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Diamandis Predicts X-Prize Winner Within One Year
drix writes "Things are moving along for the X-Prize. The FAA is currently in the process of approving a launch site for competitors, several of which are set to launch "within the next few months." Perhaps most exciting, Peter Diamandis says he expects a winner within one year."
From statistics you can learn one thing. That is, whenever anyone claims something is definitely going to happen within a short time frame, it almost certainly won't.
"Duke Nukem Forever will be out in time for Christmas 1999!" - 1999
"Doom 3 will be out sometime next year." - 2002
"By 1999, most homes will have access to broadband."
But I'm not being pessimistic. I think the X Prize WILL be won within "the next decade." The promise is there, but I think the next year will contain a lot of launches, but a lot of mid-air explosions and failures too. It's natural, it happens in every industry.. software and hardware.
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A really big stain near the launch site. This isn't trying to fly across the English Channel by human power. This is a really super dangerous thing to try. Even with a budget of billions and thousands of super geeks, NASA still ends up with BBQ-ed astronauts. As much as I think the free market, private industry is superior to Government, NASA is one of those exceptions. I hope these guys kiss their loved ones before punching the button. It will most likely be the last thing they do.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
I agree with Diamandis on this one. We are about to see the first vehicle not initially developed for government reach space. And, as the X-15 was a precusor to the space shuttle, I expect the X Prize contestants to be the precusors to a variety of orbital vehicles.
Instead of a one size fits all vehicle, though, I expect to see various vehicles developed for various uses. We've learned the shortcomings of that approach.
NASA predicts it will take a number of years to develop the OSP. If they do get bogged down in bureaucracy too much, they'll wind up losing that race to private entrepreneurs. That will radically change the way humanity does work in space.
Even if all doesn't go well, I expect to see a broad range of humans boarding space ships before I die (probably 30 to 45 years from now).
"Beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy." -- B. Franklin
"Well, after all, it's hardly rocket science is it?"
But seriously, these people are sending perhaps 1000kg (3 people + capsule) to 100km. They are *not* going into orbit. The "delta-vee" they need is a small fraction (1/10 at a guestimate?) of that needed to reach Low Earth Orbit. And still it might kill them - they've got guts and they want to prove it.
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Even assuming he's right (and I think he's being a bit too optimistic), it will still be a LOOONG time before anyone does anything commercially viable in space. Only when someone figures out what endeavors in space that makes money we'll see real innovation to get there, driving down the cost immensely. Until then, it'll just be "space geeks" doing it just to prove it's possible.
I know that space has been profitable for some (TV satellites, for instance), but MANNED spacecrafts have so far had such ridiculously high cost that any gain would be dwarfed by that cost. I know that's part of what the X-Prize is designed to remedy, but realisticly it will take "big business" to drive down the cost.
So what can we get from manned spacecrafts that couldn't just as easily be handled by automated crafts? Science perhaps? Practically any form of production would be handled better by onboard robots, IMHO.
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I'll be very surprised if Scaled doesn't win. Burt Rutan has tremendous experience with experimental aeronautical engineering. Their carrier aircraft is flying and they've done several successful gliding tests of the spacecraft, including a test of the "feathered" re-entry system. They have a safe, working rocket motor. I agree that it would be cool to see Carmack win, but I just don't think he's a match for Rutan.
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Perhaps most exciting, Peter Diamandis says he expects a winner within one year."
I would love to see an X-Prize winner before regular space shuttle flights resume.
GF.
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This race is essentially becoming one of Rocket (Armidillo) vs. Spaceplane (Scaled). Might NASA take a hint from this in the developement of thier next generation of spacecraft. From my experience with American politics they are likely to try the one that has previously exploded in their face.
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I don't think you appreciate the surface area of LEO. Are you worried about overcrowding the sea with wine corks?
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What killed Challenger was a stupid design that used solid motors on a manned vehicle, followed by an idiotic management decision to launch during weather conditions known to be outside the tolerance of said motors. What killed Columbia was a known design flaw that everyone ignored, and that probably could have been mitigated if the astronauts had (a) a better understanding of the problem (e.g. through recon satellite imaging), and (b) the ability to perform an EVA outside the cargo bay to evaluate the problem up-close-n-personal. I won't even get into whether or not the hole could have been patched - at a minimum they would have known that they shouldn't reenter, and could look for alternative options ("scramble" a shuttle? launch a couple of Soyuz capsules? ferry everyone to the station using Progress modules? Who knows what might have been tried?). Trying to claim that orbital flight won't work because NASA has saddled itself with an idiotic design is a stupid argument. The Russians seem to be doing ok on the manned front, and that's even with their well-known reputation for being a little "casual" on the safety stuff. Their system appears to be robust enough to allow them to be casual without generating casualities in the process.
The problem with NASA is that they are a government program, which means they have to come up with the "one true solution" to everyone's problems, and make a launch vehicle that's all things to all people. The beauty of the X-prize is that we'll get to see a whole bunch of different approaches. Some will work. Some won't. But we'll learn something from both, and hopefully that will allow manned orbital craft to evolve in the same way that early aircraft evolved.
No, actually, it's NOT difficult to get things into space; we've been doing it since 1957. Heck, we pretty much use the same techology now. The difficulty with space travel, I'm afraid, isn't technical, it's organizational.
My prediction, whoever wins the X-prize will be all the hell over Jay Lenno for a week, and then we'll hear about how they went out of business 6 months later.
I don't think that Scaled Composites (who have a pretty good chance of winning) is going out of business anytime soon. And Armadillo Aerospace doesn't seem to give a fig about "business" period.
The X-prize is strictly for show and consists of just getting to the edge of space. I haven't seen any competitor that plans to go any further (though I could be wrong).