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FAA Grants Sub-Orbital License to SpaceShipOne
abucior writes "The FAA announced today that Scaled Composites has been granted a launch licence for a series of sub-orbital flights over a one-year period for Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne. Is X Prize finally entering the end-game? Space.com has more information on the move."
At least the government isnt getting in the way. Im for one am glad to see the X-Prize might actually have a chance of revolutionizing the space industry!
Potential financial liability is likely to be covered by insurance (which will be costly no doubt), which anything that can reasonably be expected to fly and has adequate funding to get it to outer space should be able to afford.
Keep in mind that stuff like this will not be launched form populated areas (deserts, etc. probably) so any liability only comes in if it can make it far enough to hit something, which in itself is a sign that it has potential, and so is more likely to be sufficiently safe. Think of it this way: conditional on it being able to make it as far as a populated area the probability that it will crash it low.
After reading about the problems Carmack and Armadillo Aerospace encountered trying to get H2O2, I don't think you'd be able to get enough fuel or parts to build anything un-noticed.
Of course, in alot of cases, it may just be easier to launch from a country that isn't so uptight.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
In addition, if the thing isn't safe enough to test without endangering the public, it's nowhere safe enough to fly in actual service. The thousands of homebuilt and homebrewed aircraft flying legally every day shows that safety and experiments are not mutually exclusive requirements.
Don't underestimate what a leap an efficiency the X-Prize represents.
Not that I disagree with you, just keep one foot in the part of reality that remembers that X-prize isn't going to LEO, and isn't even getting close to LEO. Unless you hit LEO, your reusable spacecraft is just a great ride. :)
Don't get me wrong, though. After they've hit the low target they've set with the reusable requirements they've got I expect the design to be pushed to LEO pretty quickly, pretty much as soon as it gets covered up with funding from both the X-prize itself and all the VCs and other investors that learn by virtue of the X-prize that you have a viable technology.
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I first noticed Burt Rutan because of a homebuilt plane that he designed. It was composite construction (fiberglass and foam) and extremely strong. It was a canard (it had a lifting surface on the nose) and therefore very stable. Some time later he built the first plane to fly around the world without refueling.
O N/ rutan/GA15.htm
The guy is a genius and an innovator in a field that does its best to discourage innovation.
If I have understood correctly, lawsuits have basically killed innovation in general aviation. Check it out the next time you are airside: most of the designs of small aircraft are fifty years old. I wonder if we will be saying the same thing about software in fifty years.
www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/GENERAL_AVIATI
Not to mention the fact that the Shuttle launch costs you note covers more than fuel, it also covers all the maintenance, prepation, testing, etc. that a craft in service must have, while a vehicle that only has to fly twice can get away with far, far less infrastructure. (The key to reducing costs isn't reducing vehicle costs as many believe, but in flying the hell out of the vehicle and spreading the costs across many vehicles and flights. Ask the airlines.)
Don't overestimate it either. The X-Prize vehicles are highly specialized test and experimental vehicles, it's a long leap from there to vehicles capable of routine operations. (Not just in general concept, but in raw performance.) Consider the long step between the Wright Flyer and the Ford Tri-Motor or the DC-3. That's how far the X-prize vehicles are from useful and cheap space transports.Remember though that the X-Prize is for suborbital flight. The height isn't important-it is the speed. Spaceship 1 won't have to deal with reentry temperatures, making it MUCH simpler to build and fly. If X-Prize was for an orbital flight, or any Mach 25 flight, there wouldn't be any entries. Is it the first step to cheap flight or just a cheap flight? Only a real reentry system will tell.
The shuttle's 60,000 lb cargo capacity is wasteful and useless. It costs more per pound (even accounting for inflation) to launch on the shuttle than it did to launch on the Saturn V. It'd be fine if the shuttle provided an economical way to launch bulk cargo, but it doesn't. Better to stick with unmanned expendables for that kind of stuff - at least for the time being. As for the 9 passengers/crew, they cost so much per person to launch that only a small elite are permitted to fly. The 4 passengers on an X-Prize vehicle may only be going suborbital (for now), but at least they're going.
The key to reducing costs isn't reducing vehicle costs as many believe, but in flying the hell out of the vehicle and spreading the costs across many vehicles and flights.
True. But that's part of the point of the X-Prize. The shuttle design simply cannot support a flight rate sufficient to make its costs reasonable. Plus it requires a standing army of several thousand just to operate it. The shuttle is not capable of operating in an airline mode. The X-Prize is encouraging designs that are capable of rapid turn-around (and thus high flight rate), and require minimal infrastructure. The X-Prize designs will (hopefully) be capable of airline-like operations.
Consider the long step between the Wright Flyer and the Ford Tri-Motor or the DC-3. That's how far the X-prize vehicles are from useful and cheap space transports.
The first flight of the Wright Flyer involved a mere 12 seconds of flying time (the third and longest flight of the day attained a whopping 59 seconds). Only 10 years later the airplane was a major player in the Great War. Ok, the world had to wait another ~20 years for the DC-3. But commercial aviation was already well-established before the DC-3 came along. Useful and cheap are relative terms. The X-Prize vehicles may be closer to both of them than you think.