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."

Comments

Where actual launch may happen

[fembots]

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 :)

Hug from the governor of Florida?!

[IO ERROR]

"I think all they really need is a hug from the governor," said Kenneth Haiko, vice chair of the Space Authority board, and accounts manager for Sun Container Inc.

You don't want a hug from Jeb Bush. Go New Mexico!

Re: NASA Gets Left Behind?

[seaswahoo]

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)?

Methuselah Mouse Prize - successor in technique

[exratio]

The Methuselah Mouse Prize (rewarding scientists who manage to extend healthy life span in mice) has some of the same names involved as advisors, and is in many ways an attempt to further evolve the fundraising methodology used so successfully in the X-Prize.

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

Clarifications

[Long-EZ]

The X-Prize is $10M to the first non-government team to launch a three person ship to 100 km (the edge of space) and use the same ship to do it again within two weeks, while the X-Prize Cup is a race of sorts, to be run annually after the X-Prize competition is won. New Mexico and Florida are competing to host the X-Prize Cup event, not the X-Prize competition.

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.