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Florida and New Mexico Compete for X-Prize
N8F8 writes "Looks like the fight for the location for the first X-Prize competition is in the final stage. Florida and New Mexico are the finalists. New Mexico is courting the X-Prize officials heavily. Living in Satellite Beach, Florida, it isn't hard to guess where my vote is going! It's too bad Governor Jeb Bush isn't putting much effort into lobbying for Florida though other efforts may be under way. Getting in on the ground floor of private space entrepuraneurism would be priceless. X-Prize officials have delayed the final decision to April 16th."
Shouldn't the location be characteristically close to the future real launch venue? I don't think it'll help much if everybody test launch in antarctica :)
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
You don't want a hug from Jeb Bush. Go New Mexico!
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
For the uninformed like I was, here's X-Prize's webpage. The news is summed up nicely in the following paragraph:
Hegler said Cape Canaveral was the first choice, even though the Kennedy Space Center is not directly involved, and Cecil Field in Jacksonville is an alternative location.
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Error 500: Internal sig error
I think I'd have to go for Florida - anything launched from New Mexico would pass somewhere overhead, and if it didn't achieve orbit, might possibly land in my backyard...
You can find more information here.
The $10 Million cash prize will be awarded to the first team that privately finances, builds and launches a three-person spaceship to 100 Km (62.5 miles), returning safely to earth and repeating the launch with the same ship within two weeks.
It seems that non-governmental groups are a little less squeamish about taking risks and heading off this hunk of rock we call Earth.
Still...they're doing it for the sake of commercial interests, not simply for the sake of exploration and gathering knowledge, like NASA, the ESA, and the space agencies of other countries including, yes, formerly Soviet Russia.
I realize that for us as humans it's inevitable that we'll break free of Earth and go out...it's something characteristic of our species. Take the discovery of the Americas for example.
Can we be so sure that the end here (travel in space, colonization, etc.) justifies the means we as humans may need to take to get there (commercial interests)?
http://www.methuselahmouse.org
I think that progress to date since the launch last year is pretty impressive. $50,000 raised and $300,000 in pledges is far greater progress than the X Prize managed in the same period of time after launch - learning from the past and improving on it is a good thing. Check out The Three Hundred as well as a good example of how to get a certain set of people involved:
http://www.methuselahfoundation.org/threehundred.a sp
Why are prizes for research so good? Take a look at this piece on how they work and why they work so well:
http://www.longevitymeme.org/topics/research_prize s.cfm
I saw "4 of 79 comments" on the main page and thought it had to be a mistake... as it turns out, somebody's been testing a bot. That's the only explanation I can come up with.
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
I get to keep all hardware that doesn't make orbit though... :-)
\/\/oobie
do they die?
Hmm... That's interesting, every time Bush proposes any NASA activities these days everybody here just says it's for military purposes.
I can also assure you that the Soviets were just as interested in the military uses of space as they were in scientific exploration.
As an aside to how 'evil' companies cannot innovate anything, imagine if NASA was in charge of creating computer chips, and nasty companies like Intel were outlawed from any involvement in creating processors... do you really think modern computing would be anything more advanced than an Apple II?
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Can we be so sure that the end here (travel in space, colonization, etc.) justifies the means we as humans may need to take to get there (commercial interests)?
I fail to see how "commercial interests" are the anthesis of space travel and colonization. What is so terrible about making money that it needs to be banned from space? It's not like they're sending the XPlanes up there to block out the sun in an act of cartoonish supervillany.
If someone can make money escaping the atmosphere in an attempt to speed up intercontinental flight, good for them. If someone can make money carrying satellites into space, or running experiments in zero-G, good for them. Profitability equals the survival of a venture... It's why profitable but socially negative corporations are difficult to get rid of. We want that kind of tenacity on our side. The spreading of mankind outside of our little planet is a good thing, and so long as the companies that do it are behaving in an ecologically responsible fashion, more power to them.
Theoretically, the only reason going into space would be profitable is if there was something sufficiently valuable up there that we should go. The more space travel there is, the less expensive it will be. The less expensive space travel is, the more experiments, manufacturing, and living can take place up there. There must be all kinds of ludicrously dangerous Xtreme sports for our grandkids to discover.
And, in case you haven't noticed, there are already commercial space operations out there. Far more often than NASA they're the ones putting up the satellite phone satellites and the flying transponders we rely upon. Except for the problem of junk in orbit, there isn't anything wrong with that.
The ______ Agenda
imagine if NASA was in charge of creating computer chips, and nasty companies like Intel were outlawed from any involvement in creating processors... do you really think modern computing would be anything more advanced than an Apple II? *shudders at the thought* I suppose commercial interests are good because they drive science and technology at a much faster pace than the government, burdened with rules and regulations and bureaucracy, can ever hope to do. I'm not anti-business, but it just leaves me wondering. Will outer space be cluttered with new forms of "spaceboard" advertising? Will planets be turned into tourist havens that people go to on day trips, leaving litter behind? I suppose the current system we have, in which commercial interests drive the science and technology but the government checks the growth so that it doesn't get out of control, is better than just the government or just corporations going it alone.
Nothing's wrong with commercial interests going up to space, but...let me put it this way: would you rather have a company spearheading space travel technology that operates like AOL, SCO, or Microsoft? or perhaps Google?
Probably not, if it's like the one we have now... if it's like the one from the '60s, perhaps. But then again, they had to contend with Soviet Russia back then...
Most of the path of a space vehicle to orbit is vertical. New Mexico starts several thousand meters higher in the atmosphere reducing the length of travel and density of air when starting. White Sands Missile base would be a good starting point for a space port. We already launch missiles from White Sands. A electromagnetic vehicle accelerator could be run up the face of the Sandias in Albuquerque giving an initial vehicle free flight beginning at 3,000 meters. Located along the spine of the Rocky Mountains so shipping from California and points east are averaged. We dropped a shuttle on Texas and nobody got hurt except the passengers. Florida is quite crowded compared to eastern New Mexico and Western Texas. I vote for New Mexico. (My love of good mexican food may be biasing my decision ;))
When I was young, I had to rub sticks together to compute.
You mean, like Darl McBride?
this has been there for months (sorry it is news but it is a bit stale).
The New Mexico Office of Space Commercialization was created in 1994 by legislation to coordinate the promotion and marketing of New Mexico's space-related resources and to develop and operate a regional Spaceport in New Mexico.
Just reading the word "Spaceport" outside of a Heinlein novel is nearly enough to bring a tear to my eye. The saddest part of all of this is that they have to offer a prize to get anyone to try this... I keep hoping for news of mineral resources somewhere in the solar system, that would make space travel profitable. There has to be a way to make money off of outer space, but what is it?
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive. If you make a slip in handling us you die!
The first customer for ICs was the military (for the Minuteman Missile project, IIRC). Later, NASA was another early adopter of the technology. The government is often the only one with deep enough pockets to buy expensive but unproven technologies. And it almost always contracts with private industry to develop them. Your "computer chips" might not even have been developed without the Air Force and NASA, since who else would have paid Fairchild, etc. to make them? A simple logic gate once cost over a hundred pre-inflation dollars...
That said, the bureaucratic monstrosity known as "NASA" is a pale, bumbling and bloated organization with little resemblance to the group that ran the Apollo project.
Sad, sad, sad...
Or what about people who are from "Idaho"? No one ever wants to take on this persistent myth.
Rank Presidents by th
But a more sensible question is whether you want really want NASA to do it.
I mean are you one of the NASA selected 'elite'? If not- sorry, no space for you.
Atleast commercial launches are somewhat egalitarian- you have the cash, you get to go. And commercial pressures tend to push down on price, with NASA there's far less pressure to do that- that's a really bad thing. The price is way too high right now, particularly in NASA land. NASA is way too risk adverse; paradoxically, I think that caused Columbia and Challenger.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
NASA is way too risk adverse; paradoxically, I think that caused Columbia and Challenger.
You may be right on that. I read an article yesterday (forget the source) about a recent maintenance check on the shuttle Discovery in which NASA engineers discovered that one crucial part had been installed backwards. For close to twenty years, since originally manufactured!
Fortunately, it was part of several sets of that particular part, and the specific part that wasn't installed properly would not have caused another Columbia or Challenger. But, had it been one of the other parts in that set, well, another space shuttle loss would set back NASA even more.
Your saying you don't want a spaceship to crash land in your backyard? Dude you would be the coolest geek in the state if you had a burnt spaceship in your backyard! I would totally come and visit it, and you would be all like, "yeah, I was just sitting here and then crrrrrraaahh sshh BOOOMMMM, and there was a spaceship in my backyard", and I'd be all like "whoa, cool".
You're not fooling me. You are really from florida and are trying to get New Mexicans scared so they launch in florida and you can watch.
But seriously, New Mexico is big, and it has alot of sand and I seriously doubt that a crash would actually hit anything. Besides I don't think any of these teams would risk their lives unless they were pretty darn certain that they craft was going to work. I live here and am not worried in the least bit.
I live in New Mexico. Of course it exists... you may have been joking when you posted this, but you would be surprised at how many people don't realize that there's something between Texas and Arizona or south of Colorado... I can't count on my fingers the number of times where people have been stupified when I tell them where I live.
I once called an airline for reservations and was told that they only dealt with the continental United States and that I would have to call the international number...
BTW, New Mexico is the 47th state. We are the 5th largest state in terms of land area. 1.8 million people live here.
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Colour me confused, but I thought the X-Prize was a straightforward "First one to get a person 60 miles in the air wins" thing. Where does lobbying fit in?
The vehicles need to launch from somewhere, therefore several places are lobbying to have the X-Prize guys choose their backyard to be the official launch point.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
wasn't that a cartoon or something?
Slashdot is more a source of entertainment that actual news on slow days. But you're still here.
It's like there isn't enough going on in the world to fill a 30 minute TV newscast, so they have to tell us that the Weazeldip 5000 isn't all it's cracked up to be so don't buy it.
I would argue that inspite of this, it is Stuff that matters, to us. Maybe we can convince them to make a heading "Olds", instead.
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I have never met anyone IRL who even knows what Slashdot is. Not that it comes up alot.
Faith is the very antithesis of reason, injudiciousness a critical component of spiritual devotion. Jon Krakauer
I grew up in Las Cruces. On the other side of the mountain is White Sands Missle Range, the place where space flight started in this country. Werner von Braun and his group of scientists were taken there after WWII to start their research in this country. Every rocket this country has had flew there first(except Saturn 5 and shuttle). The lake bed at Northrup strip is where all shuttle pilots practised there landings for 10 years, and where one shuttle landed when Edwards was flooded. That place is the history of space and weapons reseach and innovation.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
You would not test fly a new Boeing at DFW during the evening rush, would you. Not that the X-prize winner will be flying out of a typical commercial airport, but you get my drift. Other than a launch and recovery facility, i.e., a long runway, describe to me what you think of as "characteristically close." Also, this won't be head to head, and the launches may be weeks and miles apart, unless they wait until the deadline, which they are not doing.
On anouther note:
I'm really bummed that Las Escaleras a las Estrellas in Fort Stockton, Texas, did not make it to the short list. You'd think that a site with no infrastructure, no workforce base from which to draw, and which is considered amazingly corrupt by much of law enforcement would be just the ticket.
Faith is the very antithesis of reason, injudiciousness a critical component of spiritual devotion. Jon Krakauer
Quit it, and let The Man finish up Doom3.
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
The X-Prize is like the Orteig prize that inspired Charles Lindberg to fly across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927. The X-Prize Cup is like the annual air races (Thompson Cup, Bendix Cup, etc.) that fostered competition and quickly led to commercial aircraft industries.
The X-Prize competition will happen wherever the teams want to launch. BTW - Burt Rutan's company, Scaled Composites, will be winning the X-Prize very soon. They're in Mojave California. Lots of info including pictures here.
And, please, no more references to "orbit". The X-Prize competition is for suborbital flight, which is essentially up and down, similar to the Redstone missions in NASA's early days. There is no requirement for a large horizontal component of velocity as would be needed to achieve orbit.
I found it interesting that New Mexico has a department responsible for space development. Finally, some government is actually looking to the future instead of being dragged kicking and screaming into it.
>> My ultraviolent Linux switch video.
Just get Diebold involved and I'm sure things will go Jeb's way.
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
And what exactly do you think motivated "the discovery of the Americas"?* Or for that matter precipitated the colonization of the Americas?** Very little in the way of exploration and eventual colonization has been done for other than commercial interests (albeit sometimes indirectly).
* Answer: the search for a faster route to the spice wealth of the Indies - there's a reason that native Americans became known as Indians.
** Answer: initially, the desire to plunder the gold of the New World.
I have nothing against commercialization of space, but what does make me nervous is the same type of "commercial interest" run rampant during the age of discovery...
In the process of colonization, European settlers reduced to almost nothing the inhabitants of a continent. There were some pretty crappy things done in the name of colonization.
Basically, I'm all up for viable commercial space projects, but let's try not to just trash a planet, or, should we encounter an intelligent life form, just wipe 'em out or take 'em down without second thought.
Still...they're doing it for the sake of commercial interests, not simply for the sake of exploration and gathering knowledge
There is at least one team doing it for exactly those reasons. Go John Carmack!
Actually none of the companies you mention are particularly heinous. The solution here is to create and maintain a competitive market.
Score! That's definitely great to hear...
Quoted from 'The High Frontier' byGerard K. O'neill, 1976. 3rd edition c2000 Space Studies institute. Apogee books ISBN 1-896522-67-X www.cgpublishing.com Chapter 4 page 35 "A typical Apollo sample contains by weight, more tha 20% silicon, more than 12% aluminum, 4% iron, and 3% magnesium. Many of the Apollo samples contained more than 6% titanium by weight. ... Finally, the lunar suface is more than 40% oxygen by weight." end quote.
Also, as we know from the Clementine missions, on the moons' south pole we found.. WATER!!
Further quoting from "The High Frontier";
"It has been shown by analyzing the spectra of sunlight reflecting from asteroids that some of them are rich in carbon, nitrogen, and hydrogen - they are about as good a source of petrochemicals as oil shale. " end Quote.
Not to mention the nickel- iron ones which are nearly solid metal! Man, it's raining soup out there!
Living in Satellite Beach, Florida, it isn't hard to guess where my vote is going!
If you live in Florida, I find it hard to believe you ever know where your vote is going!
On the moon, there is plenty of room to place large arrays of solar panels.
Using a "laser", one could possibly transport the energy from the moon to earth.
How do we get the solar panels there ? Well, the moon is largely a brick of silicon, which could be very well used to produce solar panels.
Enough motivation wouldn't you think ?
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Won't somebody please think of the spelling?
entrepuraneurism?
That is the most tortured, mangled, fucked up attempt at an English word I have ever been privileged to see.
Kids, if you are that confused about a spelling, wouldn't it be worth a quality moment with your dictionary to try and sort things out so that you and the word can coexist in some kind of harmony?
"entrepreneur"
No, NASA is not risk-averse, they are change-averse and some might say criticism-averse. I get the increasing impression that NASA is a top-heavy, beurocratic ivory tower run for the self-agrindisement of its managers and for taking advantage of huge government hand-outs by hoodwinking the customer.
If NASA was risk-averse, it wouldn't fly spacecraft. If NASA wasn't averse to self-criticism, it might fix safety problems rather than deny them, turn a blind eye and cause disasters.
Large-scale safety-critical engineering is possible, but it's about humility, perseverance, good management, opneness, honesty, ambition, meticulousness, rationality, self-discipline, quality and fit-for-purpose cost control.
There are other industries and organisations (in different countries even) that NASA could learn from, but I doubt that the culture of "we are the leaders and can't learn anything from anyone else (and especially foreigners)" will let it happen.
This has been a Random Rant production.
Stick Men
Ok, so this morning I drive to work from Satellite Beach, after staying up late reading "Space, the Free Market Frontier" by Edward Hudgins, and yes, I also saw the article on this in the Florida Today yesterday... and then I see this on the Slashdot frontpage.
;)
D8F8, are you spying on me?
I never knew Satellite Beach had a webpage. Sadly enough, the counter told me I was visitor number 1. I suspect some mighty fine coding. For those of you who have never visited, yes, our beaches do have as many coquina rocks as the picture shows (although you can only see them like that at low tide). We do have some of the best surfers in the world though (the Hobgoods are from here, and Cocoa Beach is just up the road).
I agree that Jeb needs to get off his butt and try to court the X-prize. I'd love to see the X-prize competitors flying from Florida. However, I hope that the X-prize committee makes their decision based upon the merits of each location (New Mexico - better weather, more frontier spirit; Florida - clear launch trajectory, more space industry).
The days you're speaking of seem very far in the past. I can't imagine anybody doing something so horrible today. If nothing else, the news media would report it and the angry masses would be out for blood. I'm not worrying until I see something more concrete to worry about.
here are your sources:9 94804
2 42.shtml?tid=134&tid=160
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99
and
http://science.slashdot.org/science/04/03/23/1644
Research being done already, apparently :)
But I agree that 1 MW in 1 year doesn't really seem attractive. Yet that didn't stop our ancestors from creating a crude vehicle that drove on petrol - grossly inefficient at the time.
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Right... but the point he was making, I think, is that the government funding in those fields eventually reduced the risk to the point where commercial entities were willing to enter the field and drive further development. NASA and other space agencies have, in some sense, accomplished that goal - they've made those huge initial investments, helped identify and delineate the known risks, and gotten things to the point where non-governmental organizations are looking at privatized space travel. That won't happen in the US, though, so long as government regulations make it virtually impossible for anyone except NASA to put anything into space.
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
..is that it requires some vision of things to come. Sure the start is highly unpractical, but in theory could end up being very profitable indeed. I for one would not be surprised to see a 'Shell Moon department' in a hundred years or so.
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There's only ever been one Von Braun.
The guy had the whole Apollo program in his head- he expertly guided the program through to completion. Then he retired- right after launching Skylab.
Once he went... NASA built the space shuttle.
Nuff said really.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"According to this website, Jules Verne also considered Florida to be an ideal spot for launching into space. This was from his 1865 novel, From Earth to the Moon.
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