 3 says "Each flight must carry at least one person..."

It does not specify if the passengers have to be alive or not. If you send up corpses, it is easier to keep them intact than it is to keep live passengers alive.
It's even stricter than that. Rule 5 says "The crew must return to the Earth's surface from both flights in good health as reasonably defined and judged by the X PRIZE Review Board."

Mice? Does not say you can't send them instead of humans.
Nope, but Rule 3 says "person" and I don't think mice count as people.

Try finding loopholes in the actual rules instead of the Slashdot summary of them.

The rules are specific that it "can" carry three passengers, but doesn't have actually do. There only needs to be one live human on board.

However, in order to qualify for the X-Prize money, the space ship must be built with enough space for three people, and must also carry enough ballast weight to make up for the fact that they have less than three people on board.

You can read the complete rules for the details.

This would be the RealOne equivalent...

The ship only has to have accomodations for three people. The rules allow for substituting ballast for the passenger's weight and letting the single pilot go up alone. The relevant rule is

3. The flight vehicle must be flown twice within a 14-day period. Each flight must carry at least one person, to minimum altitude of 100 km (62 miles). The flight vehicle must be built with the capacity (weight and volume) to carry a minimum of 3 adults of height 188 cm (6 feet 2 inches) and weight 90 kg (198 pounds) each. Three people of this size or larger must be able to enter, occupy, and be fastened into the flight vehicle on Earth's surface prior to take-off, and equivalent ballast must be carried in-flight if the number of persons on-board during flight is less than 3 persons.

They better not have any more delays like that last one, if they want to win the X-Prize. The $10 million dollar prize expires at the end of this year, and a lot of other groups are competing for it.

I think we'll see some exciting new developments in space technology over the next few years. I'm confident someone will win the X-Prize,(which is more a PR bonus for starting a space tourism company than anything else) the Bush Admin wants to send folks to the moon or Mars (probably using nuclear propulsion), and it's all but a foregone conclusion that someone will try to build a Space Elevator soon.

Whoever wins the X-Prize will write it.

I think it will be the private sector that will actually accomplish these things. Take a look at the X-Prize competition for an example. Several teams are ready for suborbital launch this year.
Personally, I can't wait for John Carmack (of id fame) to start working on a moon mission.
Looking at these private people and corporations' budgets, you can see that this sort of thing, if handeled properly, by skilled people, can cost far less than overpriced government programs.
So, I say "Yes, let's go to the moon, but let's fly Jet Blue!"

Take a time out to remember the accomplishments of two bicycle shop owners who changed the world immeasurably, 100 years ago today.

I wonder what's wrong with these bicycle guys (Scroll to the Armadillo Team description, last paragraph of it).

RTFA

To qoute from the official guidelines:
The second flight must demonstrate economical vehicle reusability. It is the X PRIZE Rules Committee's intent that the winning flight vehicle should exhibit sufficiently low per-flight costs such that the flight vehicle will support low-cost space access. Toward this end, no more than 10% of the flight vehicle's first-flight non-propellant mass may be replaced between the two flights.

So, unless the nosecone contribuetes more than 10% of the dry weight of their vehicle, they could replace it without penalty.

http://www.xprize.com/images/teams/armadillo4_lg.j pg

Rocket technology aiming at supersonic suborbital flights built by privateers using off-the-shelf components? Sounds more like Darwin Awards, especially after you take a look at the level of technology. How do they even know that their rocket is aerodynamically stable? Building robust, real-time control systems to adjust the attitude during flight at a sub-millisecond rate can't be that easy either.

Damn good idea.

• Clarify NASA's mission - if it is to be pure R&D, then
  get NASA out of the routine space launch market. Scrap or
  sell off the remaining shuttles, and contract for routine launch services
  from private companies as a regular customer, not in "cost plus"
  defense-contractor mode.
  
• Lift the protectionist restrictions that prevent NASA from using
  foreign launch services that are far more cost effective.
  
• Fix the onerous "ITAR" regulations that hobble US companies trying
  to manufacture space components and sell them overseas, and equally hobble
  US companies trying to use cost-effective overseas launch services.
  
• Have the commerce department, energy department, NSF, and other government
  agencies work with NASA to focus R&D on things that can become
  important economic engines in the coming space age: space tourism,
  space solar power, space industrialization.
  

This X-prize candidate team is using the concept. http://www.xprize.com/teams/davinci.html However, looking at standard rocketry analysis, it seems that the advantages of baloon launch are relatively minor for orbital flight, since most of the energy in the rocket is used for acceleration to orbital velocity. The dynamic pressure of the thicker atmosphere below 10,000 to 20,000 feet becomes rather small in the grand scheme of things because that altitude is passed so quickly. For more information: Flight Mechanics of Manned Suborbital Vehicles

It seems that most voters at XPrize believe that the SCALED COMPOSITES, LLC have a better chance to take home the XPrize than Armadillo Aerospace.

It seems that most voters at XPrize believe that the SCALED COMPOSITES, LLC have a better chance to take home the XPrize than Armadillo Aerospace.

The Space Access Society has its annual meeting this weekend; this is the first one since the X prize was announced to be fully funded last October, and the race has definitely been heating up.

This year is also the 100th anniversary of the Wright brothers flight, and a lot of these companies see this year as a terribly symbolic time to actually make it all happen.

It's time :-) Space enterprise will be the next big growth area - and NASA won't have a whole lot to do with it. Think of the shuttle accident as just another piece of motivation these guys need - right now the US has no human spaceflight capability, until one of these companies succeeds, or the shuttle starts flying again. Which do you think will happen first?

If you're wondering what's up with all these private space ventures lately, the Space Access Society conference is going on right now. This particular contender is for freight, not human travel (at least at this point), and orbital, not suborbital as in the X Prize competition, which has also been heating up the last few months, since they got the full $10 million in the bank last October.

I don't have a problem with this. Even if I did, the solution is simple. Once we get people there, we adapt them to the environment.

A far more realistic plan is to create a life that can live there. I imagine "big clanking replicators" : a huge factory with fairly familar machinery, all of it automated and only requiring human supervision to perform repairs. Mining machines, robotic rock haulers, nuclear power plants, smelters, presses, lathes, ect...most of the robotic tech similar to what you would find in a general motors plant. This facility would be built on the moon, remotely operated by people on earth. It would be capable of constructing the parts to build another facility (and so on). While expensive, it would be a fraction of the cost of human missions, and after enough replications be able to produce useful products.

I like this scenario (as have many people since the late 70's). Going to the Moon makes a lot more sense if you've already made the homes that people will live in. Manufacturing on the Moon is also extremely useful (and probably required) for assembly of space craft and other major projects in Earth orbit.

I understand why noone will listen to me : there's an incredible glamour about blasting off our heroes into orbit, sending a man out in space to get the job done. Hell, I want to go too. But the truth is, without all the overhead associated with minimizing the risks to said heroes a lot more could be accomplished with the same money. In addition, the new tech and perhaps even real products from space would eventually provide a real return on investment, enriching us on the ground.

I guess that depends on what you want to accomplish. As for me, my space goal is for people (and Earth-based biospheres) to live self-sufficiently in space. Even to that task, I can see the use for a large unmanned program. Discontinuing manned space exploration isn't a negotiable though that doesn't imply that NASA should itself have a manned space program.

Let me describe my thinking here. Instead of NASA holding a monopoly on manned space, use that money to fund awards for various manned and unmanned accomplishments in space. Eg, in the vein of XPRIZE. Actually, there's nothing preventing people from awarding their own prizes for these accomplishments! For example, the Bowery Award for Amateur Rocketry which preceded the CATS prize (and aside from award amounts is identical).

I totally agree with this article.

But, I have to wonder... What would happen if we sent a robotic bulldozer to the moon, paved a street, and put up a 'for sale' sign? Think that the commercial sector would go for it? People are clammoring for space tourism, and I bet that there are some crazy folks out there that might just through money at a public utilities company on the moon, if somebody were to design it.

Of course, there is the X-Prize Competition which is trying to do exactly what you mentioned: come up with a more efficient launch vehicle.

because you can't be a nerd and not know. Can't you at least google or just try guessing at a URL before showing off your incredible ignorance?

Why not just wait until all those brave entrants in the X-Prize contest have had a go.

Who knows, mybe that crazy Englishman with his "Thunderbird" rocket made from plywood will astound us all.

Or not.

http://www.xprize.com

Xprize has a nice little $10,000,000 prize they're giving away to the first company or group who can build a ship that will travel to a sub-orbital level and be ready to run again in two weeks. I think there're over 18 teams competing and one of them has already had a sucessful launch. Most of the optomistic followers of the project that I've spoken to say that someone will succeed in the next 36 months. I can agree with that.
____________________

I went to the guys site, and the tech is at the very least plausable. The Silver/H2O2 tech has proven itself (rocket powered dragster Sprit Of Australia - 300+ MPH/4.11 second 1/4 mile), and the rest seems not without merit. I think he'll land using the chute on his back - but he'll land.

Yes, he has a good shot at the Darwin Award to be sure, but he might actally be the first to collect the X Prize. What he proposes isn't any sillier than what these inventive people from my country intend to use to collect the $10M US (about $20CDN).

I myself salute his moxy and entrepreneurial spirit. No way I'd hit the button to light that candle.

I have a few interesting links to private projects, that might just show the path to commerce in space, such as tourism, mining and research.

Artemis Project - A private venture to establish a permanent self supporting community on the moon.
Space Frontier Foundation - Want to open up the new frontier for everyone.
Space Island Group - Among other things, they wish to creat low earth orbit commercial space stations.
The X Prize - A prize dedicated to boost the development of private space crafts.

Ok, this was probably off topic, but I guess that my point is, governments will probably not be able to finance all the space projects. There are not enough money. The private sector can do this. Competition is always good, and I think that it will some day make it possible for anyone to go into space.

I can see a possible future where a team of scientists at a university will send a mission to Pluto, mining companies establishing mines on the moon, you will go to the low earth orbit space hotel for your vacation. Ok, this is far in the future, but I think it will happen one day.

Just a quick link that seems highly relevant to this story but is missing (last I checked, a few seconds ago)...

From their site:
The purpose of the X PRIZE is to promote the development and flight of spaceships able to provide low-cost commercial transport of humans into space.

Although I have the utmost respect for NASA and it's accomplishments, maybe it's time for somthing new. Ever since the Apollo program funding for space exploration has steadily decreased. NASA's crowning achievement (the shuttle) is old technology. Maybe it's time for a new way of doing things? We are already seeing signs of privatization in the space industry, and i'm not just talking about Mir being used as a space hotel for tourists. Projects like the Xprize could lead to a new era in space travel. The first is bbeing prize is given for simply getting into space. But future prizes could be awarded for say the first team to return a sample from Mars. Just my 2cents but I definetly think space travel should move away from Government organizations...

Rocket failures are almost always due to guidance or support system failures. This dude's chances are very slim. My bet is that Scaled Composites will be the first by winning the X-Prize too!

Still, it's my belief that space is for robots. Let's see this kind of money put into airship development so we can all sail the skies!