Slashdot Mirror
Another Private Space Startup
An anonymous reader writes "Wired has a story about former PayPal owner Elon Musk who has his own rocket company, SpaceX, trying to lower the cost of getting into space. They just tested the rocket engine, and hope to fly a test by the end of the year. Not bad for less than a year's worth of work so far." We mentioned this guy last year.
by far, the greatest phenomenon in the world is that of the rich man with too much time on his hands....
By his own admission, Musk is making some grandiose claims -- among them that he will cut the cost of launching up to 1,000 pounds of payload into near-Earth orbit by up to two-thirds, and that he can buck the dismal success rate of space-launch startups.
Wait a second. Grandiose or not, which market is he talking about? The European Space Agency can already lift more for less. So is he talking about taking two-thirds off the American price or the European price?
Heck, for all we know, he's going to take two-thirds off the price Afghanistan would charge you if they had launch capability.
Mirror to the article.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
I found how many other types of people are actively starting their own "going to space" club. So far the only ones I've heard of on slashdot are IT-industry veterans. Are they the only ones, or is there somebody else out there with the money to pull it off?
Regardless, private space enterprise could be both a good and bad thing. As NASA seems to be flagging in some areas, private funding of exploration could be the big push needed to get us beyond the moon.
That... and whomever develops a working "warp drive" will probably have to be a Star Trek geek...
Just checked out the website. Tagline:
"Be the first on your block to ride a big shiny dildo to the moon!"
NO?
REALLY?
Why havent I read about this on slashdot?
Also, I'm curious if you have any information on this "water is wet" theory I've been hearing about.
Or maybe it is to blast the 5 PayPal customer dis-service employees into space....
This guy doesn't look like Emperor Ming by any chance does he?
So, did he get the funding from this from all the disgruntled PayPal users?
http://www.paypalsucks.com
You might not like it, but that's my opinion.
The guy in the article should join the Space Entrepreneurship Network.
Maybe I should too...
Either way, I'll better off than that stupid NSync guy who thought Pepsi was going to sponsor his $20 million ride on a Soyuz. If he's really a space fanatic, as he claims, he should have put the money up himself. (I'm sure he's got enough, with all the teenage girls who listen to that crap.)
Suicide Booth: You are now dead! Thank you for using Stop and Drop, America's favorite since 2008.
Do they still have those little platic water rockets or have they gone the way of the lawn dart?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The more the merrier. NASA is busy launching (or lately, not launching) shuttles that cost roughly 30X the cost of launching a Soyuz, and has cancelled the latest of its "shuttle replacement" programs (the X-33/Venturestar). The sooner somebody else gets their foot in the door, the sooner we can get on with the exciting stuff in space. Cheaper. Some of these nuts will blow themselves up. Some will fail less catastrophically. A few will make it, and it will be a damn good thing to have somebody besides NASA pushing out for a change.
I heartily welcome and cheer for anybody willing to try. Build it and go, you crazy rich bastards!!
There's a big Nike swoosh in the night sky
An errant launch vehicle kills someone (the goverment just gets all somber and hands out taxpayer money, what would a private company do, buy Space Explorer insurance? Bet that's not gonna be cheap...)
Servers are running in space, immune from meddling DMCA-type laws, sending spam, etc. ("In tonight's news, a SpamHaus missile took out RalskySat I, also the RIAA plans to launch a series of jamming satellites as CD prices top $75 each.")
People start spamming me with Timeshares over Florida offers...
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I thought that Colubia was damaged at take-off, not while in space.
Some people have a way with words, others not have way.
With paypal being charged under the PATRIOT-ACT, it's obvious this guy is just a terrorist. He probably just wants to fly his rocket ship up and drop a bunch of crap on people from space.
Space is for the government. private space exploration is an invitation to disaster. Hopefully Total Information awareness will keep in eye on these dangerous types.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Also, I'm curious if you have any information on this "water is wet" theory I've been hearing about.
Not yet, but a start-up founded by Steve Wozniak (yes, that Steve Wozniak) has already made significant advances towards the commercial production of humid water. Just imagine the possibilities!
-- Repeat with me: "There is no right to profits".
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.
Energy: time to change the picture.
While I am all for free enterprise, I am not yet convinced that the technology exists to make space travel inexpensive enough for any organization that does not have the capability to spend hundreds of millions without seeing a return (like, say government agencies).
Sure a suborbital flight may be (relatively) cheap, but I am not sure that keeping humans in space for prolonged periods can ever be made safe and cheap.
Trolls: The high-tech version of those morons that scrawl obscenities in public bathrooms.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Ignore that troll beneath the gantry... if/when one of these private gigs takes off, he'll be crisped in the backwash....
I love vegetarians - some of my favorite foods are vegetarians.
Hey, guys - if your rocket starts to malfunction - can you point it at - say - the Moon? We're looking for water.
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
What's the deal with this anyways?
I mean the purse is 10 million. It seems to me you'd have spent that many times over to develop a rocket ship. So I doubt the winner recoups his investment, let alone makes any profit.
So I assume it's more about bragging rights? And if so, why not donate the 10 million to charity, and just give out a fancy trophy?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
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.
"Beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy." -- B. Franklin
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.
If only Bill Gates would get a bee in hif bonnet about putting a man on mars in 10 years, I would start purchasing the software put out by his company just to support the endeavor. Maybe I am a sell out...
Former PayPal owner Elon Musk is dead
I think his server just went into orbit.
IIRC, none of these private ventures that are trying to go into space are also trying to go into orbit. They are trying to do "sub-orbital" flights like the first couple of Mercury flights.
So, none of the "waste" that they may leave behind is going to remain up there: It will all come falling back down into the atmosphere where it will not pose any danger to any other spacecraft.
Sometimes the "writing on the wall" is blood spatter...
Just a matter of time before IP Lawyers are in space...
"Jeff Bezos announces Amazon awarded patent for 1-click launch."
"Pan-IP files suit against PayPal for infringement of their patent on doing business from space."
"Now we've got all this room, we've even got the moon and I hear the U.S.S.R will be open soon, as vacation land for lawyers in love."
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Yeah, his company is called armadillo aerospace, it uses a hydrogen peroxide engine and has no control surfaces, instead it is controlled by software so that the engines are independently controlled and can be used to stabalize the craft. check it out at Armadillo Aerospace
Visualize Whirled Peas
"Flying is easy... it's the landing that's hard."
As long as they're only claiming that they can get stuff into space, I'm inclined to believe them. All you need for that is a powerful rocket and some good mathematicians. But when some random rich guy claims that he can bring stuff back safely when even NASA is having problems with that... that's when I stop buying it.
This was part of the plot of the Red Dwarf novels.
A spacecraft, called the Nova 5, was sent up into space to trigger certain stars to go supernova at precisely the right times so that when the light from each of them reached the earth, it would spell out "COKE ADDS LIFE!" across the night sky - an ad campaign that would supposedly "buy pepsi for good".
The crew were in stasis on their way to add the final dot on the excalmation mark when the ship's android decided to clean the computer - with hot soapy water. The ship, with no computer (the android, Kryten, cleaned the backup computer as well), crashed into a moon, to be found three million years later by Red Dwarf and its crew - with Kryten still tending to the needs of the three female crash survivors, feeding them, bathing them etc, although they've been skelotons for a fairly large proportion of those three million years.
Do they have the bubble wrap handy?
Do you have stairs in your house?
It seems like quite a few groups have gotten to the "engine test in the desert" phase. Not too many have actually flown something around. Don't think I'll get my hopes up until I see some of that from these guys.