Slashdot Mirror
Private Spacecraft Prospects
mwallis writes "Space.com has an article on the recent Space Access conference in Scottsdale a few weeks ago. The article talks about the (slowly) emerging commercial space transportation industry with interviews and quotes from Space Access Society's Henry Vanderbilt, XCOR's Aleta Jackson, Armadillo's John Carmack and many others."
space transports you!
He gets bonus points if he makes his space outfit one like the space marine from doom.
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
Why would you want to pay to sit in low-earth orbit for (any) period of time?
We need:
1) High-altitude high-speed space/planes to make the 3 hour trip from Chicago O'hare to Tokyo
or
2) Some sort of destination for the space trip, ala the moon.
If it's weightlessness you want, I'm sure you can buy a vomit comit for much less than funding your own rocket program.
Now, if your enterprise is purely geared towards privatizing small-scale space work, and gaining a foothold in that area, then I have to applaud that. If we're going to have an inter-sol-system trucking company we've gotta have pioneers. ^_^
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
Paul
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate
Here we are, the top 10 ways that Star Trek would change if Slashdot replaced Starfleet. 10. "Mod me up Scotty" 9. New Starship designated: NX-31337 8. The Enterprise would mistakenly re-explore the same planets every few months 7. Parts of the crew would demand to rename the ship to GNU/Enterprise 6. Every time Kirk says anything, fifty people burst onto the bridge and repeat it 5. Open Source Shields not such a good idea 4. Captain's log full of bad grammar, typos, and poor spelling 3. Battle plans now consist of highest-moderated comments by crew 2. Q would be renamed to "root" 1. Borg would cite things as being "offtopic" rather than "irrelevant"
Fly me to the moon... Let me pay to see the stars
Just as irrigation is the lifeblood of the Southwest, lifeblood is the soup of cannibals. -- Jack Handy
How long before cheaper access to space leads to various parties messing around with satellites that are currently in orbit? If some baddie with vast financial resources (two immediately come to mind) had the gumption, he could probably wreak havoc with commercial and military communications networks.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
I've always felt that one aspect of the computer revolution was not so much their fuctional value, but their entertainment value. From what i've observed, a computer marketed for entertainment resulted in more sales then those marketed for trivial little tasks like word processing.
People like my self have been waiting for years for this to happen, something out there that would generate money to advance the space program... and I think we have a winner. Not only will it fund R&D into manned space vehicels, but will renew an interest in the space program in general.
Let's face it, the last moonshot i'm aware of was 30 years ago, and the shuttle has proven to be most inadquate for any sorta high orbit depoyment and recovery. The private sector could provide funding to make a *real* space program possible, rather like how Atari and Commodore actually got people to buy their products, cause it's fun!
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Imagine this: NY USA to Sidney Australia via Shuttle. AKA Yesterday Delivery.
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
I'm all for civilians building and launcing their own suborbital or orbital crafts, but it'll never recapture the thrill of the early spaceflights. Unless, off course, someone with money gets the same idea as I just got as I read the article:
The Gusmobile, better known as Gemeni, is close to the perfect 'light spaceship'. All around the Gemini was considered the ultimate 'pilot's spacecraft', and it was also popular with engineers because of its extremely light weight. It ought to be possible with todays advances in electronics and metalurgy to build a replica - or better; a fleet of replicas - that are semiautomatic and reusable. Bring back the Rogallo wing (basicly a cross between a paraglider and a hangglider) it was intended to have in the first place to fasilitate GPS guided landings on dry land. Launch it with a semi-reusable rocket (first stage reusable, possible solid, second stage disposable).
Now here is the core of the idea; don't offer people just a ride with five or ten minutes of microgravity. Offer them some basic training to let them control the attitude of their craft during non-vital parts of the flight (vital parts should be guided by a onboard computer or from the ground), and offer them a day or a week in space. It won't be cheap, but it'll give people a change to really experience the thrill of spaceflight.
Off course, I don't have the money to realise this idea, and it probaly ain't that original anyhow. But I'll place it in the public domain - if anyone reading this wants to do it, you have my blessing and my best wishes.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
I dont know anyone by that name... I know a Sydney, Australia though.
Silly Amerikan!
Vomit comit for the physical thrill, and space-planes to look down upon the earth like some sort of uber-god. Tourists won't miss out...
You can do it, it's just I think duplicating the space shuttle or repurposing it is silly.
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
Square Pigs were in Space Truckers. I ain't just making this shit up.
to Howard Carmack? Privately organized space travel funded by spam revenue...too...conflicted...must...speak...with.. .dramatic...laboured..words
I went to this article and was greeted by two pop-ups. I disabled them with NoAds. When I tried to enlarge one of the images, my browser died. Every other attempt to access that page has resulted in the browser dying. Beware if you can't tolerate pop-ups.
Hahhahhaaa...
priceless. Going to have to rent it now... I love trainwrecks.
Tonight on Scrapheap Challenge: Two teams build and launch manned suborbital capsules - from what they can find on the scrapheap!
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
For those interested check out the UKs main contender for the x-prize here
the general opinion seems to be that steve bennett actually tries to shoot himself up into space on the top of one of his rockets it'll be the last we hear from him...
Look at the people who are funding these projects - toy makers and game makers. People who are imaginative and playful.
Look at the people who are part of the entertainment industry. Rerun, rehashes and sequels. Beyond Jim Carrey, dreadfully serious.
I, for one, would not want space travel controlled by someone who had a contract with an RIAA or MPAA memb
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
That's all well and good, but can they schedule the Conference in 2020 to be in Luna City?
Of course, Caramck's version will involve a device whereby you point the launcher at the ground and fire to propel yourself into upper orbit. It'll never quite work the way you'd think. Fair play for trying, though.
However there is an especially insidious reason to believe this market will be quite limited this time around, compared even to the depression of the 1930's, and that is the nature of the individuals in whose hands the net assets are concentrated.
When Greenspan decided to depart from his gold standard by keeping interest rates high relative to gold during the crash he in effect decided to concentrate net asset ownership in the hands of people who don't necessarily have the best of characters -- indeed they are far from the ideal of heroic capitalists so promoted by Alan Greenspan himself when he was a devotee of Ayn Rand's.
As I stated in a white paper posted to sci.space in 1992 (resulting from having spent a few years doing politics in Washington to promote commercial incentives for space launch companies):
Seastead this.
i hope someone will be setting up a affordable space transport program soon.
I wodent mind being one of the first ones to live on the moon ( i dont care what kind of work it wood involve, im gonna get there if it kills me in the proses)
Thanks for the info, that is great.
Apollo Command Module and Service Module would be great for this.
Is the Apollo Landing Module next to come out of the garage?
Cool... I got some ideas... Where do I sign up?
Not everyone deserves a 320i
"the last moonshot i'm aware of was 30 years ago"
r us sr.html
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/luna
Luna 24
Launched 14 Aug 1976
Landed on Moon 18 Aug 1976 at 02:00:00 UT
Latitude 12.25 N, Longitude 62.20 E - Mare Crisium
Lunar Sample Return
Of course, that's not counting Clementine or Lunar Prospector...
Us here, the 10 ways in which the principal star voyage would change if Slashdot replaced Starfleet.
10. "MOD that I to the top of Scotty"
9. new Starship indicated: Nx-31337
8. the company Re-would explore in an erroneous way same planets all the few months when
7. shares of the crew would require retitrer the boat with GNU/Enterprise
6. each time Kirk indicates anything, glare of fifty people on the bridge and
5. open shields of source repeat it the notation not of a so good captain of idea
4. completion of the bad grammar, typos, and the weak plans of battle of epellation
3. are composed now of the comments high-moderate by crew
2. Q would be retitrés "for enraciner"
1. Borg would quote things as being "offtopic" rather than "nonrelevant"
..that all these capitalists seem to actually be putting their money where their mouth is.
Could it be that "capitalists" are people like just anybody else, and they are as prone as anybody to love adventure and new frontiers? Seems so to me.
Oh and btw, asset centralization is bunk - these new space entrepreneurs are very blatantly CREATING assets, namely suborbital hoppers, that simply would not exist otherwise. Capitalism isn't a zero-sum-game of money accumulation, but rather consists of creating wealth out of dross.
Yes, and to really drive the point home, look at how fantastically successful Atari and Commodore have been, compared to IBM and Microsoft.
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
I want to see various space mutual funds, of various "riskiness", attached to all these little companies... I'd like to put a few dollars on the line to further such concepts.
meh
Hopefully nothing that involves proper usage of spelling or grammar.
After reading this last post, it got me to wondering that if I make a post in slashdot with lots of random random references and questionable assertions will I get moded up because it looks like I am smart?
"He who laughs last, didn't get the joke."-Cap
Having attended the conference, I'd like to add a couple points.
Few people who presented at the conference have any doubt that they will be able to obtain their objectives. Many pointed out that financing is a hassle, but the single obstacle that everyone had collectively in mind was that of FAA licensing. No license, no launch. Period.
It does not matter if you launch from Florida, the ocean, or Australia. If you are a U.S. citizen, you must obtain a launch license from the FAA. Failure do so will land you fines and probably even jail time.
Now the good news. Obtaining a license is less complicated than many of us previously believed. As of yet, no licenses have been granted for civialian, manned, suborbital flights. XCOR is in the queue and pushing heavily; I believe that they will likely be the first to receive one, and more power to them. Meanwhile, groups like Armadillo Aerospace have recently begun the process, and I expect that they will be able to draft behind XCOR through the obvious portions of the licensing procedure.
The FAA itself has over 80 people dedicated to making civilian space access work. The delay is in determining how to properly balance the needs of the budding civilian space industry with the very serious safety needs of the people living down-range. This is very uncharted territory, and the FAA (AST) is no hurry to reach any conclusions. The policy is literally being formed as the applicants complete the process since the laws as specified are not sufficiently complete. Anyone wishing to be part of this process is encouraged to attend the COMSTAC meeting on May 21st. This is effectively a town-meeting for civilian space access.
The real bottleneck is the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency). All the groups who are seeking launch licenses are being held up on environmental impact issues. Plus, where you launch from will ultimately determine when you launch since the environmental impact studies for some sites are not complete. Launching from White Sands would be preferable to the Oklahoma "spaceport" as the White Sands studies were completed years ago.
If anyone has any questions about the conference, I'd be happy to reply them. Overall, I think many of the people at the conference will either die in the process or entirely fail to get off the ground. Someone will succeeded however and in a couple years, probably even me.
-HopeOS
Well, while mid-class people buy guns or special plastic bags (poor people use bridges and other free-of-charge methods), top class people look for something that can satisfy their ambitions at last seconds or minutes. But how about days or weeks or even months?
Eject such guys to the orbit or to the moon, where they can enjoy their last days-weeks-months before they are running of money and air. Or they fail down to burn in the athmosphere. Or just fail down and crash to the moon. I thing many multi rich people would like to enjoy such an end. People, who are still alive, will enjoy they payment. So, everybody would be happy.
Less is more !
The US Commerce Department released an interesting report on private suborbital development. It's a little out of date now (doesn't mention Rutan's SS1, which is now an X-Prize front-runner), but is still an interesting read.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
look at how fantastically successful Atari and Commodore have been
I am looking at how successful they *were*. In contrast to microsoft, there is NO contest... microsoft wins hands down. But Microsoft couldn't sell a home solution in 1981.
Apple, Commodore, Atari all sold home computers pre 1985 to a world that never experenced them before. The apple till has a massive userbase, dispite being an obsolete standard, but apple still makes computers. Atari as a corp got out of the gamming business, where Commodore sorta folded, but the Amiga corp still is producing... well not sure exactly what, but is still around (kinda). All of whom defined the concept of home computers, rather then being just an esoteric tool of business and industry.
The major marketing points on these legacy systems where...
1. Word Processing... was a new and unique concept which made documents look professional, and didn't need whiteout
2. Education... look at the parents who bought their kids 6502 based hardware for their enhanced learning
3. Entertainment....IMHO this was the final selling point. They played games.. more advanced then the atari 2600. Fun games, silly games, educational games, shoot 'em up games, board games.
Will every company who gets into consumer space travel be as sucessful as microsoft? Probally not. But will the research and develoment into manned spacecraft, develoment payed for by people who are willing to shell out big bucks just so say *i've been in space* actually advance the space program? I'd say so? Why, cause if all else failes, advancement of the human understanding of the cosmos, puttting in place world wide communciations systems, and useful tools like GPS fail, what will succeed is, "it's fun and you can go into space".
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
I am looking at how successful they *were*. In contrast to microsoft, there is NO contest
Well, of course that's what you were talking about -- otherwise it would be just too weird. And yes, entertainment value often provides a large part of the initial impetus to get something off the ground. [*1]
But that doesn't mean that an entertainment-oriented approach will be more sucessful in the long run than the more serious/practical type of enterprise. If your point is just that it's what will spur the initial development, without the pioneers necessarily being very successful in the long run, then I'd agree.
Though I'd point out that this sort of makes it sound like those of us who want space exploration to proceed will basically take advantage of the over-enthusiastic early investors, hoodwinking them into spending their money to pave the way for the 2nd- (or Nth-) generation efforts, which we all know will be the ones to really take off.
The ironic thing here is that I'm really not as cynical about this stuff as I sound. I'm very excited about the possibilities, and I even agree with your basic idea. I don't even necessarily believe that the first generation efforts will fail; I just can't help but notice the potential fallacy in the argument.
--
[1] Which is why, back in the '80s, everyone knew that the IBM PC was a dead-end platform which would be killed by the Amiga, Apple IIGS, et al. [*2]
[2] See, even giving you the benefit of considering only that time period, I just can't resist poking fun at your claim. Why is that?
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
I'm supprised noone has wanted to partener with the russian and restart the MAKS program. The russians had a project for a mini shuttle that would easily fill the needs for sending crew to ISS and space tourism rides. Basicly the craft was a blended wing design that used an antov 124 cargo plane to carry it to 45,000 feet and 500mph. It then would burn fuel in a large drop tank first lox and kerosene and then switch to lox hydrogen with it's tripellant engines. The orbiter had a crew of two and could carry 9tons of cargo or an extra crew module could be carried instead in that configuration it could carry eight to ten crew members. The cargo only version of the system could launch 18tons to LEO. EU was partly founding the project but backed out of it for unkown reason maybe because it would put ariane out of bussiness. And russia was not able to afford to finsh the project and had to shelve it for the time being. Most of the technology behind it got finished such as the engines which were successfully test fired. To bad as the Russians claimed it would cut cost by a factor of 9 to 10. It would have been a truely elegant solution to todays space tranportation problems.
PS: escuse me for my mistakes cos' English's not my mother tongue ^^ A little question man: does John Carmack usually come on this forum?? Thx... "ONE WAY, TOURISM....." ^^ lol