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X-Prize Overview: To The Edge Of Space, Cheap
_randy_64 writes "The X-Prize competition has gotten a lot of coverage on Slashdot - either because it's cool and geeky or because John Carmack is involved. The Baltimore Sun has a decent background/overview article on the contest in Sunday's edition."
Well, the article says 15,000 people/year would pay $100,000 for a 15-minute trip by 2021. Personally, I'd want more than 15 minutes in space for $100k, but there you go.
That doesn't seem like a bad growth rate for an industry--from 0 to 1.5 billion per year in only 20 years. Of course, the PC industry puts that to shame, but I don't think a whole lot of industries have matched that growth rate.
Matt
In the article, the author makes the comment:
On May 20, 1927, the day Lindbergh's plane took off from New York, the young Boeing Corp. rolled out the Boeing 40-A, a simple plane used primarily to carry mail. By 1933, after thousands of flights and incremental improvements, that plane evolved into the Boeing 247, the first modern passenger airliner.
Looking at the Model 40-A (Boeing.com), you can see a fabric covered single engined biplane. Jumping to the 247 (Boeing.com), they are comparing to a dual engine, all metal monoplane with retractable landing gear.
I guess that you could say that the difference in the aircraft were a result of thousands of "incremental changes", but I would think that the difference is primarily the result of thousands of people being excited by the prospect of air travel - the incremental changes came later.
This should be the point of the X-Prize, rather than establishing a starting point for space travel, it should be an example of how low cost space flight could be achieved and then ignite the passions of many people with the result of space travel on a par with today's air travel.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
The first time there is a safety problem with any of the spacecraft, all hell will ensue.
The public will become fearful of visiting space on a private tourist craft, and the governments of many western nations will undoubtedly begin passing laws to regulate the industry.
Space tourism has a future, but I'm not so sure it's as lucrative as the foundation would have us believe.
Since the Apollo program, manned space flight has been an expensive and dangerous waste of time. Nothing's been accomplished by the space shuttle that couldn't have been accomplished by unmanned craft. The "science" carried on by shuttle astronauts has been worthless PR-driven junk (see http://www.aps.org/WN/WN03/wn022103.html).
What we need is all funding currently thrown at manned space flight to be spent on projects which result in genuine science. Take the Hubble telescope: the total cost, including repairs, was $200m. Each shuttle launch costs $400m: ten times as much per tonne of payload than the cheap launch vehicles used by the Russians and Chinese.
The X Prize just encourages the believe that manned space flight is a worthwhile end in itself. It isn't. To the extent it succeeds, it will continue the popular and political obsession with manned space flight and waste more money and lives.
Across the world, how many people ride motorcross bikes? Jump out of planes? Go rock-climbing? Or, if you're arguing that the people that like those kinds of activities can't afford $100,000 to go to space, how many rich dilettantes like to race Porsches - an activity that can easily chew up well over $100,000 in a single season.
I would argue that there are plenty of rich people who will view the risks phlegmatically enough to keep a space tourism operation expanding for a while.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
That doesn't seem like a bad growth rate for an industry--from 0 to 1.5 billion per year in only 20 years. Of course, the PC industry puts that to shame, but I don't think a whole lot of industries have matched that growth rate.
Well, remember that the expenses would be very high too.
1.5 billion revenue doesn't equal 1.5 billion profit.
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
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.
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At least that what this comment reads like. Hmm Everest has been climbed, why climb it again?
Tourists are even happy to pay for trips to Antartica to get covered in penguin shit. And some tourists are daft enough to try crossing the Australian desert in summer. The only thing that seems to slow them down is fear of something less likely to kill them than a car accident back home. Something = anything from SARS, bombing, snake bite, shark bite, lightning strike etc. They don't usually think of death by thirst, jellyfish stingers, crocodiles, or wombat/roo/donkey/camel/sheep/sandhill/washout car accidents).
I just hope that successful space trips don't give corporates a new excuse to continue trashing the only planet we've got.
That's my rant for the day...
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
"Seriously, though, once one group has succeeded, what is the immediate benefit to other groups who may succeed afterwards? No $$ usually leads to seriously reduced efforts."
:)
I doesn't matter. Industry doesn't work like that. Just think of the flights around the globe or Linburg's flight across the atlantic.
Thing is, is that nobody knows how is the best way to get up into space is yet. Obviously tossing rockets up in the air only to watch them self destruct in order to do it is a very bad thing.
So once people figure out how to do it in a feasable way then that's once the $$ comes in. If it still remains unknown then there are just to many questions and nobody resposible to stockholders is willing to throw away his client's retirement money and his company's future on something that flimsy.
But that's how capitalism works, it's up to individuals to take the risks, not society. It's a risk, if a person fails he is a loser, so he has to try to find more money and try again. But once a person succeeds he has the right to profit from his efforts.
Beleive it or not the majority of rich people did it on their own. Most business owners fail miserably over and over again before they get it right and then have a chance to become rich. bankrupcy after bankrupcy, even jail time, then one day the risk taking pays off and they have a successful business and can provide jobs and livelyhoods for hundreds of other people not willing to take the risks.
That's why the X-prize exists. After completing the prize your going to be strapped for cash, time, and resources to say the least, if it wasn't for the x-prize you'd probably loose everything. If you win the prize it will keep you solvent long enough to sell the technology and you then have a chance to live out your dreams a rich man with access to space flight.
Of course this doesn't realy work to well for people like Camrak, but not everyone trying is already rich, but being wealthy has little to do with having good ideas about space flight or other new technologies.
Of course, the PC industry was based on an already successful commercial computer industry, who had already been refining the concepts of computer science and electrical engineering. The PC industry simply introduced the concept of low-cost personal computers and mass-produced consumer devices.
The analogies are very strong, especially considering how the existing Aerospace industries are totally falling flat on this idea. I am very surprised that companies like Boeing or Airbus aren't at least letting their engineers have access to their shops after hours to try a stunt like this and submit their own entry for practically pocket change, kinda like how IBM let their engineers play a bit with Linux for next to no bottom-line cost for years...with a huge ROI.
Once you hit the 15,000 for $100,000, the question then becomes how many would pay $10,000 if they could get the price per trip down?
Heck, I might be encouraged to get a home equity loan in 10 years just for an opportunity to do that myself (or help finance one of my kids for that opportunity).
The study was only talking about some real hard numbers that could be given to investors and point out the very real profit potential of commercial space transportation systems, even considering that the need to send a 747-style spacecraft to Mars will still be a century away.
One thing worries me about the X-Prize and that is safety. During the cold war the space race was a matter of national security as well as national pride so huge amounts of money were spent on research and development. Dispite this huge spending there were a large number of systems failures and a number of deaths.
Although we may have advanced in a number of technical fields since the 1950s space flight has not significantly changed. Is offering people money to win a race to get into space a good thing to add to the mix of small budgets and amateur rocketry?
Hmmm... My best bet is on the "space plane" sollutions. I can't see anything based on a helo realy working. Fixed wings are much more effiecient lifters.
Come the revolution, the Bourgeois, Capitalistic, "A PARKING STICKER HOLDERS", will be first against the wall!
When there's a bad car crash, do we shut down the Interstate system? When there's a bad air accident, do we ground all flights? While tragic, it's also expected, normal and routine that there will be occasional safety problems with all forms of transportation.
But in space travel - which is nose-on-your-face obviously the most dangerous transportation system - we get all freaked out whenever there's an accident, and burn down entire programs.
Is it because 1950s NASA engineers sold us the dream that we could have perfectly safe space flight because of our modern technological superiority? Why is it that the most dangerous way of traveling can't be satisfied with the same safety record as its mundane counterparts?
-Graham
I think the problem is that suborbital New York to Tokyo is a much, much, much bigger scale trip than X-Prize. X-Prize is pretty much straight up and down. Ballistic New York to Tokyo requires fairly warm re-entry heats. You've seen the size of ballistic missiles to send footlocker sized nuclear devices half way around the world... ...moreover, how would you know which missiles, er, rockets have the million dollar part and which ones have the nukes?
You speak like this was your money they were spending. NASA is, X-Prize isn't. They've explicitly disallowed state help or funding. It's the contenders' own money and they can spend it however they please, including on things you consider frivolous. Likewise they can risk their own lives, who the hell are you to tell them not to?
Oh, and space flight isn't an end in itself (except to tourists and adventurers), but nor is it only there for some dry academic's miserly conception of "genuine science". It's a tool towards the real end: colonizing the solar system, then the stars. If you think differently, you underestimate the wanderlust and expansion-instinct which are natural to the human species.
Just the idea of the possibility of flying in space excites me. Feeling accelleration of lift off, being in free fall, watching sun rise over the Earth, seeing plasma stream by the windows on re-entry.
I suspect that this is similar to the excitement of a hundred years ago, seeing a man take off and fly around a field. Being excited about flying isn't about going somewhere.
As for there being places to go 100 years ago, why would you assume that 100 years ago there were places to go by air? The idea of flying New York to Washington by a heavier than air craft was considered science fiction at best.
It was the first few pioneers that got people excited about flying who then went on to make the thousands of incremental changes that made flying practical.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter