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SpaceShipOne to Try for Space on Monday
CommanderData writes "The first piloted private space flight will occur Monday at 9:30AM ET. SpaceShipOne is planning to ascend to the 62 mile (100 Km) mark and return to land at its takeoff point over the course of 90 minutes. With only a pilot (unnamed at this time) on board this does not qualify as a run for the Ansari X-Prize. If the flight is successful they will likely try for the prize soon afterward..." An anonymous reader adds: "Scaled Composites also has this page about the event."
If this is the case, I wouldn't go until about version 6. Good luck nonetheless -- as this has to be one of the coolest frontiers (private spaceflight) in space travel lately.
> Launches a piloted, privately-funded spaceship, capable of carrying 3 people to 100 kilometers
Hell, I've got a vehicle that can do that now.
It just does it horizontally over paved surfaces. Details.
The technology used in this launch is going to be reused by SpaceDev to put satellites up for only $5 million a piece. This illustrates the direct effect of the X-prize.
Currently, satellite launches can cost in the hundreds of millions.
Now if only their were more prizes.
"The "bubbling morons at NASA" who sent people to the moon on the back of one of these? [neatherd.org]
With all of the money that private space launch groups have wasted with so little to show for it despite standing on the shoulders of giants, it amazes me that people can continually insult the space agencies that have overcome such incredible problems to achieve amazing feats."
Yes, NASA accomplished great things back in the 1960s, but that doesn't excuse them from the horrific behavior that they've demonstrated since then. Most Americans would be horrified if they knew how much money NASA really wastes, and how much harm it does to the commercial space industry. Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-NASA because I'm against space exploration; quite the opposite. I dislike NASA precisely because I care about space exploration, and they've done a criminally poor job of it since the 1970s.
Consider the space shuttle, which is an especially low point even for NASA: The shuttle was built to replace the Saturn family of launch vehicles. The Shuttle can launch about 60,000 lbs into orbit for a price of around $8,000/lb. The Saturn, on the other hand, could launch about 212,000 lbs into orbit or 100,000 lbs to the moon for a cost of only about $5,000/lb after adjusting for inflation to 2004 dollar. Yes, NASA spent a colossal amount of time and money to build a launch vehicle that was ¼ as powerful and much more expensive.
Even today, there are commercial disposable rockets (like the newest Titan and Delta classes) that can launch virtually any commercial satellite payloads for 'only' $170 million, vs. the average $500 million cost of a shuttle launch. But why, you probably wonder, would anyone use the shuttle if such inexpensive alternatives exist? The answer is the NASA has spent years subsidizing the shuttle costs, only charging around $80 million to launch satellites for people. This has been absolutely devastating to the companies that manufacture commercial spacecraft (Boeing, Lockheed, and Orbital Sciences) since even though they have far superior products, they can't compete with a NASA that is willing to launch payloads at enormous loss. NASA has basically been using taxpayer money to kill a vital U.S. industry.
By far the most horrific part of the whole thing is that NASA has spent years using 'science' to justify their $500 million shuttle launches. Sorry, but with a very few exceptions there aren't any science experiments conducted on the shuttle that justify that kind of expense. While things are undoubtedly learned, it's small potatoes compared to the sort of scientific research that you could conduct here on earth with a comparable amount of money. If you submitted a grant request to the National Science Foundation for $500 million to perform the sorts of experiments that they do on the shuttle, they would laugh their heads off at you.
Yes ...