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There's quite a bit going on with regard to private space. Just check out The X Prize for information on Carmack, Rutan and others. The most recent story about Rutan's work is attracting quite a bit of attention.

Personally, I think the next crewed orbital vehicle will be coming out of one of these startups, not out of NASA. Of course, NASA could get back into the picture if they decided to help independents rather than try to run the whole damned show.

What this fellow seems to be promoting is nothing more than a "Big Dumb Booster"-based launch system. He's not worried about building a reusable launch vehicle a-la X-Prize, or an orbiter/re-entry vehicle, or a hypersonic jet engine. Kerosene, LOX, and a good pumping system...not necessarily elegant, but could be pretty effective.

Big thrust, low weight, "cheap" to manufacture, limited exposure to the "risky" science of re-entry (leave that to the folks worrying about the payload)...

These guys may be on to something.

I know that their design is a long way off, but they have been spending lots of time on a their motor designs. They've even been testing them on a Rutan designed Long EZ(modified, of course). Does anyone know if XCOR is officially an X-prize team? They're not on the list...

I know that their design is a long way off, but they have been spending lots of time on a their motor designs. They've even been testing them on a Rutan designed Long EZ(modified, of course). Does anyone know if XCOR is officially an X-prize team? They're not on the list...

• able to carry three people to 100 kilometers (62.5 miles)
• Returns safely to Earth (duh)
• Repeats the launch with the same ship within 2 weeks

If you're referring to the Challenger explosion, then I should probably say that there were repeated objections from plenty of people saying that it was too cold to launch, but somewhere in the beauraucracy somebody decided that they would launch anyway for political reasons. The same beaureaucracy buried complaints about the shuttle safety which culminated in Columbia's disaster.

I think NASA should get back to research.

This sort of incentives-based policy is in the tradition of American values. It should be no surprise that such values are being eroded as the 'nation of immigrants' changes from pioneering independence to bureaucratic dependence. The use of a socialist bureaucracy to explore space is a fundamentally different experiment that other proven American approaches to expanding the resource base available to humanity.

In 1989 I was working on grassroots legislation to reform NASA's launch services policies. This led to the passage of P. L. 101-611, The Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990which required NASA to procure launch services from private vendors whenever possible. This is common sense if proper boundaries between public and private functions are to be maintained. As radical as this may sound to many who see NASA as a space transportation company, it was, in fact, Presidential policy at the time and the legislation was therefore, in fact, redundant, but bureaucratic inertia demanded separate acts by the Legislative branch to reinforce the Executive's own command structure. This legislative effort started out as an attempt to passsomething along the lines of the Kelly Act of 1925 (which formed the basis for Jerry Pournelle's recommendations first put forth by his Citizen's Advisory Council for Space Policyin 1980), but compromised when it became clear that resistance from NASA, and its contractors, to citizen involvement in space policy was so intense that serious reform would be impractical. My testimony before Congress legislative follow-up to P.L. 101-611 made recommendations for a focus onincentives for commercial investment, rather than plans or "programs". An example of incentives-based legislation, applied to fusion energy policy, was recommended for passage by Bussard, R. W., one of the founders of the US fusion program in a letter confessing some of the subterfuge to which technical leaders resorted. It is still quite relevant today given the reliance on Middle Eastern oil and problems with fission energy. The point here is that incentives are more effective in general than governmental programs.

The first settlers in America experienced enormous causalities their first years they were in America. Entire colonies were lost. The original colonies included a substantial variety of fundamentally differing approaches to settling North America. America's frontier wasn't built by a centrally controlled bureaucracy -- and there is no reason to expect such a bureaucracy will take Americans to their next frontier.

Space policy is a touchstone of American values since Americans are spiritually a pioneering culture. Let's not forget who settled the frontier, how those "immigrants" differed from later immigrants, and what sort of "program" they had to settle the new frontier.

Alas, I was disappointed to find no easy money after investigating the X-Prize Guidelines. Specifically, item 5 seems to disqualify the capitalists among us who would be tempted to pay somebody $1 million just for taking a quick little ride in a craft that looks suspiciously like the ammunition for a very large-scale potato gun. Net gain of $8 million, minus what it took to construct the cannon and retrieve the projectile and clean it out for use by vict^H^H^H^Hbrave individual #2!

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...

Burt Rutan has said that he would have claimed the X prize by now, but he wasn't going to persue it further until the US$10M prize was real. They've never gotten the sponsors to put up the money.

Rutan's already flying Proteus is the launch vehicle he plans to use. He's keeping the capsule part secret.

The feds could have pushed on things like prize award incentives for technical achievements in energy or space transportation or scientific discovery.

Think about Henry Ford and The Guggenheim Trophy or Charles Lindbergh and the Orteig Prize.

Of course, I think we all know why prizes that let the best man win (AKA "fair contests") are anathema to the guys who run things.

The feds have become the enemy not simply of the people but of the planet. They're going to grind the United States, and with it life on earth, into the dust. Nanotech grey-goo won't be an issue if the feds aren't removed from the seat of power by something at least as radical as a Constitutional Convention.

The very success of the United States proves that capitalism is the only answer. Compare the exponential advancement of computer technology to the thirty year old space shuttle technology. If NASA worked 98% to inspire commercial space ventures, working to help the nation's state of space technology rather than focusing on discovering if life ever existed on Mars, then we'd soon see space hotels orbiting between Earth and Mars, colonies on other planets, etc. Research would be far easier to manage given a better platform, rather than this "smarter, cheaper, faster" stuff that NASA and it's international counterparts are trying to come up with together. The average American says "Wow, space, that'd be a wild experience." That's how to get the public funding, and once you get public funding, and by public I mean general public, not crazy millionaires, then the sky is the limit, as computer technology has discovered. The X-prize is a very nice start towards this way of thinking, but we'll need much more focus on manned space technology and space tourism before we have serious competition in orbit.

The race is in 2004, I'm going to have to wait more than a year for this event! Maybe this will turn into a tv show, as with what seems to be the current techno-driven trend in new programming.

But I think that some of the network execs should get serious and spend some serious money. Wouldn't it be cool to hold a race like this on Mars, or the Moon!

That would be wicked! And with the advent of privately funded space delivery contests like the X-Prize, the race could be made into a veritable interplanetary decathalon! Its a few steps down the road, but hey, why not?

This is my favorite Canadian XPrize entry. Simple and efficient. Have a look.

Why, yes they are: Armadillo at X Prize.

Burt Rutan's entry with "Undisclosed Rocket Power" sounds interesting...

Why, yes they are: Armadillo at X Prize.

Burt Rutan's entry with "Undisclosed Rocket Power" sounds interesting...

Here's some pictures at the X Prize site which I included in my submission. (I even had a link to the Rocket Guy, ah well.)

Er. wasn't the prize US$10 million? That's what their site says.

Besides, the whole point of the program is for private manned spaceflight to be feasible at US$10M. Sure, you can throw a gazillion dollars to a space program and make it SUPER safe, but that's not what this is about. This is about risk, exploration, daring. The same kinds of things that made Lindberg famous and motivated an entire industry to make trans-atlantic flights open to the public. Remember this competition is modeled after the one lindberg won.

Most likely someone will die trying to win the prize and they know it. So do the competing teams. I can't find a link, but the Xprize promoters themselves have said so.

I'm a huge space enthusiast. Huge. I love just about anything that promises to bring the cost of space access to a reasonable (read: below $200 per kilogram) levels. I've been following the X-Prize competition with great interest.

That said, I can't get behind this space elevator push. First, the economics of it won't scale to meet a wide range of demand fluctuations. What if you build it and then find out that demand for it is only a tenth of what you had predicted? There's no way to scale down the sunk costs involved--it's an all or nothing sort of proposition.

Second, it would represent a prime terrorist target. No set of defensive systems could hope to cover against every possible means of attack. Missiles, bombs, lasers, and who knows what else. And we haven't even covered the subject of action by a hostile nation-state, which could presumably marshall far more impressive resources to the task of bringing down a cable.

Third, it represents completely unproven technology. Better to go with a multistage rocketplane or some variation on that theme. Design one that can be built with the equivalent of off-the-shelf parts and build it with a multi-purpose role. A launch vehicle that could also effectively double as a system for high-speed transoceanic delivery would have great commercial and military applications, and would be developed that much more quickly and economically.

In short, the space elevator is a nifty idea in many respects, but it won't happen until the construction of such a system is relatively trivial. When one business guy turns to another and says: "You know, we're paying a lot of money for pilots for our launch vehicles. Maybe we should just build an elevator and get some high school kids to run it."

The X-Prize is a $10 million prize to get 3 people to 100km twice within 2 weeks.

-- Bob

Assuming that your 35-mile launch is succesful (which I dearly hope that it is, for many reasons, including the preservation of your life), do you plan on going for The X-prize? In any case, what do you think would be different about an X-prize attempt? Would it be more difficult legally?

Getting to space in the first place is the key to space tourism. That's where the X-Prize comes in...

"The real milestone is when tickets are listed on Travelocity. JFK->ISS, non-stop, no smoking, snack only."

To follow the true path to space you must not be mislead by false hippocracy such as this eBay conspiracy. The true path lies in pioneering. Look at the golden carrot from the x-prize and true seekers of enlightment such as the armadillos and the canadian arrow. True pioneers to space.

Seems that the C-21 is the Russian Entry to the X-Prize.
Also, they have built two of the M-55 carrier craft. They are a updated 'research' version of the M-17, which was the Russian version of America's U2 spy plane.
This page on HTOL TSTO (Horizontal take off & landing, two stage to orbit) has a few pictures of various launch systems. There is a nice picture of the M-17 in flight at the end of that page. (The M-55 in this picutre seems to have additional wing mounted engines.
According to the cutaway model, the cabin is relativly roomy, but there dosn't seem much room for fuel. Most of the equipment at the rear of the craft seems to be life support and other equipment, not presurised fuel tanks. Perhaps they are using solid rocket motors (aka Big Firework), but russians tend to prefer, and endeed excell, at liquid fueled rockets. Besides, this schematic seems to show a rather different type of spacecraft. (note the wings, and overall length) Therefore, I suspect that this is a plywood mockup, for the benifit of potential investors, in the tradition of most space enterprises over the past 5 years.

Seems that the C-21 is the Russian Entry to the X-Prize.
Also, they have built two of the M-55 carrier craft. They are a updated 'research' version of the M-17, which was the Russian version of America's U2 spy plane.
This page on HTOL TSTO (Horizontal take off & landing, two stage to orbit) has a few pictures of various launch systems. There is a nice picture of the M-17 in flight at the end of that page. (The M-55 in this picutre seems to have additional wing mounted engines.
According to the cutaway model, the cabin is relativly roomy, but there dosn't seem much room for fuel. Most of the equipment at the rear of the craft seems to be life support and other equipment, not presurised fuel tanks. Perhaps they are using solid rocket motors (aka Big Firework), but russians tend to prefer, and endeed excell, at liquid fueled rockets. Besides, this schematic seems to show a rather different type of spacecraft. (note the wings, and overall length) Therefore, I suspect that this is a plywood mockup, for the benifit of potential investors, in the tradition of most space enterprises over the past 5 years.

Burt Rutan envisons a Space Tourism venture that works partly as a raffle. The company would create three new astronauts every week. One of those will have paid big money. The other two will have paid a reasonable $x,000 (it was $5000 in 1996).

The spacecraft has three seats. You can guarantee a seat by paying $100,000+ for a ticket. Otherwise you pay $5,000 for a chance. For a chance for a seat on each flight 10 people pay $5,000.

For each weekly flight all eleven go the training site in the Carribean. They are instructed in the three crew positions on the spacecraft. At the end of the fourth day of training the 10 candidates draw straws. Two of them get seats in the spacecraft. The other 8 have gotten a very nice Carribean vacation for $5,000.

The two and the $100,000 passenger get seats on the spacecraft launched on the Proteus for an Alan Shepard style 15 minute sub-orbital flight that lands in the same Carribean. The flight includes ten minutes of free weightlessness.

Rutan's vision was the commercial application of his entry for the X-Prize. The X-Prize competition is dormant because it never got a sponsor for the $1 Million prize.

The NASA pdf says 'This document is limited to defining the process and criteria for selection, assignment, training, and certification of IIS (Expedition and Visiting) crewmembers'.

The headline seems to imply NASA will keep everyone that dosent qualify out of space. But really they just dont want drunks mingling with scientists. Those crazy drunks over at the x prize are still going.

After the £7m prize was announced for the first non-commercial person to get into space, it seems there are now several people aiming to win it. Cool.

You make it seem like a new prize... this article is just talking about the same old X-Prize, which has been around since 1996. In fact, almost a year ago there was an article in the BBC discussing several of the contenders, and Bennett was generally talked about as being a crazy risk-taker, and least likely to win. Another (closer to home) competitor is toy-inventor Brian Walker (aka Rocket Guy, about whom there was a Slashdot article, but I can't find it as Slashdot's search is down), as well as famous aircraft designer Bert Rutan and his company Scaled Composites.

There are several other contenders, and lots of cool animations and info to be found at the X-Prize homepage.

For those of you interested in Darwin Awards, here is the X-Prize site. Here is Robert A. Braeunig's page on how to do it, orbital mechanics and the like. Space.com usually carries the X-prize news. For those of you wondering about the difference between an Ariane and a Proteus, here is the glossary

1Alpha7

Maybe Nasa should up the ante for the xprize with the condition that they get the plans and such on the winning vechicle. Then maybe the teams would have more insentive to get on with it.

This is an important step to the impending and necessary privatization of space exploration. This and the Xprize contest are important steps to the entry of privately funded efforts in space exploration. When that happens, the pace of development will, well, skyrocket! Our government has been at this for over 30 years and they're just now building their second space station and they need other countries' assistance to do it. They've been in an insufferable rut of short run shuttle missons for almost 20 of those years. If humanity's ambitions for space travel are left to the whims of Congressional budgetary discretion, we will be in for a long wait.

Well, you could try the X-Prize team listings. Quite a few amateurish efforts listed there.
--

They just canceled the X-33/-34 project mainly becouse of cash problems...

TO make some cash, NASA should invest more in tourism and mining. This may also result in increasing interest in space. Right now, we can't go, just see fancy images, so most people don't care. If you could book a week for $5000 people would, NASA would get cash. If you could mine Helium-3 of the moon, titanium and other interesting stuff, loads of cash might start falling in from the private sector.

For now, the X-Prize, and notably Starchaser is my favourite space program, as these folks have passion for putting people up there, the way we should.


- Knut S.

PS: I know the scientific value of a Pluto mission, and nothing is more important to mankind than science, but getting us out there is an investment in further expansion of missions like that to Pluto, as we would have to make cheaper toys to get us out there, that woulkd benefit all space technology in the end....

That is a stupid comment... if they don't want the money, send it to me... if they want the money to go to NASA, mail NASA a check, I'm sure they will put it to good use! Maybe they should send their check to one of these start ups that are trying to win the X-Prize... or maybe my personal favorite, Rotary Rocket

Well, I guess this automated firing system is going to kill amateur rocketry and anyone vying for the X-Prize.

This isn't a practical national defense system, either. For the theatre-level battlefield this would be great... You could even increase its range by putting up large reflective blimps, use GPS to coordinate the locations of everything and tie the detection gear to the man-portable search radars carried by the Army's LRP teams, and then make a bank shot that goes plane-blimp-target or plane-blimp-blimp-target.

Just please, PLEASE, Boeing, think about having a human-pulled trigger.

If youre interested in spaceflight, and want to help get the average Joe sixpack (you) there as soon as possible, consider donating to the X-Prize foundation. The foundation has set out a ten million dollar prize for the first vehicle that can successfully reach outer space with two people aboard and do it again within two weeks. Click here for more information about joining.

it's the huge slingshot needed to get it into space that is a bugger to design.

That's what the previously mentioned CATS prize was all about. Too bad it failed. Maybe next round, or better yet, the X prize!

-Derek

The biggest thing standing in the way of cheap space exploitation is NASA. NASA needs to get out of near-Earth space. Instead they should guarantee that all future unmanned launches will be done using commercial boosters, with manned launches to follow as soon as someone builds a man-rated launch vehicle. There are at least 19 outfits that would love to be in that business, but they have a hard time competing with NASA's tax-supported monopoly.

You mean the X Prize (at http://www.xprize.org), a prize of ten million U.S. dollars for the first private launch of a three-person reusable spacecraft. Several teams have entries in advanced stages of development, including Dick Rutan, who built the first plane to travel all the way around the world non-stop.

So is this where the finals of BattleBots/Robot Soccer league thing are going to be held?

(OT) This is a good step, even if NASA is not going to do it. With our current technology, going much past Mars is going to be difficult using basically remote control. So, as most of the Slashdrones have been screaming for, autonomous bots get a lot of the work out of our hands. It's also good to read that they are reusing ICBMS to keep costs down (and get a launch in the next 5 years or so). Question: do these guys then win the XPrize too?

Information just wants to be left alone. I asked it.

Still and all, if it goes well it can only be a good thing overall. Has anyone heard anythign about the X-Prize recently? Last time I checked, they were trying to get funding to sponsor an award for the first craft that could bring a crew into space twice in like two weeks. It doesn't seem to be his goal, but this "Rocketguy" just might be on track to claim the prize if he so chose...

There is a 10 million $ prize for the first private space shot, but you have to reach 100km.

Oh well, I guess he's not doing it for the prize anyway, but it seems like a shame to risk your life and not get the honor. I think there is some other millionare using a much more sensible approach involving a 747 boosted rocket plane.

For more information, check out http://www.xprize.org/.

That's why we need to do it privately. Avoid all the politicians and bureaucracy and budget cuts and do it with a private company. A company with dedicated individuals of any and all nations who all work toward a common goal.

As mentioned, The Mars Society, as well as the Space Frontier Foundation, the Artemis Project, and the X-Prize are all great examples of stimulating private space exploration and development. Click here for another site with some good links.

It is actually called the X Prize, and the web page is here.

Woogie

Joking aside. If you want something to happen, there are two things you can do:
help make it happen.
hope someone else does it.

You seem to be a member of the second group. As you can tell... I want to be part of the first.

And yes if I had the $ I'd be donating cash to NASA or buying stock in a company trying to get into the space business.

Just because your buck rogers fantasy didn't come true, you seem to believe that a revolution in space travel won't be happening anytime soon. But it's comming. Why? Private industry. I doubt Uncle Sam will get us anywhere any time soon, but I think private industry will. Companies are going after the x prize (for the first commerically produced re-usable lauch vehicle) worth $10 Million. The rotary rocket is now in test flight.

Things are happening. And momentum will grow.

But of course, being young and impatient, I of course wish it would happen faster!

NASA has been looking for a cheap way to get into space, and has created a contest among the various aerospace companies to produce such a plane.

Actually, the contest is being put on by the X Prize foundation (the new Spirit of St. Louis). It's a private organization that is offering a $10M prize for the first one that can launch a re-entry vehicle for under $10M.

Check it out at xprize.org

the nearest i've seen to a new RLV would be the X-33 project, which is a half-scale, suborbital demo of an as-yet-unbuilt RLV that could be a great thing if it ever flies. AFAICT it's running several months behind schedule - first launch was supposed to be this year, and the thing is still being built.

further out-there ideas seem to be coming mostly out of the Space Transportation Program, which has some wild pipedreams and not enough flying prototypes for my taste. or, in the private sector, there's the X-Prize; i'll let you people look into that one for yourselves, i like their idea too much to advocate it in public...

Yeah, and Rotary's rollout was cool, too!

One problem is that the ET was recently redesigned, to be lighter. There should be some question, I imagine, as to whether this tank is as appropriate for re-use as the original design. Any redesign to optimize recycling would have to overcome the new standards of tank weight and capability.

This is a long-term vision, and it rests mainly on the establishment of true Cheap Access to Space (CATS). Look at places like ProSpace and the X-Prize to see what's happening there. If we get a 90% reduction in launch costs to orbit, then almost anything becomes possible.