SpaceShipOne and Wild Fire to Go For the Gold

Fizzleboink writes "Space.com reports that with the upcoming January 1, 2005 deadline for the $10 million Ansari X Prize, Rutan and his team have given their official 60 day notice. Brian Feeney, leader of the Canadian da Vinci Project also reported today that his team is rolling out on August 5 with the balloon-lofted Wild Fire rocket."

Comments

Canadian Content

[edwardog]

Glad to see that there's some Canadian content! Hope it doesn't turn into another Avro Arrow...

Re:Canadian Content

[DeeBs]

It figures. Rutan et all have a sleek, high tech rubber composite powered spaceship carried by a state of the art high altitude airplane. We have a kerosene powered rocket lifted into the air by a balloon.

Re:Canadian Content

[Anonymous Coward]

But ours has a fridge for a six pack, and a tv to watch hnic, though it is not allowed to turn right on a red light.

Re:Canadian Content

[Pi_0's don't shower]

There's very little new information available from their website Da Vinci, but you can always look to the X-prize site for information about the teams. I personally think that the development of many different ways of reaching your goal is the best way to go -- facilitating as much development of future technology as possible! (Which is probably the whole point of this anyway.)

Re:Canadian Content

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you mean "We have a kerosene powered rocket lifted into the air by a balloon, eh?"
</too easy>

Re:Canadian Content

[codemachine]

How widespread is that law in Canada? In my province we can turn right at red pretty anywhere.

Re:Canadian Content

[compwizrd]

haven't a clue, it's legal in ontario. I've seen a lot of americans shocked when i turn right on a red, even when it's legal in their state that i'm driving in.

Re:Canadian Content

[untermensch]

I know that it's illegal in Quebec, but I thought most (all?) of the other provinces allowed it.

Re:Canadian Content

[Anonymous Coward]

Afaik it's legal everywhere but Québec, and even there it's starting to change to allow it. I know I pretty much always turn right on reds when I'm over there, and I've yet to get a ticket for it (though I never do it when there's a cop present).

Re:Canadian Content

[Vilim]

Actually it used to be illegal in Quebec, they repealed the law about a year ago. Information on this can be found at. It looks like it is still illegal on the island of Montreal

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNew s/1089949545116_85358745/?hub=Canada and http://freespace.virgin.net/john.cletheroe/usa_can /driving/right.htm

(remember to remove the spaces from the URL)

Re:Canadian Content

[El-Kelvinator]

Turn into an Arrow?
The Arrow was cancelled for some cheapo subsonic rockets, and even cheaper subsonic semi-retired fighter jets.
But since the project isn't govt funded, we can all rest easy that it will be successful, profitable, and our MP's can afford a comfy pension.
How us Canadian's voted back a party, and Prime Minister who are proven crooks is beyond me.
But then again we can turn right on red lights, and every now and then we can turn left on a red too.
It's the going straight part that seems to cause problems *shrug* Who knew?!?!

Oh, and I suppose we have an abundance of hot air here in the west, all those cows just lazing around, not being eaten and all, might as well put some of that methane to good use eh!

You can make it illegal, but you can't make it unpopular.

Re:Canadian Content

[Anonymous Coward]

That reminds me...
Do you know how Canadians spell Canada?

C, eh? N, eh? D, eh?

Re:Canadian Content

[jx100]

Funny, we do that all the time here in California.

Re:Canadian Content

[Anonymous Coward]

Bloody awesome. Welcome to my friend's list.

Re:Canadian Content

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget about the Canadian Arrow project http://www.canadianarrow.com they have conducted extensive engine tests and are testing the recover phase shortly. I believe they are full scale test in November.

Re:Canadian Content

[Mr. Jaggers]

How us Canadian's voted back a party, and Prime Minister who are proven crooks is beyond me.

Take a peek at our (U.S.) last election... probably a story similar to that. Except we're still doing it...

Re:Canadian Content

[merdark]

How was this modded funny??

It should be modded tragic.

At least the USA didn't get the Arrow. Imagine if the USA had advanced killing machines even earlier than they did!

Re:Canadian Content

[Rei]

Um, Rutan's dumb choice of oxidizer means that he has a heavy oxidizer tank without getting a worthwhile ISP, and could never scale it up to orbital flight. On the other hand, LOX/Kerosene is a pretty darn good fuel/oxidizer combination.

I don't know enough about blimp or aircraft operating costs to say which method of lifting the craft aloft is best, but carrying a craft up to altitude is a definite bonus;that whole thing about air resistance being proportional to v^2 on the macroscopic scale is a really big pain. I am surprised to see no tow-launch craft, however.

Re:Canadian Content

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say that people can only call Rutan dumb if they've succeeded in outdoing him. Until then, your post is just another example of a geek trying to desperately sound cool by one-upping someone that's accomplished more than they have.

Re:Canadian Content

[peacefinder]

Um, Rutan's dumb choice of oxidizer means that he [...] could never scale it up to orbital flight.

Who said he wants to scale it up that far?

Whe Rutan builds a specialized craft, it tends to be excellent at what he designed it for, and pretty much useless for anything else. For instance, Voyager went around the world on one tank of fuel, but you don't see FedEx trying to modify the design for long-distance cargo delivery, do you?

SS1 is meant to win the X-Prize and demonstrate safe, shirtsleeve suborbital flight. Afterwords, the design might possibly be produced as a suborbital tourism vehicle. (I think that's likely.) But the evidence suggests that the design was never intended to see orbit. It doesn't have the heat shielding required for re-entry, it can't attain anything like the necessary speed, and it probably lacks sufficient life-support, too. It doesn't need that stuff to do its suborbital job, and that's why it doesn't have it.

Rutan chose a good propulsion tool for the job he wanted SS1 to do. The hybrid rocket does its job, and does it safely. If Rutan decides to do something different (like go to orbit) I expect we'll see him roll out an entirely new craft with a different propulsion system.

Calling his choice of oxidizer dumb is not helpful to your credibility.

Re:Canadian Content

[georgewilliamherbert]

Um, Rutan's dumb choice of oxidizer means that he has a heavy oxidizer tank without getting a worthwhile ISP, and could never scale it up to orbital flight. On the other hand, LOX/Kerosene is a pretty darn good fuel/oxidizer combination.

It is entirely possible to fly to orbit using Nitrous Oxide oxidizer.

Nitrous has a somewhat lower energy content than LOX, but performance is not everything. The overall size of the vehicle increases, but you do away with pumps in the rocket motors, since nitrous self pressurizes. You may need to cool it to get to reasonable pressures... around -40 C gets you down to 150 PSI, in very very rough numbers... but it's entirely workable.

SpaceDev, the company that supplies the hybrid motors for Space Ship One, is developing a Nitrous oxidizer hybrid multistage launch vehicle for the US Air Force under contract to the Air Force Research Lab, the Streaker launch vehicle.

My company bid a Nitrous/Propane liquid multistage rocket for the AFRL/DARPA FALCON project, which SpaceDev's contact came from originally.

The idea that rockets need to have the absolute highest performance materials and propellants used everywhere is exactly why it costs five thousand dollars a pound to launch things instead of five hundred or less. A large number of bright people have been working on changing that for the last decade or so, and we're getting close to having some of us flying things that prove the point.

Use the right technology for minimum cost depending on your design approach.

Re:Canadian Content

[Rei]

Oh, it's quite possible to get to orbit on nitrous, but your mass fraction will be lousy, and you'll find it essentially untenable to develop a carrier plane for a midair launch of a craft large enough to have significant payload.

Somewhat lower? For comparison, nitrous oxide/propane has an vac. ISP of about 230 (according to a quick search; I'm not familiar with the site, so I'd want to cross-reference it, and they didn't give a chamber pressure), while LOX/propane has a vac. ISP of over 360 with a 20MPa combustion chamber.

Here's what SpaceDev has to say about nitrous:

"While the somewhat lower Isp and reduced mass fraction associated with hybrid propulsion systems tend to make them less desirable candidates for launch vehicle boosters and high-performance upper stages, hybrid propulsion offers several benefits over conventional liquid and solid systems. For sub-orbital manned vehicles, hybrid is ideal because the performance is adequate to achieve altitude, but the safety features of using hybrid propulsion in conjunction with these vehicles far outweigh other performance factors. Hybrid rockets are non-explosive, and their simplicity of operation makes them ideal for high-reliability applications."

I'll second that, with even less optimism. Nitrous oxide has lower density, lower ISP, and tougher tank requirements than LOX. The only real advantage that it has (which can be a big one for suborbital flight, admittedly) is simplicity: it's not cryogenic, and it doesn't require a turbopump or a gas to pressurize it.

ISP isn't everything, but it's a *Lot*. A low ISP can quickly make the requirements for and payload of a design to reach orbit degenerate to absurdity. And with a midair launch, that point of absurdity isn't too high. What are they supposed to launch from, an An-255 Cossack?

I suppose that your design had the nitrous oxide/propane as the lower stage, where ISP isn't as important? :)

(just checked - sure enough, the upper stage of the Falcon (Kestrel) has a 325s ISP!)

Not a Register reprint?

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally! something that's not just a The Register reprint...

Wild fire who?

[Anonymous Coward]

If they win, I will eat my socks.

Rutan is the man!

I suspect that in about 10 years, while NASA is still burning dollars as fuel to stay in LEO, Rutan and Steve Wynn will already have a hotel/casino on the moon.

Re:Wild fire who?

[codemachine]

Only if Paul Allen funds that too.

The fact is that the Canadian entry would actually profit by winning the X-Prize, whereas Rutan's team would only be cutting their losses.

I bet with Paul's billions, Rutan could put a hotel and casino on the moon, but I'm pretty sure that it would be a money losing venture. just like SpaceShipOne.

Not to say that Rutan's work isn't interesting. He certainly is favored to win this thing, and whoever wins it will be accomplishing a first.

Re:Wild fire who?

[Anonymous Coward]

If they win, I will eat my socks.

Are we talking thick wool socks or those thin dress socks ... cause thin dress socks can actually be rather tasty

Re:Wild fire who?

[PerlMonkey]

The Ansari prize is just a goalpost, it's not meant to make space travel profitable by itself. As an offset to development cost, I'd say it's done it's job perfectly. Now, it remains to determine wether the Rutan (and others) designs can compete with existing alternatives.

Re:Wild fire who?

[Rei]

Oh, for God's sake. Rutan's rocket couldn't scale up to orbital any more than you can bake a cake twice as fast by doubling the temperature of the oven. His ISP is just too darn low, and his oxidizer tank too darn heavy. It's custom designed *specifically* for the X-prize, and very little of the technology will transfer over to full spaceflight. It's designed for a level of operational simplicty that do not apply to real orbital flight (very, very short flight times, and comparably very limited reentry stresses and temperatures, for example, which allow a lot of shortcuts).

Just as an example of how much things don't scale linearly, take a look at how quickly aluminum tensile strengths fall off with heat. At room temperature, your best aluminum alloys (lets use T7651 for our numbers) will have an ultimate tensile strength of ~600MPa. However, go up to 400 degrees celcius, and you're down to a mere 45MPa. It's a really steep slope. Linear scaling just doesn't work.

At high reentry velocities (and temperatures), all sorts of other new problems arise. For example, control surfaces and inlets/outlets become huge engineering problems, because the openings act like blowtorches into the inside of the craft.

Linear scaling doesn't work from a thrust standpoint, too. The more fuel you add, the more fuel you need to accelerate. Your maximum velocity follows a sharp logarithmic curve compared to how much fuel you carry - not to mention how much the mass of your craft increases. That's why higher ISP fuels are critical.

There are all sorts of other things I could go into (power concerns, heating systems to stop parts from freezing up, longer term crew accomodations and life support, etc), but I think you get the picture: most of their tech won't just transfer.

Re:Wild fire who?

[arivanov]

His rocket will not (and I think that it is not intended to). His launch vehicle will (and this is what he is good at after all).

The design is the only one so far to offer a clean separation strategy without the second stage being powered at time of separation. I would expect seeing a continuation of the White Knight genus very very soon (with a completely different second stage).

Re:Wild fire who?

[jpop32]

If they win, I will eat my socks. /me bookmarks the comment

You never know. :-)

Re:Wild fire who?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm...

Two datapoints as an example of non-linear scaling?

With only two datapoints, even sin(x) appears linear.

Re:Wild fire who?

[Rei]

Fine, I'll post more numbers; I had to convert from Farenheit and kpf to kelvins and MPa when I gathered them, so they're going to be rough, but here we go:

temp(K), tensile(MPa)
53, 730
183, 634
242, 606
328, 572
386, 475
441, 214
503, 103
566, 76
628, 58
691, 45

If you need, I can dig up my old reference for those numbers.

Re:Wild fire who?

[Rei]

I seriously doubt that the White Knight could carry enough payload to get a craft into orbit, so it would have to be another, as you put it, "conditionation of the White Knight genus".

Why even bother, though? It's one reason that I'd prefer to see tow-launch vehicles out there, so you don't need some sort of custom designed carrier. The other day, I saw an ad for 1.4 million dollars for an aircraft with a 110,000 kg payload capacity (used, of course, but it'd be getting a relatively light workload compared to the short cycle time for passenger and cargo craft). Operational ceiling will be lower than the White Knight, but you'd still be outside of 80-90% of the atmosphere. I doubt towing modifications would cost more than a couple thousand to a couple tens of thousands of dollars. With a commercial craft, you have a proven track record (which will not only make it safer for you, but really help with your insurance), proven and optimized maintinence procedures, and no development costs. And used, they get pretty darn cheap (on the scale of things); their per cycle maintinence costs will go up, but again, their cycle time would be greatly reduced from a typical passenger liner, and most of the costs would be in spacecraft maintinence anyways.

Now, don't get me wrong; I really like some of Rutan's ideas (for example, a lockable "reentry configuration", or the concept of launching from outside most of the atmosphere to begin with (like the Pegasus missile)). But it bothers me to no end when people act like if we just tweak SpaceShipOne a bit, it'll make it to orbit (or even the moon! Ha!)

Re:Wild fire who?

[joeljkp]

Offtopic. SpaceShipOne wasn't designed for orbital flight.

Re:Wild fire who?

[Anonymous Coward]

But it bothers me to no end when people act like if we just tweak SpaceShipOne a bit, it'll make it to orbit (or even the moon! Ha!)

It seems to me that you are the one who seems to think that that is the plan. I haven't seen anyone else say that SpaceShip One is supposed to scale up to an orbital design. It looks to me more like Rutan and Alan have done what the early X-projects did. Build a vehicle to test an idea. Get as much data as possible from operating that test vehicle. Use that data to help with the next idea you test.

Re:Wild fire who?

[Anonymous Coward]

You clearly meant to post that to the parent, then.

Re:Wild fire who?

[Rei]

> I haven't seen anyone else say that SpaceShipOne is supposed to scale up to an orbital design

Look back to the start of this thread.

"I suspect that in about 10 years, while NASA is still burning dollars as fuel to stay in LEO, Rutan and Steve Wynn will already have a hotel/casino on the moon."

I'll put my money on Burt Rutan.

[MtViewGuy]

Mostly because the White Knight/SpaceShipOne combination has demonstrated it can fly to 100 km altitude, even though the last flight wasn't perfect.

Meanwhile, the da Vinci project has yet to prove it can fly to 100 km altitude with its final flight hardware; they probably need to do a couple of test flights before attempting to win the X-Prize.

Re:I'll put my money on Burt Rutan.

[kfg]

I'll bet on Burt Rutan because I'd never bet against him. I dislike losing money.

KFG

Re:I'll put my money on Burt Rutan.

[corngrower]

Same here. The guy definitely has a 'can do' attitude. Seems like anything he sets his mind on doing, he'll get it done.

Re:I'll put my money on Burt Rutan.

[TMB]

I suppose that's better than a Candu attitude. ;-)

[TMB]

Re:I'll put my money on Burt Rutan.

[uberdave]

I'm not sure if you read the article you linked to, so here are a few quotes:

• CANDU reacts natural, unenriched uranium... This means that they can be operated without expensive fuel enrichment facilities.
• The pressure tube design means that the reactor can be refuelled continuously, without shutting down, as the fuel channels can be accessed individually.
• CANDU are designed to be constructed without large pressure vessels. The large pressure vessels commonly used in light-water reactors are extremely expensive, and require heavy industry that is lacking in many countries.
• The reactor has the least down-time of any known type.
• Another advantage is that fuel use is the most efficient known.
• CANDU can even be operated to "burn" nuclear waste to a less-reactive state.

So, CANDU reactors are efficient, cheap, and safe. Sounds like a CANDU attitude is a good thing.

Re:I'll put my money on Burt Rutan.

[TMB]

I was thinking more along the lines of the first reactor meltdown... though it was more of a prototype than a full Candu design. ;-)

[TMB]

Canadians second in getting there

[Marxist Hacker 42]

But I wouldn't be surprised if they end up first on fuel usage- since they're using a balloon for the first stage.

And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[chill]

Re-reading the earlier article about James van Allen questioning the validity of human spaceflight, it struck me that his only argument was about scientific knowledge and research.

No mention of capitalistic exploit, such as mining of minerals; low-G manufacturing; etc.

He's probably right as far as it goes, but I don't think any of the teams competing for the X-Prize have scientific research as their primary goal.

If nothing else, just seeing the variety of launch vechile styles and different approaches to the same basic problem is worth the effort.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Or for that matter, population pressure. The way livable real estate is going on earth, within the next five centuries for sure and maybe even after just one century, land will be so expensive that it will be a good deal to put bubble cities on Mars to exile people to.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[Christopher Chang]

I don't buy the population pressure rationale. It will be cheaper to build underground cities than to build space bubbles on Mars.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[Sgt York]

No mention of capitalistic exploit, such as mining of minerals; low-G manufacturing; etc.

I was talking with a friend a while back, who brought up a good point for Rutan's concept having a real commercial application : travel. Not tourist travel, but actual travel to other places.

Rutan apparently has an orbital vehicle on the drawing board that is a scaled up version of SS1 (rumor only, AFAIK). If something like this could be set up, it's about 2hr to anywhere in the world. Even for $10k, there are a lot of business travellers whose time is worth that much.

Think two hours from NYC to Sydney or Tokyo, compared to 17+ by passenger jet. It's a niche market, but there are people that travel very long distances like that who would like to be able to do it much faster, and are willing to pay a lot for the ability. They already purchase day-of-travel prices with first class tickets; how much is that from NYC to Tokyo?

The niche is small, but probably big enough to sustain a company or two. And that sounds kind of like the start of the airline industry, minus the government subsidy.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[cmowire]

Alternatively, give people the option between fronteer life on Mars/Asteroids/etc. where you can have as many kids as you can support, and a 2 kid max on Earth (although preferebly not enforced the way they do in China).

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[jcr]

Think two hours from NYC to Sydney or Tokyo, compared to 17+ by passenger jet. It's a niche market, but there are people that travel very long distances like that who would like to be able to do it much faster, and are willing to pay a lot for the ability.

It's not as small a niche as you think. Picture a factory that's down at a cost of $1M/hour, waiting for a technician to arrive and fix a critical piece of equipment. $10K for the ride? No problem!

-jcr

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[AuMatar]

I'm not so sure its niche. If I could fly to europe in 2 hrs, I could make it a weekend trip. As it is now, it'd have to be a week vacation. I'd definitely be buying some tickets.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[geomon]

...low-G manufacturing...

More budget-bloating propaganda from your friends at NASA.

No one has ever shown the viability, or the necessity, of low-G manufacturing.

Search the American Physical Society for the "What's New" newsletter archives. Bob Park and other renown scientists can give you plenty to chew on regarding the utility of low-G manufacturing.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[wankledot]

You've never driven across the US, have you? "livable real estate" is by no means scarse. Sure, buying a house in Seattle is tough these days, but that's a choice I make to live here.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[Sgt York]

The "niche" comes in when you look at the price. Probably in the realm of $10k each way at first. Cost would come down, of course, but at first it would be niche.

The technician scenario above certainly makes sense, though. Hadn't thought of that one. I will now go seek markets where that scenario would apply, and become a highly skilled technician in that field.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Once we hit 80 billion, those underground cities will be VERY crowded....but hey, if we're lucky, we'll create an environmental disaster long before 2150 and we'll never reach 80 billion to begin with.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Most of the US is basically desert or high mountainous regions- if the lack of water doesn't get you, the winters will. There's a REASON why all that land is empty.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[NeoThermic]

>> Rutan apparently has an orbital vehicle on the drawing board that is a scaled up version of SS1

Not exactly a rumor. SpaceShipTwo and SpaceShipThree are on the boards, the latter being orbital IIRC.

There was an information page on their timelines, but its seeminly vanished...

NeoThermic

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[interiot]

You've never heard of exponential population growth, have you? Every 36 years, the world will have half as much space per person as we do now. In 72 years, a quarter. In two centuries, a 47th as much free space. In three centuries, one 322nd as much free space. In four centuries, 2200 times less space per person as we do now. Does the earth have enough space for that?

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a REASON why all that land is empty.

...for now.

It will become more appealing to live there as other places get more crowded. Northern New Mexico STILL looks more hospitable than freakin' underground cities.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[dabraun]

What, you've never seen the midwest? It's a bunch of open space - much of it is used for agriculture but we don't even need most of that agriculture as we have the capacity to produce so much food already that we pay farmers not to produce it.

Also, the popluation of the US is declining if you take away immigration. Fewer and fewer people are having lots of children - because most people are more interested in pursuing their own lives for longer and simply don't have time to have lots of children.

Land is scarse around major cities in the US - but there is no nationwide land shortage.

Now, this is bound to piss someone off but ...

We have significant population growth in 3rd world countries where women still live highly restricted lives and frankly have nothing better to do than have more children. These are the same countries that regularly experience mass famine. This works out in the end - by the time society reaches the point where most people don't die from disease people have also decided that there are more interesting things to do in life than have 10 children.

Then we go into those 3rd world countries and bring them medecine that they don't even understand - massively disrupting the balance that would otherwise exist.

Yes, we are going to be swamped with people from 3rd world countries in a few hundred years - we the '1st world' are going to weed ourselves right out of the gene pool.

Pretty sad actually.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[AKAImBatman]

80 billion people?! Where in the world are you finding numbers to support the idea that the population will reach 80 billion?! There are only about 7 billion people in the world today, and that number hasn't budged much in 20-30 years! At the current rate of population increase, we should have a problem... errm... lemme see... NEVER!

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[dourk]

On my last trip to Vegas, I noticed quite a bit of empty land right here on earth.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[wankledot]

A better question is will the population grow at that same rate. Even with 2000 times less space (which I doubt would happen that fast), I would be willing to bet that there will still be enough space.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[wankledot]

Yeah, we had better let those people in Denver, Alaska, Las Vegas and phoenix know that they weather is going to kill them. The fastest growing city in the US is in the middle of a desert, and that's not stopping it at all.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[Billy the Mountain]

I was talking with a friend a while back, who brought up a good point for Rutan's concept having a real commercial application : travel. Not tourist travel, but actual travel to other places.

Out of curiousity, I had been exploring these ideas recently. The problem is there's really no free launch, er lunch. SS1 can go pretty well straight up, but in current configuration have a heck of a time if it was also required to go horizontally. I think I remember reading that it's ballistics could send it 26 miles down range. (and that's all in a flight lasting more than an hour) It's true that a commercial jet has to suffer slogging through the draggy atmosphere to get anywhere, but it really does take a terrific amount of energy to touch space and travel somewhere else for any significant distance, even though the in-transit costs are basically free.

BTM

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[mforbes]

That population isn't evenly distributed. Places like India and China are intensely crowded already, while vast areas of Canada, the US, and Russia are sparesely settled if at all. Additionally, if not for immigration then the population of the US would actually be declining. China's population still has a while to go before theirs starts to decline-- gotta wait for the elderly to start dying in droves. India's, I have no idea what the growth rate (current or projected) looks like. Unless a better treatment for AIDS is found in the next couple of decades, Africa stands to lose a LOT of population.

The end result will be that some areas of the world, just like today, suffer from incredible population pressure; while others barely support anyone at all.

The problem isn't leibenschraum (apologies to German readers if I spelled that wrong). It's scarcity of resources.

Think about all the metals available in just one small asteroid, if only we had the technology to get there, bring it home, and mine it.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[MrWa]

Is there any real evidence to support the notion that our population growth is out of control? Now that it looks like the more "advanced" nations are having a problem with population decline (e.g. Japan and USA), what does this mean for other nations. Might the growth just appear to be explosive now and once technology and culture catch up, it might slow down to a sustainable level?
Land is a scarce commodity through unnatural reasons. If we allowed humans to live every that was not used for farming, the amount of growth that could be sustained is probably a lot more than what we currently have. Even food shortages are more of a logistical or political issue, not a supply issue.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[JDevers]

Are you serious? There were roughly 2.5 billion people in 1950 and under a billion in 1900. Now 80 billion is definitely a bit out there, but 12-15 billion by 2150 is definitely possible.

Here are a few links:
http://www.prb.org/Content/NavigationMenu/ PRB/Educ ators/Human_Population/Population_Growth/Populatio n_Growth.htm
http://www.cmu.org.uk/demography/05p op/pop_index.h tm
http://darwin.bio.uci.edu/~sustain/bio65/lec16 /b65 lec16.htm#HUMAN%20POPULATION%20GROWTH

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[josquint]

I dont know about 80 billion, but IIRC back in grade skool(20 years ago), we were estimated at about 5 to 5.5 billion

so 1.5 billion in 20 years, at a linear increase(which its definitly not) that puts it about 19 billion at 2150..

but who knows, gotta have a good poplulation decrease by that time anyway :)

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[wankledot]

30 years ago the world population was 4.014B, 20 years ago it was 4.77B, 10 years 5.615M You are right though, the 80 billion number is bunk.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[Sgt York]

You're right, SS1 probably isn't cut out for the task. It doesn't have the range to get any travel done; all the input it makes isn't enough to get "over the hump" to the orbital horizontal payoff. The White Knight would be able to give more downrange ability. However, according to rumor (and NeoThermic), there are SS2 & SS3 in the works, and SS3 at least will be orbital-capable. There's the payoff. NeoThermic put up the confirmation (thanks!)

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[rsmith-mac]

With your desert examples, it's worth noting that the cities in those areas are approaching situations where they will be dealing with water shortages, as the Colorado River is already being whittled down to a small stream by the time it leaves the States. There are only a couple of rivers in the SW that can support a major population right now, and they're all in use; you can pretty much count another Phoenix out of the picture in another decade or so.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[wankledot]

Hmm, 2 hours to anywhere in the world would mean the plane would have to travel at 6000 miles an hour (mach 8.5) Are any of these planes/spacecraft designed to go that fast? And that's not even taking into account takeoff and landing times. Spaceship one goes up to mach 3 right now, it looks like.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[Shihar]

Humans are never going to 'run out of land' such that it makes sense to build in space or on mars. Walk to the east coast of the US and look east. See that massive blue thing out there? That is 2/3 of the world's surface and there is absolutely nothing on it. Now consider that there is plenty of room under the ocean and plenty of room both above and below all the land we currently inhabit. Hell, look at Canada. The population could easily grow ten times and there would still be enough room for everyone.

The bigger issue of course are resouces and places to grow. Growing is probably less of an issue then resources. By the time it becomes an issue, we will probably easily be able to produce soil easily for underground/underocean/skyscrapper green houses and have the power to keep the lights on. The much bigger issue is just getting enough raw resources to meet our ever expanding needs and desires, which is where space comes in.

There is a lot of stuff out there we could harvest and a lot of ways that that stuff could make our life better. Aside from this, a lot of people just have an exploration spirit and would jump at the chance to live some place other then earth. While this might not offer any immediet rewards, it would in the very least spread the human seed around such that we are not so dependent upon earth always existing.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I was thinking a WORLDWIDE land shortage- not the US alone. It's the 3rd world that will swamp us. Of course, I'm also for isolationism and creating MORE land and MORE jobs in the United States.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, 80 Billion is way over the top, but you're spouting just as much FUD as he is.

From the linked article:
For the last 50 years, world population multiplied more rapidly than ever before...

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[mrchaotica]

if the lack of water doesn't get you, the winters will.

What, and you think MARS is better?!

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Actually, in the last 30 years, we've added a billion a decade- and the rate is still increasing...there were only 4 billion people in the world in 1974. 80 billion is inevitable within the next 5 centuries. At which point we will hit the carrying capacity of the Earth. It's the rice on the chessboard problem- take a bag of rice. And a chessboard. Every turn, put down twice as many grains of rice- one on the first move, two on the second, four on the third, etc. Eventually you'll have half the chessboard full- and on the next turn you won't have any more room for grains of rice.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

And would you want to live there- given that there is little to no water? There's a REASON Nevada has more BLM land than any other state in the Union.

I noticed the same thing- about the time I also noticed that I hadn't seen a creek within 30 miles.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[Razor Blades are Not]

A First Class ticket to Australia is in the vicinity of $4K already. That's a 14 hour trip without stops. Anyone willing to spend four thousand dollars to get there in style in 14 hours may spend twice that to get there in a quarter of the time.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

And your water will come from where?

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[Moridineas]

That's hogwash.

Remember the dire population growth warnings from the 60's and 70's? No neither do I because they were just wrong. Population growth has already slowed considerably. Once countries like India develope more, their birthrates will fall as well.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Have you ever seen the price of land go DOWN? Eventually the human race will NEED new frontiers- that'll be the point where Mars becomes cheap by comparison. Heck, we might even end up seeing Asimov's idea of shipping in water from Saturn become a reality.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[pokeyburro]

I don't buy it either, for a different reason: I don't think shipping people into space could overcome the growth rate. Right now there's over 25000 new people on the earth every day, even accounting for deaths. You might get that many people moving with multiple space elevators, but with current techniques, I don't think we could produce fuel, vehicles, platforms, and launches fast enough.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[ThosLives]

I really wish folks would remember that "Mach" isn't a speed at all, but a measure of dynamic pressure. As you get less and less atmosphere, the speed of Mach 1 changes. Since, even in space, there is *some* small medium there is a Mach speed, but it's sure not the same as Mach 1 here at "ground level" As it is, Mach 1 easily changes 10% just going up to 35000 feet. Using Mach as a speed for anything other than compressible flow calculations ranks right up there on my pet-peeve list...

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[Dun Malg]

And would you want to live there- given that there is little to no water? There's a REASON Nevada has more BLM land than any other state in the Union. I noticed the same thing- about the time I also noticed that I hadn't seen a creek within 30 miles.

There's a lot of water there, it's just underground. Seriously, the Great Basin (northern Nevada, essentially) is like a giant funnel that directs millions of acre-feet of water down towards the colorado river, most of it underground. People don't live there because a) it sucks, climate wise and b) there's already plenty of awful places to live that are closer to metropolitan areas.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[grozzie2]

It's not as small a niche as you think. Picture a factory that's down at a cost of $1M/hour,

There's already a whole industry built around this. One of the mainstays of income for the air taxi business, is moving parts on a rush order because equipment is down in the field. I did a job a few weeks ago where we were delivering parts into the field, as they came out of the machine shop from fabrication. We would dispatch an airplane the moment the part arrived. Each piece weighed about 200 pounds. There's 4 flights a day by airline to the destination, it would have cost about 100 dollars each to ship on the airline. The private air taxi cost about $5000 per trip. Each delivery brought another machine back online, and the downtime estimate was on the order of $5000 a minute in cost (per machine). Nobody blinked at the price of the charters, they were only interested in 'how fast can we get it there'. Nobody was interested in holding the parts till the next scheduled airline departure to save 4800 on shipping costs.

These types of jobs are not at all unusual for air taxi operators.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[Dibblah]

http://www.prb.org/Content/NavigationMenu/PRB/Educ ators/Human_Population/Population_Growth/Populatio n_Growth.htm
http://www.cmu.org.uk/demography/05pop/pop_index.h tm
http://darwin.bio.uci.edu/~sustain/bio65/lec16/b65 lec16.htm#HUMAN%20POPULATION%20GROWTH

, even.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[Anonymous Coward]

80 billion is inevitable within the next 5 centuries.

Bollocks. For the last 40 years, projected population estimates have been way over the actual numbers when the calender rolled around to the predicted dates.
Population growth rate has been steadily declining for decades as standards of living improve
1. Each extra year in school significantly decreases the total number of children a girl will bear in her lifetime (literacy is the most effective vector for birth control methods), and
2. It's damned expensive to rear children in a developed country, compared to a subsistence economy where they can go out in the fields at age three to scare birds off the crops..

I can't find the estimate at the moment, but IIRC, world population is estimated to peak sometime around 2050 at 12 billion people, and then start declining: I think I saw the exact figures (probably overestimates) somewhere in this book, but i'm too drunk at the moment to fish them out.
Human beings aren't rats, or bacteria, and don't breed like rats or bacteria...

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[norkakn]

That would be the crappiest job though, you'd be flown everywhere at a moments notice and then have to take the slow way back.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[lga]

Does the earth have enough space for that?
Perhaps not, but they can all have an IP address thanks to IPv6!

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[norkakn]

maybe then they will stop watering the damn lawns

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[leeward]

Don't take it personally, but I am always amazed when I hear someone say something like this. And that is entirely too often. I can only assume that a person who says this is a "city boy", who thinks that food comes from a store, and water comes from a faucet, and gas comes from a gas station, and electricity comes from a power outlet...

I'm not real sure what your definition of "livable" is, but I think you will find that the environment will undergo total collapse long before all that space is filled with people.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[lonesome phreak]

I live in the Midwest. There is quite a bit of open land, and much of it is highly habitable. You could probably up the population 10x before running out of land.

Now, running out of resources for all those people is a completely different story. The logistics of supply would also be a nightmare, especially water. But, the lack of resources is even worse on Mars or the Moon, since you can't even attempt to grow anything "outside", except maybe some microbial lifeforms.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[Anonymous Coward]

that fits with the whole mormon idea of going to the most inhospitable places and bring as many into this world (or universe) as they can

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[9Nails]

2 Hours sounds good. But 54 minutes sounds better!

http://media.dsc.discovery.com/convergence/engin ee ring/transatlantictunnel/interactive/interactive.h tml

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[corngrower]

The problem isn't leibenschraum (apologies to German readers if I spelled that wrong). It's scarcity of resources.

Yes. And resources will become more scarce in decades to come. Just think, when oil reserves give out, no more plastic (let alone fuel). My prediction when this happens - massive wars, and starvation. Today's high ag output is supported by chemical fertilizers and pesticides, made from petroleum, remember. Ever heard the history behind Easter Island? My advice: think about the world your grandchildren will be inheriting.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[Ben Hutchings]

Modern agriculture also requires lots of fuel for farm machinery, irrigation in some cases, and distribution.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[CaptainAvatar]

As the AC said, bollocks. The rate of increase is decreasing . The absolute increase is also decreasing. The UN's latest projections have a majority of even the developing countries falling below the replacement level. And on their "low" projection, the absolute world population peaks at less than 8 billion in the 2030s and then starts declining. (The other projections will also peak, but beyond the UN's 2050 cutoff date.) Who knows? Maybe things will change again and we will end up with a population of 80 billion by 2500. But it's absurd to assert that it's inevitable. On current trends, it's not even likely.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[Anonymous Coward]

And wells have been causing ground water levels to steadily drop over the last 10 years through most of the Colorado and Mississippi basins for the last 20 years

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[Zakabog]

Umm he has a very good point, have you ever driven across the country? Most of the US is not "basically desert" or "high mountainous regions." Jeez just look at a topographical map of the US, there's a huge flat spot between the east coast and the mountains to the west, that's not all desert (actually I don't think any of it is, except like parts of texas and new mexico. The winters aren't unbearable in these areas, Alaska gets pretty cold but people still live there. And currently I'm in Phoenix, I'm pretty sure this entire area was nothing but desert although you'd never be able to tell just living here. I've had more drought warnings in NY than I've had here. It might be terrible taking up the entire US (there's a lot of nice land to see when you drive cross country, hate to see it all become a city) but it's deffinitely possible and I can't forsee this happening within the next 200 years or even in 500 years (we focus more on building up, not building across, I can see having huge apartment buildings towering over NYC, but can't see all the land in the US being taken up.)

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[linzeal]

Enforce it by sterilizing all of one sex at birth (females) and growing the children in artificial wombs.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[Kenshin]

The Concorde did it in not too much more than that.

Until one crashed, and people got scared away, of course. (ONE crash, in 30 years of service.)

But no, I can't picture anything going wrong with a space vehicle...

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[Ariane 6]

My school flew me to Germany from Honolulu for a conference last month...It lasted a week, and took about 30 hours each way to get there, on eight different aircraft. Once an SS1-derivative craft goes online, a ballistic flight might only be slightly more expensive, as it could reduce the number of aircraft involved considerably. This might go a long way towards offsetting the money spent on R&D.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[amdg]

...it will be a good deal to put bubble cities on Mars to exile people to.

Great idea! I say we send the telephone cleaners and hairdressers first.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[Chris Tucker]

"Search the American Physical Society for the "What's New" newsletter archives. Bob Park and other renown scientists can give you plenty to chew on regarding the utility of low-G manufacturing."

I refer you to Clarke's First and Second Laws .

Particularly the First Law.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[Galvatron]

The current population of the earth could fit in the Grand Canyon with a population density similar to Tokyo. Who modded this insightful?

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[Dun Malg]

And wells have been causing ground water levels to steadily drop over the last 10 years through most of the Colorado and Mississippi basins for the last 20 years

Which is true, but entirely beside the point. The OP opined that there was no water visible, therefore no water. I was merely offering a correction.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[dangermouse]

bullshit.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[Johnno74]

Yes, SOMETIME it will definitely be worth us going into space, to live. But I agree with James van Allen in saying that the only reason right now is exploration, but there isn't anything wrong with that.

The way I see it, there are two reasons why its not worth going out into space right now.

1) Its very difficult, and hence expensive. Its all fine and dandy talking about the resources ripe for the picking out there, but right now its just not worth the effort. We've got enough of those resources down here (for now) and its hard to see a return on investing in asteroid mining right now.

2) Who really wants to live out there? We've got wide open spaces down here, plenty of fresh air (for now), nature around us (again, for now...)
Living in space or on some airless rock doesn't appeal to many people, compared to how we've got it down here.

BUT - both of these things will probably change, the way we're going with our planet. Unfortunately unless we change our ways in a hundred years or two, we'll mainly be living under glass domes or in underground caverns. Either that or we're exinct...
If we are forced into using technology like closed biospheres that is currently only used for space travel to just survive, then we'll have no option but get a lot better at it, and suddenly spreading to live on other planets will be both cheaper and more attractive.

If we continue to fuck up this planet, its much more likely we'll spread out across our solar system, and maybe one day to others.

I believe we should start expanding our knowledge and developing techniques for space exploration now though, while time is on our side.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[hcdejong]

But Concorde promised faster travel (albeit only Mach 2), and it failed (commercially, that is). IIRC most countries wouldn't certify it for continental flights because of the sonic boom issue, which limited Concorde to only a few routes, which limited sales to ~17 planes, keeping cost high.
How much of an issue would this be with the Rutan concept?

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[Anonymous Coward]

I spent all my weekends in Europe, traveltime is 0 hours and it costs nothing to travel.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[arivanov]

Err... and what were all those 75% of ocean surface all about once again?

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[arivanov]

80 billion from where? You have based your predictions on UN population increase statistics from before the AIDS when there were countries like Cuba which were spouting 4.8% annual growth (number from the mid-70ies).

This is no longer the case. All these countries now have negative growth as the fertile population is dying of AIDS and TB faster then it grows, mainland China is also being hit by AIDS and is on its way towards negative growth, so on so fourth, leaving only Muslim countries and India with a positive growth for the time being.

Where exactly do you see this population increase? Decrease in about 10 years if infection rates remain the same - more likely.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[nvioli]

does anyone know why these trips are so much shorter? is it just faster jets, or lower air resistance, or earth rotation? or something else?

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[TheCrazyFinn]

Canada, and the upper plains, not to mention the Pacific Northwest.

Most of the US is NOT water-poor. Canada is bloody well flooded.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that it looks like the more "advanced" nations are having a problem with population decline (e.g. Japan and USA), what does this mean for other nations.

What it looks like is that nations/cultures that don't support any rights for women, where the women is nothing more then a baby-cooker and the goal is as many as possible... are the countries that are going to dominate the next century.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[geomon]

That is also referred to as the logical fallacy of "The Appeal to Authority" argument.

The difference between my assurance that Park et al. have it right and the "others" have it wrong is based on the fact that Park et al. are scientists and the folks who make bugetary decisions at NASA are often career administrators.

When given the choice between a scientist and an administrator on matters regarding the usefulness of something in the field of science, I tend to lean toward the sciencey-types.

I'll admit my bias in this regard, but it is well earned. I am a scientist who has worked at a US Department of Energy site for thirteen years. Believe me, science can take a back seat to politics.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[Chris Tucker]

Was it Vannevar Bsuh who said that computers would be as big as the Empire State Building and need to be cooled by the water flow of Niagria Falls?

Let's Google and find out!

WikiPedia sez: : "Vannevar Bush has an unfortunate eponym: vannevar [1] owing to his habit of overestimating technological challenges. He asserted that a nuclear weapon could not be made small enough to fit in the nose of a missile as in an ICBM. He also predicted "electronic brains" the size of the Empire State Building with a Niagara Falls-scale cooling system."

And he was a Scientist who should have known better, partiularly the comment about computers. The folks at Bell Labs had demonstrated the transistor previously to Bush's statement. The implications of the transistor were well known in the scientific community at the time.

I guess Bush missed that memo from the Terran Science Council.

Scientists are proved wrong every day. That's how science works.

And as for 'office' politics, well, we all of us know how absolutely apolitical scientists are, solely devoting all their scientific energies to making new discoveries in the Field of Science! (Gratuitous reference to The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra . Collect 'em all!)

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[geomon]

Did I say scientists couldn't be wrong?

Nope. In fact, let's get in the wayback machine and see just what I said:

"When given the choice between a scientist and an administrator on matters regarding the usefulness of something in the field of science, I tend to lean toward the sciencey-types."

You also missed one of my favorite science vs. science gaffs, one from right here in the heart of the Pacific Northwest. For background more, google J. Harlen Bretz and the Missoula Floods.

Bretz was a mere public education science teacher who pitted his interpretation of the Channeled Scablands against all of the scientific conventional wisdom of his day. It wasn't until the Corp of Engineers started flying over Eastern Washington that Bretz's opinions began to take hold.

You also missed Fahrenheit's famous 'miss' regarding the age of the Earth.

These examples are, among others, why I cited "The Appeal to Authority" fallacy. The problem with low-G manufacturing is that the testing performed so far has produced not one interesting result. Yet it is paraded out as one of the Holy Grail-ish reasons to go to space.

I personally like the idea of adventure. Sending out humans to do a robots work has an important psychological factor. I once had a copy of a political cartoon done by Pat Oliphant that showed a group of people standing at the edge of the Great Plains watching an unmanned Conestoga Wagon headed out into the frontier. The gist of the text below it was "How the West Would Have Been Explored if We Hadn't Sent Settlers".

That comic was published shortly after the Columbia explosion.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[hesiod]

> I'm not real sure what your definition of "livable" is, but I think you will find that the environment will undergo total collapse long before all that space is filled with people.

I'm not sure what you mean by "collapse," but I think you'll find that there's no reason to believe it will happen because of people moving.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[Croaker]

Basically, lack of air resistance. Flight in the lower atmosphere is basically limited by air friction. The SR-71 Blackhawk flew high up in the atmosphere, and at Mach 3 it heated up so much it would actually expand a measurable amount. Getting much faster than that within the atmosphere would be a major technical challenge.

Get above the atmopshere, and you can pretty much go as fast as you want without worrying about air friction burning you up (well, until it's time to come back down again...). Also, you don't have to keep expending fuel to fight the air friction once you're up there... you're basically coasting.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[Scrameustache]

The rate of increase is decreasing . The absolute increase is also decreasing. The UN's latest projections have a majority of even the developing countries falling below the replacement level. And on their "low" projection, the absolute world population peaks at less than 8 billion in the 2030s and then starts declining.

Ah, AIDS, curse, or blessing?
What's worse I often wonder, an overpopulated world where people die of hunger (yeah, I know many already do, but stay with me here), or a less overpopulated world where people die of AIDS (well, or of whatever kills you after AIDS weakened you).

And I say to myself: what a wonderfull world...

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[Suidae]

The SR-71 Blackhawk

Ugh, can we revoke your geek license for that?

flew high up in the atmosphere, and at Mach 3 it heated up so much it would actually expand a measurable amount

About a 9 inch increase in overall length. And the leading edges tended to sharpen as the material was worn away. They would eventually become knife-sharp (but were generally replaced first, evidently there are performance issues with very sharp leading edges).

Da Vinci Tests?

[TheFlyingGoat]

The Da Vinci project looks to only have a couple of tests to date, and none carrying a passenger to any notable altitude. The most information I could find is here. Have they done the testing that SpaceShipOne has, or are they just making a hasty attempt to try beating the SpaceShipOne team? Hopefully it's been tested enough that nobody gets hurt.

YAY

[Anonymous Coward]

something to take my mind off of the perils of society. A good ol' boomin' rocket shitfest. Competition = good.

WOW already slashdotted

[eadint]

I wanted to actually RTFA but i couldn't. one thing is that i don't remember hearing about a Canadian test shoot. so i wonder who in their camp is crazy enough to attempt this without even making sure that it really works. i used to think that Canadians were beer drinking mellow hockey guys that said ay allot but i guess they got some cahones in the great white north.

Re:WOW already slashdotted

[Doctor Crumb]

It's a *balloon*. If the first stage fails, odds are good they can float back to earth, drinking beers and being mellow all the way.

Also, it's 'eh', not 'ay'.

Re:WOW already slashdotted

[geomon]

...beer drinking mellow hockey guys...

I can't believe you put all of those words together in one sentence.

I have NEVER met a beer drinking, mellow, hockey guy in 43 years.

Re:WOW already slashdotted

[DarkMantle]

You never met a Canadian I take it... "who in their camp is crazy enough..." we're all crazy... "Canadians were beer drinking mellow hockey guys".... we are.

"they got some cahones in the great white north." Damn straight we do :D

Re:WOW already slashdotted

[Anonymous Coward]

wow, big surprise, you didn't hear about the canadian effort.

I'll assume you are american.

It appears at least one of you dumbasses is actually learning that there is a whole world outside your damn borders!

The Canadian project has been considered to be one of the fore-runners for the x-prize, but as usual your media couldn't possibly show you anything but what you're own country does.

Wake up, the USA is just one backward dumbass corner of the world!

Time to Space

[usefool]

Did X Prize specify the maximum time allowed from launch to reaching the space?

The da Vinci Project Team is using helium balloon to lift its rocket for the first part of its journey, and SpaceOne is using WhiteKnight which goes round and round until it reaches a certain altitude.

Re:Time to Space

[Ayaress]

I don't remember ever seeing any time limit for the launch itself, just the turnaround time, which I suppose is from the first launch to the second landing? Or second launch? Either way, unless they take a week to get from ground to orbit, they should be ok.

Re:Time to Space

[corngrower]

Did X Prize specify the maximum time allowed from launch to reaching the space?

Well, indirectly. Since the second flight must be completed within two weeks of the first, you'ld have up to two weeks to reach space from launch, assuming zero turnaround time.

Re:Da Vinci Tests? (LINK IS HERE)

[TheFlyingGoat]

Oops. I'm a web developer and can't form a simple link. :)

here (real link this time)

Re:What the Devil is Bezos up to?

[cmowire]

You do realize that lifters are absolutely useless for real space travel. Electrogravitic? No, just Ion Wind -- same thing as the Sharper Image Ionic Breeze, which also doesn't work as well as the designers claim. ;)

You are laboring under the misassumption that all of the space activity is solely built around solving the prize. In fact, the prize is only the first step. The real prize is building a company that operates spaceflight JetBlue-style and/or builds the craft. Bezos is a little late to the game for an X-prize run, so if he doesn't give up partway through, I doubt anybody will know much substantial for another few years.

Check out some SpaceShipOne hardware.

[funny-jack]

For anyone who is interested, check out the Dynon EFIS-D10, a basically home-brew electronic flight information system that went up in SpaceShipOne.

Re:Check out some SpaceShipOne hardware.

[Anonymous Coward]

A recent hardware rumor suggests Burt Rutan will be wearing his Air Force Ones in his SpaceShipOne. I had no idea that Nike was involved with them.

Git doooowwn wid'it Rutan...

Re:Check out some SpaceShipOne hardware.

[Anonymous Coward]

Astronautics makes the EFIS for the space shuttles, and air force one. www.astronautics.com

Re:Is this supposed to be a new form of mass trans

[AKAImBatman]

No, it's not supposed to be a new form of transit. It's a new form of developing space hardware in the private sector. Early NASA and USSR flights focused on putting a man up high enough, then bringing him back down. That allowed them to test airframe, recovery methods, and engines without jumping straight to building a Saturn V. The knowledge gained from these flights was then used to put Yuri Gugarin (sp?) and John Glenn into actual orbit.

The point of the 100km flight is to reproduce much of that research. If we end up with 10 engines that can make the altitude, then at least some of those engines and airframes may be scalable to orbital flight. Even if they aren't, certain points in their design may be useful in designing cheaper and better airframes and engines.

Aargh

[Anonymous Coward]

1 - Being a Canadian, I should be cheering for da Vinci. But Rutan is my hero.

2 - There's nothing on the da Vinci site about launching on Aug. 5. It looks like the site was last updated on July 10.

3 - The X Prize site looks like it has an interesting story, but you need a password to get at it.

4 - Similar to at least one other poster, I am seriously worried that da Vinci is not sufficiently tested.

Aargh, aargh, aargh, aargh!

Re:Aargh

[Doctor Crumb]

They're actually just 'rolling out' the craft on august 5th, which I believe means it's finished, not that they're going to actually launch it that day.

Re:Aargh

[madprogrammer]

The da Vinci Project has been trying to keep a low profile and hasn't been making a lot of announcements... kinda like Rutan before the actual launch to space.

Also, da Vinci Project is entirely volunteer based, so the website gets updated when people have time. Keep checking the site though, there must be something in store since this is the least amount of activity on that site in a while.

Re:DaVinci

[abigor]

"Too bad they're Canadian, though....."

Fuck you too, shithead.

Re:Second Place

[Anonymous Coward]

Second to none!

Interesting Numbers

[grozzie2]

The interesting thing comparing Da Vinci project to the effort at Scaled Composites. There's more than enough rumors within industry, and outside it, that peg the Spaceship One project price tag in the 20 million dollar range, one can probably assume there's some basis behind that number. There's another article on the Da Vinci stuff here that pegs numbers on the Da Vinci expenses. They are quoted at $337,000, doesn't specifically say cdn dollars, but every other number in the article is tagged as $us. It's a canadian paper, the figure is likely $cdn, which puts it around 1/4 million us dollars.

It's NOT a given that Spaceship One will walk away with the X-prize. A lot of folks seem to think it is, but, those same folks thought shuttle flights were routine, uneventful, and safe. Flying into space is HARD. SS1 has a good chance at it, but this craft will be ready to give it a shot.

It would certainly go with the spririt of the X-Prize to see this true 'backyard' effort pull it out of the blue, and beat SS1 to the X-Prize finish line. Nothing against Rutan and his team, but, X-Prize was meant to spark the real backyard innovation. Da Vinci project is just that. I think it would be great to see them scoop the prize out from under the noses of the foks that spent 20 million to achieve the same goal.

Re:Interesting Numbers

[Anonymous Coward]

Take off, ya hoser.

Re:Interesting Numbers

[Coryoth]

You do realize that, as far as designing reusable space faring vehicles goes, $20 million is practically nothing and qualifies as a "true 'backyard' effort" as far as the aerospace industry is concerned?

I agree that it would be nice to see the Da Vinci Project do well, but as it stands it's pretty much untested. It's worth noting that Scaled was doing test flights over a year ago. Da Vinci could work, but I have yet to be convinced. It will certainly be interesting to see how it pans out.

Don't write Scaled off just because they have some cash behind them - in aerospace terms they have hardly any cash behind them (it costs way more just to buy a 747 than they've spent on the entire design, construction and testing of their project so far).

Jedidiah.

Re:Interesting Numbers

[wjwlsn]

It'll never happen. Even though it's a private project, the Canadian government will find a way to cancel it the day before it's supposed to go (probably some stupid public safety thing, or maybe because the team isn't half-francophone). They'll confiscate and burn all the drawings and models and chop up the vehicle and sell it for scrap. They might use some of the parts to patch up the broke-ass Sea King helicopters until the replacements get here, assuming they don't cancel those too.

Re:Interesting Numbers

[grozzie2]

Check your history a little better. That's what happens right after the conservatives win an election. They lost. Wildfire is safe from the choppers on this go round.

Within the industry, diefenbaker will forever be known as the farmer from saskatchewan that killed an industry. I think it's rather ironic that wildfire will attempt to fly from his back yard.

Re:Interesting Numbers

[grozzie2]

I'm well aware of how the aerospace industry burns money, I've been involved in it for the last 28 years. The point is, it doesn't have to be that way.

If you take a look at the methodologies used by NASA and thier contractors, and present them with a requirement for a man rated design, from scratch, to exit the atmosphere, the project would have to be cut to the teeth to achieve flight hardware by the time they burned thru 2 billion dollars. Scaled composites did it for 20 million, that's 2 orders of magnitude less. Along comes Da Vinci, and they did it for another 2 orders of magnitude less, with the caveat it has not been flight tested yet. Even if they use 100 dollar bills for fuel on the flights, they'll still end up an order of magnitude cheaper than Scaled.

The real difference between scaled and da vinci is in methodology. Scaled is a group of professional engineers, working on a budget with a benefactor. It's a full time job, and everybody is collecting a salary. Da Vinci is driven by professional engineers, working in thier spare time, and collecting satisfaction for thier efforts. Has anybody seen this contrast in methodologies before ? It's kind of ironic that the 'big budget' x-prize vehicle is funded by Microsoft money, and the long shot contender is a volunteer collaborative effort.

The real point is, the aerospace industry as we know it is carrying a LOT of fat, mostly due to the fact it's driven by government contracts. the job can be done 2 orders of magnitude cheaper, Rutan and crowd have proven it. Collaboration and co-operation works, and it would be great to see the Da Vinci folks prove that too, in a field other than software.

At this point in time, scaled is the odds on favorite to grab the prize. Da Vinci has yet to fly hardware. that doesn't mean it's not gonna fly, or it's incapable of flying, it means it hasn't been tested in full flight configuration yet.

August could well be a very interesting month. If the Da Vinci folks can scrape up the cash they need to get thier hardware out to the launch site, and into the air, and get a couple good test results immediately, there may well be a race for the prize.

As an engineer, I have to have great respect for what the Scaled team has done, it's outstanding. As an individual, I still want to sit back and cheer for the 'back yard' guys. However small a chance they have, it would be great to see them succeed.

Re:Interesting Numbers

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that, as far as designing reusable space faring vehicles goes, $20 million is practically nothing and qualifies as a "true 'backyard' effort" as far as the aerospace industry is concerned?

Fuck, $20 million doesn't even elect a president anymore.

Re:Interesting Numbers

[bwy]

Don't be fooled by the Da Vinci numbers.

Feeney said the da Vinci Project has taken 8 years of dedication by more than 600 people.

Feeney said that roughly $337,000 dollars in cash has gone into the balloon/rocket project, along with some $10 million to $15 million dollars worth of time donated by people, as well as help from in-kind sponsors.

600 people working for 8 years, well, with $337,000 cash that means they were all volunteers (which he seems to indicate) because the equipment and operating expenses would be well over 337K. That is the price of an average house these days in a lot of neighborhoods. It doesn't buy a lot when you are talking aerospace engineering.

So, if everyone at Scaled gave up their paychecks maybe they could post a lower number too. But, the bottom line that will prove itself is that if you want to do exceptional things, you need exceptional people. Exceptional people usually don't come cheap- and building a space ship is a full time job. A few engineers couldn't have created SpaceShipOne a few hours a week after their day jobs that pay the bills.

We'll see- but I just hope they don't kill someone. This isn't the kind of shit you screw around with. I feel a lot better knowing Rutan's got several aircraft out there that he designed previously. Things that fly and don't kill people. From Homer's mom in October Sky... "Don't blow yourselves up."

Re:Interesting Numbers

[HeghmoH]

Even if they use 100 dollar bills for fuel on the flights, they'll still end up an order of magnitude cheaper than Scaled.

Minor nit: $20 million in $100 bills would only be about 200kg, and I doubt if they're going suborbital with that little fuel. They'd be ok if they were using $1 bills as fuel, though.

Re:Interesting Numbers

[grozzie2]

I feel a lot better knowing Rutan's got several aircraft out there that he designed previously. Things that fly and don't kill people.

The well known ones dont fall out of the sky and kill people. Some of the not so well known ones did just that. A good start, read up on the accident reports during flight testing of the BD-10, one of his earlier attempts at a supersonic airframe. It had a tendancy to disintegrate as it approached transonic speeds, killed a few test pilots like that.

Re:Interesting Numbers

[grozzie2]

hehe, ok, I'll grant you that. Dollar bills probably dont have the specific impulse required of rocket fuel either, but, you got the point. With hardware built, and the budget now in the 300K range, they'll have to squander a LOT of money real fast to not be on the order of 2 orders of magnitude less than the other guys.

Re:Interesting Numbers

[HeghmoH]

Indeed, I got your point. I didn't respond to the rest of your post because it all seemed rather sensible and I didn't have anything to comment on.

I made a similar mistake when talking about Microsoft's Xbox finances. I wanted to state that Microsoft would have lost less money by paying a bunch of guys to shovel $100 bills into a furnace all day long than they have by operating their Xbox division. In fact, I had to drop it down to one guy working a normal 40-hour week shoveling $10 bills (or something like that) before my numbers came out to match reality. Those things are worth more than you'd think!

Re:Interesting Numbers

[michael_cain]

Scaled is a group of professional engineers, working on a budget with a benefactor.

Assume that SS1 can be extended in ways that make actual revenue-generating services possible -- and some serious extensions would seem to be necessary to make that happen. For example, assume they can deliver, on extremely short notice, a person or similar amount of mass to anywhere on the planet via suborbital. I, for one, would want the vessel on which I'm putting my company's chief engineer for delivery to Moscow to fix the broken whatever, to be designed, built, maintained and operated by paid professional engineers. I'm sure that the insurance companies (losing my chief engineer is something I want to be insured against) will feel the same way. Unless he/she has really strong feelings about amateur space (or near space) travel, I suspect that the chief engineer will also feel that way.

I think what Scaled Composites has done for $20M is really cool. But producing a commercial vehicle will cost them at least one order of magnitude more money than SS1 has cost, very probably two orders of magnitude, and possibly three orders.

Re:Interesting Numbers

[wjwlsn]

Liberal, Conservative, whatever. They're all elected governments. Wikipedia's got the most balanced account of this I've ever seen, at Wikipedia:Avro Arrow, and it has this to say about the claim that cancellation of the Arrow killed the industry.

Many have also suggested that the aviation industry in Canada was destroyed with the cancellation of the Arrow. This claim is rather suspect, considering that Canada is the 3rd largest aircraft producer in the world (behind the US and France). It is true that design of fighter aircraft in Canada ended with the Arrow, but the same is true for most countries of similar means. The rapidly rising costs of fighter aircraft have driven almost everyone out of the business, there are only three companies in the Western world designing them today, when at the time there were dozens.

Re:Interesting Numbers

[stiggle]

You do know that Scaled Composites has done stuff for NASA and DARPA too? They're slightly closer to the big boys than they make out (stuff for Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, McDonald Douglas, Orbital Space Corp, etc).

Their Proteus aircraft (forerunner to White Knight) is used by NASA (laser target deployment).

Re:Interesting Numbers

[elandal]

The article states volunteer work worth about 10-15M, so the entry isn't really much less expensive than Rutan's. Could be that Scaled hadn't burned that much before they started test flights, in which case Scaled Composites would come out cheaper.

Not counting personnel costs isn't really an option unless you want to bet future flights on volunteer work.

Re:Interesting Numbers

[DerekLyons]

The real point is, the aerospace industry as we know it is carrying a LOT of fat, mostly due to the fact it's driven by government contracts. the job can be done 2 orders of magnitude cheaper, Rutan and crowd have proven it.

Rutan & Co. have proven that a high performance experimental aircraft can be built cheaply. It's quite a step from there to an aircraft that the FAA will let the unsuspecting public park their little pink fannies in. (Not to mention the lack of scaleability in the design much neyond what it is.)

August could well be a very interesting month. If the Da Vinci folks can scrape up the cash they need to get thier hardware out to the launch site, and into the air, and get a couple good test results immediately, there may well be a race for the prize.

Unless Rutan fails, the race is all but over. The rules require a sixty day notice before a Prize attempt can be made, which gives the DaVinci team 12 days to make notice, and then will require flights on back to back days to beat the end of Rutan's window. I don't rate this as likely.

Re:Interesting Numbers

[Moofie]

The Pond Racer was another beautiful, but ill-fated, Rutan design. The flaw with that aircraft was mechanical (oil fire) rather than design, but nevertheless...

Designing aircraft is hard. Designing safe aircraft is almost impossible. Designing safe, high performance aircraft is impossible.

(safe=some arbitrarily low value for deaths per passenger mile)

Re:Interesting Numbers

[Jim Starx]

Shuttle flights were routine, and safe (I think going into space is an event in of itself, so I wouldn't describe them as uneventful). How many shuttle launches have there been? And how many fatal accidents? It's a pretty good track record. Just because an accident gets more publicity does not mean it counts higher.

Re:Interesting Numbers

[grozzie2]

Prepping a shuttle for launch takes months, using thousands of people. Each mission is planned out to the very last detail. You can call them a lot of things, but, routine is not one of them. A huge investment of time and effort on a 'per mission' basis in preparation is anything but routine.

On the safety side, the shuttle may have been around for a long time, but, 1 in 57 flights had catastrophic conclusions. A much higher percentage had other problems that folks came to accept as 'normal', little things like heat shield tiles falling off here and there. On at least half it's flights, shuttle returned to earth with missing/damaged tiles. Not exactly a big plus in the safety column, the most critical safety system on the vehicle was 'routinely' damaged during operations. Some folks may consider a failure rate of 1/57 acceptable risk, but nobody is going to pretend it's 'safe'.

For those that want to do pure calcs on the whole thing, its easy to break down into hard numbers. Shuttles fail on the order of 2% of flights. Minimum crew for a space station mission is 5, 2 shuttle crew, 3 station crew on rotation. 0.02 * 5 = 0.10. The cost of operating a shuttle mission is on the order of a half billion dollars, and 1/10 of one life. Running 4 missions a year, that works out to 2 billion dollars, and 4/10 of a life per annum, the cost of the program. The consensus is, the 4/10 life cost is to high, or the shuttles would still be flying, the monetary budget was already in place.

I find it ironic, a country willing to sacrifice an average of over 1 life a day in the conquest of oil, finds 0.4 lives a year to high a price for a program of exploration and scientific discovery. Guess it's all in the political spin, and what you can 'sell' to the public...

Re:Interesting Numbers

[Anonymous Coward]

1 in 57 flights had catastrophic conclusions

Didn't *two* shuttles blow up? There was one in the eighties, Challenger(?), and the recent one... whatever its name was.

Re:Is this supposed to be a new form of mass trans

[dillon_rinker]

What's the point of sending people 62.5 miles by airplane? What's wrong with cars?

What's the point of sending people 62.5 miles by car? What's wrong with horses?

What's the point of sending people 62.5 on horseback? What's wrong with shoes?

What's the point in walking 62.5 miles? Can't you find everything you need within an hour's walk of the cave?

And that, of course, is the point...if you can't go 62.5 miles, you can't go 200 miles. You can't reach low-earth orbit, or high orbit, or solar orbit, or anything else. Orbital flight is currently a governmental monopoly. If you fail to see the point of orbital flight in the short term, then feel free to chuck your GPS receiver, cell phone, pager, and international internet connection in the toilet. If you fail to see the point of orbital flight and beyond in the long term, then feel free to mine your back yard for every element needed to support your lifestyle.

Re:DaVinci

[Sgt York]

Take a joke, man. I'm from Texas, so I take 10x as much crap about that as any Canadian. And most of that is not in good humor. I know a lot of Canadians, and they're not all that bad. For Canadians (JOKE AGAIN!!!!)

Re:Host humans on computers first.

[Anonymous Coward]

Read The Emporer's New Mind, by Roger Penrose.

It's impossible to make a conscious machine. If you think your brain is a conscious machine, then you're wrong.

Leibniz pointed this out 400 years ago. If you could make a conscious machine, you could look into it and see two parts pushing on each other and you could point to it and say "that's a thought." But you can't, and never will. It's also why mathematicians will never have their jobs replaced by computers.

Re:Is this supposed to be a new form of mass trans

[irokitt]

Yuri Gagarin.

Re:DaVinci

[kfg]

Yeah, but if Burt loses we can. . .blame Canada.

KFG

Wild Fire Stats

[PIPBoy3000]

From this story:

Another Canadian team, the da Vinci Project in Toronto, is also building a rocket. But their rocket won't fire its engines until it's already 80,000 ft off the ground and tethered beneath a reusable, piloted helium balloon. It will hang in an 80 up angle. After starting its engines and cutting the tether, it will fly a 90, straight up profile. This lets the designers reduce the propulsion system to one-fourth of what a ground-launch would require. The craft, weighing 7,200 lb on take off (3,200 lb, empty), uses two kerosene and LOX engines, each generating 5,000 lb of thrust, to take it the rest of the way to 100 km. The engines are newly designed with emphasis on light weight, reliability, and low cost.

A helium-fueled cold gas-reaction control system (RCS) will give the ship attitude control. The pilot uses two control sticks, one for main-engine gimbals, the other for the RCS, or relies on an autopilot. Like other X-Prize contestants, the da Vinci rocket uses an inflated shuttlecock or ballute to increase drag on descent.

For something I just heard of today, it sounds quite clever.

Re:Wild Fire Stats

[Anonymous Coward]

The engines are newly designed with emphasis on light weight, reliability, and low cost.

Reminds me of NASA's mantra: "faster, better,cheaper" - choose two...

Re:Wild Fire Stats

[Mad_Rain]

the da Vinci rocket uses an inflated shuttlecock

No matter how many times I see the word "shuttlecock" I wonder if I read that right, and then have a good laugh. "inflated shuttlecock" doubly so. (Will that be the next spam subject line? "Inflate your shuttlecock with our all-natural supplements!"

Re:Wild Fire Stats

[corngrower]

the da Vinci rocket uses an inflated shuttlecock

Maybe this is the thing that is used to mate the Shuttle to the 747 that caries it from Edwards AFB back to Florida on occasion.

Re:Wild Fire Stats

[acey72]

"For something I just heard of today, it sounds quite clever."

It sounds bl**dy terrifying to me!

The timing & reliability has got to be pretty good. Think about it - they start the engines and release the tether, fine. They start the engines and the tether doesn't release in time - fun ride for the balloonists. They release the tether and the engines don't/are slow starting - rocket will probably be plunging earthward like a large lump of metal.

Some mighty cojones required.

Re:Wild Fire Stats

[hesiod]

> Some mighty cojones required.

Yes, however you are talking about people trying to fly to the edge of space in "homemade" craft. The cajones are a prerequisite.

Re:DaVinci

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a reason for everything. Sometimes that reason just sucks.

And the reasoning behind your last sentence sucks.

Re:Second Place

[Anonymous Coward]

No, second to one. spaceshipone that is

Re:What the Devil is Bezos up to?

[bizard]

Jet Blue style? God, let's hope not...I wouldn't want the space lounge to be my "last stop to pick up oxygen tanks". How about we say "commercial air travel style" and hope that means at least a little bit of service.

Wrong Wrong Wrong

[Thinkit4]

You host consciousness just as the thalamus does, but on silicon instead of carbon. Its consciousness hosted on a computer, not a conscious computer.

What's the payoff?

[cephyn]

$10M is a lot of money. What do these guys plan to do with it? Either team? I haven't heard much about that. Is there somone I should be rooting for? Is one team planning to live off the money and pass it on to their kids and the other planning to feed the hungry? Or what?

Re:What's the payoff?

[codemachine]

Well since Rutan's vehicle cost Paul Allen between 20-25million to build, maybe the money will go to Paul. But I doubt he cares much either way.

Haven't heard what either teams plans to do with the cash if they win. Given that one is a volunteer effort, and the other spend more than 2x the prize money already, it is likely neither team cares much about the money.

Re:What's the payoff?

[Theobon]

Well seeing as SS1 is said to carry a price tage of 20 mil I think it will be used to pay of the debts :)

Re:What's the payoff?

[Ayaress]

I doubt it's really about the money, just the title. SS1's already cost $20 million, so it's not going to make a profit from the prize. However, a few years down the road, when they have an improved model built that can be used for actual commercial venture (passenger/cargo flight, or just taking rich people up so they can see what its like to get motion sickness in zero-g), the "Winner of the X-Prize for Private Spaceflight" will look pretty nifty on the ads.

Re:What's the payoff?

[cephyn]

If they don't win, will they be doing that anyway?

Re:What's the payoff?

[FishermansEnemy]

Jeez, $25 mil is impressive stuff. A Boeing 747-400 costs between $181m - $220m to buy. Hell, the building they did the RnD in cost $200m in the 60's!

Re:What's the payoff?

[Ayaress]

They'll be in the spaceflight business either way, of course. They've invested too much not to at this point. But, like I said, the X-Prize will be the first industry award in commercial spaceflight, and will be worth far more for advertisement and name recognition than actual cash payoff, at least in the short run.

Re:Da Vinci Tests? (LINK IS HERE)

[Anonymous Coward]

well it's not your fault that slashdot doesn't come with a frontpage express editor ;-)

Armadillo concedes

[LMCBoy]

After seeing this story, I wondered about the status of Armadillo Aerospace's effort. At their website, I found this news item, posted last month:

The Scaled Composites team deserves huge congratulations for the 100km flight of Space Ship One on Monday. They probably have the X-Prize in the bag now, but just in case, I did go ahead and place orders for all the long lead time items we still need. If their flight had been flawless, I probably wouldn't have bothered. We can still have our final vehicle assembled this year, but it isn't clear that we have time to recover from the inevitable setbacks during testing.

Too bad. I hope they are able to keep going, even if they don't win the X-Prize.

Re:Armadillo concedes

[ErikTheRed]

Actually, John Carmack has stated that they have a business plan that does not rely on them winning the X-Prize, or getting any other sort of cash windfall (I'm summarizing, so any mistake is mine and not his). Some great insight as to their plans can be gleaned from the Armadillo Aerospace Forum at XPrize.org.

Even though they are not as polished or well-funded as Scaled Composites, their openness with their processes, plans, trials, and tribulations makes them one hell of a lot cooler and several orders of magnitude more interesting, at least in my book.

Re:Armadillo concedes

[FleaPlus]

I have no doubt that Armadillo will keep on going, and even though it might take a while longer, eventually create a phenomenal product. If you have any doubts, just watch this video of a perfect test flight they recently had. In the video you can see the unmanned craft fly straight up, above the camera's view, and then land down in the same spot perfectly. It's simply amazing.

Re:DaVinci

[Sgt York]

And the reasoning behind your last sentence sucks.

Humor sucks? OK, *my* humor may suck, but humor in general certainly does not suck.

TAKE A JOKE, jeez. touchy, touchy.

Re:Is this supposed to be a new form of mass trans

[Ayaress]

62.5 miles isn't the point. It's just a first step. The first cars couldn't drive as fast as a horse could run, and they were very hard to get started (some had a spring loaded crank you had to wind up to start them, others had to be push-started, a few even had lawnmower-style pullcord starters). However, within thirty years, they were going fifty miles an hour comfortably and somewhat safely. The first planes were slower than their contemporary cars, but look at them now: you can get anywhere in the world within 24 hours. Suborbital (or even low orbit) travel is the same way. Maybe you're wasting weeks of work to go 62.5 miles now, but in thirty years, you'll be able to get almost anywhere in the world in 90 minutes (with at most a local connection flight in between to get you to an airport capable of handling orbital launches), and quite possibly cheaper than conventional flight (you don't burn fuel in orbit, and even suborbital flight would be ballistic except during launch and landing maneuvers).

Re:Is this supposed to be a new form of mass trans

[AKAImBatman]

I was *so* close. Of course, both are incorrect anyway. They're nothing more than transliterations of the Cyrillic name. (Since Slashdot is too lame to accept Cyrillics, you can view his name here.)

Even then it would still br Americanized. In Russia, the middle name is always used. The middle name is a "standard" variation on the father's name. Thus Mr. Gagarin would be known as Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin or simply Yuri Alekseyevich in conversation.

And why you needed to know this? No idea. I just figured I had to do something useful because I misspelled the guy's name. ;)

Montreal Only

[theluckyleper]

I've driven Canada coast-to-coast a number of times, and the only place that red light right-turns are wholly illegal is Montreal. There are signs posted (French, even!) telling you not to turn right on red lights anywhere in Montreal.

Which makes PERFECT sense if you've ever seen how pedestrians behave in that city... there'd be fatal accidents daily, if it weren't for that law, I'm sure.

Re:Montreal Only

[Anonymous Coward]

actually its a shame you can't turn right in montreal.

I'd love to take out as many of the dumbass separatists as I could in 'traffic accidents' ... when the fools finally succeed, I hope they enjoy taking on their share of the canadian debt, and returning two-thirds of their landmass (Rupert's Land, given to them for joining Canada) back to us, with all its mineral and Hydro wealth.

Re:Montreal Only

[SubtleNuance]

seen how pedestrians behave in that city... there'd be fatal accidents daily

Why? Would you car drivers crash? or would you drive through fleshy people? cars suck ass. pedestrians rule!

Re:Montreal Only

[theluckyleper]

Montreal pedestrians rarely use the sidewalk, and they don't attend trafic lights or walk/don't walk signals.

When waiting for the traffic to stop moving (note, I say "traffic to stop", not "signal to change") they stand a good 3 or 4 feet out onto the road! If you tried to turn right, just as one of the pedestrians began his move to stand 4 feet out as he/she waits, you'd collide.

I have nothing against pedestrians... and nothing against Montreal driving, either. I'm just telling you how it is :) I actually like driving there, and walking there... it's quite fluid and natural. As long as you pay attention to your surroundings (and don't break any major traffic laws) you can do as you please. Quite fun!

Kind of reminds me of this cool article, on the merits of traffic de-regulation.

Re:Montreal Only

[SubtleNuance]

and they don't attend trafic lights or walk/don't walk signals.

ive been to montreal. you are right - and I like it that way.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2062160.stm
You may also like to read this article -- thanks.

Wouldn't WyldFyre be a better name for a rocket?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe W17DF1R3, that would be 7337 as long as it didn't a-splode.

CanCon

[TMB]

Here's your requisite 30%! ;-)

"We'll leave a jet-trail across the sky
Just like Armstrong and the guys
Vapour trail against the blue
I'd get off on getting higher
Is it over the Moon for the frequent flyer?
Straight to the arms of...

Jezebel, I hear you well
Or is it Gabriel? I can never tell

And the question's growing
'Cause it's not knowing
When it's coming, where I'm going"

-SOTW

[TMB]

Population pressure? More like population vacuum.

[PerlMonkey]

With birth rates falling the way they do (both in developed and developing worlds), we'll have to have serious life-extension successes just to maintain something approaching the current population of Earth. Within a hundred years, we may be back down to several billion people.

They work in vacuum

[Anonymous Coward]

My lifter works in a vacuum - build one and see for yourself. All it takes is a spare monitor, balsawood, wire and tinfoil. Vacuum's a little harder to come by - I tested mine at school in very low pressure and it doesn't notice the lack of air.

Re:Is this supposed to be a new form of mass trans

[dabraun]

Slowly wandering off topic I know but ...

The only thing you listed that actually *requires* satellites is the GPS reciever.

Cell phones and pagers don't use satellites at all (the hard wired phone network they tap into does - but not for most calls because the latency of satellite communication is too high)

Satellite phones exist for remote places where there are no cell towers but they are extremely expensive to use and are hardly essential to most people.

Interestingly the GPS reciever works via satellites for the same reason phones don't (work well.) The significant amount of time it takes to transmit the signal creates a measurable difference in the timecode which can be used to determine your distance from each satellite - and in turn your actual location (one of two possible locations with 3 satellites within reach - the other possible location is somewhere well beyond orbit and hence is discarded by the reciever.

Re:Is this supposed to be a new form of mass trans

[RickHunter]

Precisely. van Allen might've been right when he said there was no scientific point to manned spaceflight... But he completely ignored the engineering point. Some of the stuff Scaled Composites has come up with is positively brilliant.

We don't drink beer all the time.

[slyxter]

Sometimes we drink Ale.

And in other news... Iran has entered the race!

[Anonymous Coward]

(Reuters) Iran & North Korea today has said that they will be the next spacefaring nations to compete for the X-Prize.
Officials with the Iranian & North Korean governments, in a joint communique, have said that, although their exact propulsion method is secret, it involves nuclear materials and if any United States or allied countries spot a rocket leaving Iranian or North Korean air space that seems to have abnormally high gamma-ray counts coming from them, they are not to be alarmed, as they are just "testing". Due to the prize rules, multiple launches are to be expected.

TDz.

Re:And in other news... Iran has entered the race!

[Anonymous Coward]

Great! One can only hope they nuke the shit out of USA and make the world a much better place.

exponential population growth

[corngrower]

IIRC, those that follow such trends predict the world population will peak at about 10 billion people, sometime this century. The birth rate in most countries is steadily decreasing.

Re:exponential population growth

[Anonymous Coward]

IIRC, those that follow such trends predict the world population will peak at about 10 billion people, sometime this century. The birth rate in most countries is steadily decreasing.

The question is whether relgions and cultures that allow equality between the sexes, equal education for both sexes, and reproductive choice will win out over cultures/relgions where women are basically slaves and the goal is as many kids as possible.

Not so much 'can do'...

[reality-bytes]

His attitude is not so much 'can do' as 'I know what I'm doing and half of it i've done before...'

He's like a one-man aerospace industry!

Re:Not so much 'can do'...

[MtViewGuy]

He's like a one-man aerospace industry!

Think of Burt Rutan as the Clarence "Kelly" Johnson of the 21st Century--an aerospace engineer that with relatively minimal resources have come up with a LOT of extremely innovative developments in the aerospace industry. It was Rutan's company (Scaled Composites) that showed the way for low-cost wide use of composite materials in airplanes, starting with the ground-breaking Vari-Eze homebuilt plane.

If you're going

[jmichaelg]

Several points:

If you're going to go watch the first shot and you want to party, hang out at the airport the night before. Mojave proper is dead.

Secondly, when the wind kicks up the night before, don't go home discouraged. It was gusting up to 70 mph around 3 am the last time around and when the sun came up, the gusts completely died off.

Don't expect to have a great view of what's happening. The spaceship is tiny when it's 200 feet away and invisible when it's 10 miles away. Maybe this time around, they'll turn on a smoke generator just before they launch so you know where to look but then again, they may not. Last time, the craft was almost directly in the sun and it was awfully hard to see until it was spewing smoke.

While you're there, be sure to check out the Aloha Air plane that peeled its skin in midflight. It's next to the two rightmost 747s that are parked half a mile northeast of the viewing area.

Re:If you're going

[twostar]

BRING RADIOS.

I forgot mine last time and had to find someone with one to listen to the audio once it was up at launch altitude. They got a local station to rebroadcast the voice comm and that was invaluable in finding the bird before launch.

Denny's was the place to be the night before. They were hopping!

Re:If you're going

[Alioth]

I've flown a light plane into Mojave twice, but I've never seen the Aloha air 737. Do you have any pics of it at Mojave?

When I went there to see the XCor unveiling, a B737 (which is probably scrap by now) came in for mothballs. We were all having coffee and donuts waiting for the XCor presentation to start, and we saw it headed straight for us at very low altitude. We all thought he was going to do a low pass right over us, but instead he made a last minute turn less than one wingspan off the ground for the runway, with the engines roaring and everything hanging out, and then landed. It was incredibly cool to watch. I guess they like to have a bit of fun on the last flight of an airliner.

Re:Is this supposed to be a new form of mass trans

[BlueStraggler]

Suborbital (or even low orbit) travel is the same way. Maybe you're wasting weeks of work to go 62.5 miles now, but in thirty years, you'll be able to get almost anywhere in the world in 90 minutes

Don't forget to add an hour to clean off the vomit of you and your fellow passengers. A 90-minute sub-orbital flight would make your average amusement park rollercoaster seem like a few seconds on the La-z-boy.

Re:Is this supposed to be a new form of mass trans

[Saeger]

If you fail to see the point of orbital flight and beyond in the long term, then feel free to mine your back yard for every element needed to support your lifestyle.

Since you mentioned it, pretty soon it'll be quite easy to live self-sufficiently off your own property (if you've bought the additional mineral rights below it) given the molecular nanotech necessary to recycle everything (using FREE solar energy) on the molecular level. There's very little need for an influx of 'space resources' that aren't scarce & useful to begin with (excepting helium, helium3, and a few others). It's not like everyone on Earth is going to be self-assembling a skyscraper-castle on their property made out of solid gold that they leeched from the ocean.

So... there's better arguments for being pro-offplanet than some old-tech need to stripmine the solar system for elements we don't need. #1 being getting some of our eggs out of the cradle so we survive as a species, and #2 being able absorb a much larger slice of the solar energy pie so we can do more, faster.

--

Re:Population pressure? More like population vacuu

[corngrower]

Maintaining the current population of earth is quite unnecessary. The earth would get along just fine with 5% of the current human population. Just think of the benefits to the environment.

Interesting information

[SkiifGeek]

I wonder how they are going to retrieve the piloted balloon (short of venting helium). If their design becomes commercially viable, how much Helium is going to be wasted to get their rocket to launch altitude. While there wouldn't be a problem for small scale implementation, on a global scale of tourism / usage, surely the logisitcs would drive Helium prices / usage up, and supplies down.

Just a couple of pondering points.

Re:Interesting information

[Anonymous Coward]

you aren't serious are you?

are you concerned that helium balloons will be more expensive for your next birthday party?

There is no helium shortage.

woooo lets all be scared about the global helium shortage! it will end life as we know it! And woooo! be scared! looks like the Canucks didn't even consider how to retrieve the piloted balloon! ... Damn how could you be so stupid as to think that?

Now, instead of raising false fears over a system that is actually quite environmentally friendly, consider the damage done to the atmosphere by the huge amount of fuel consumed by systems like the space shuttle, delta rockets, and the Ariane and Russian equivalents...directly seeding the ozone layer with all kinds of chemicals that can destroy it.

Do you really think its better to use these types of systems in the future, 'on a global scale of tourism'? that they are somehow more viable than the canadian idea? dumbass.

This Dumbass just can't stand that a Canadian team has a great idea.

Re:Interesting information

[lombre]

attach a tank to the baloon and recompress the helium into the tank.

i have no idea if such a contraption could be engineered light enough.

currently there are billions of cubic feet of helium stored around the world.

Re:Interesting information

[Anonymous Coward]

how much Helium is going to be wasted to get their rocket to launch altitude
yes, because, as we all know the Helium Balloon industry has been CRYING about helium prices. Just think, if people start using the stuff to blast off into space, how much is going to be available for little-sarah's birthday balloons?

Re:Interesting information

[sotonboy]

Whilst helium is the second most abundant element in the universe, Its supplies are more limited that you would think here on earth, have a look at :

http://www.webelements.com/webelements/elements/ te xt/He/key.html

Re:Interesting information

[DerekLyons]

I wonder how they are going to retrieve the piloted balloon (short of venting helium). If their design becomes commercially viable, how much Helium is going to be wasted to get their rocket to launch altitude. While there wouldn't be a problem for small scale implementation, on a global scale of tourism / usage, surely the logisitcs would drive Helium prices / usage up, and supplies down.

*That* is a significant problem with the Prize, and Scaled suffers from the same problem. (The WK/SS1 combo is at or near the outer practical limits for such a scheme.) The Prize is leading to wonderful point solutions for winning, but those solutions have few applications in the real world.

Re:Second Place

[dustinbarbour]

Rutan is the man.. If the Canucks beat him, I'll gladly lick the armpits of every guy on the team.. even the big, fat, sweaty ones.

Re:Is this supposed to be a new form of mass trans

[cheekyboy]

actaully you can find alot of gold and sewage dumps/processing centres, perhaps all those millions of people washing their hands with their gold rings wipes off? or is it a strange bacteria in humans which processes/collects gold from all food/waters which gets dumped into the toilet systems?

Whatever the case, theres gold in those hills of shit. :)

Re:Is this supposed to be a new form of mass trans

[cmowire]

You are on the right track -- energy really is the ultimate limiting factor -- but solar energy is not as free as you'd like to think.

Solar energy both requires the materials used to collect the energy and the space for the collector.

There's also the problem of weather.

Now, the interesting thing is that the population problem is probably overstated -- population control is working. And we've got enough Uranium and Thorium available in the crust, especially with breeder reactors, for millions of years.

But there's plenty more reasons for why we still need to go into space.

Re:Host humans on computers first.

[0123456]

Penrose is just a carbon chauvinist. A century from now our silicon-based overlords will be reading his books and having a good laugh at how stupid their carbon-based ancestors were.

Re:Is this supposed to be a new form of mass trans

[WindBourne]

More importantly, we were able to cross the atlantic by ship in 1919. Then a prize was offered of 25K to the first plane to cross the Atlantic.after 6-7 years, Charles Lindburgh with Spirit of St. Louis did it. After that the private VC focused on crossing by plane, not by Ships.

This will be the same. Most likely, Boeing or L-Mart will get into the game of trying to build an X-33 or DC-X or something that can do cheap flights. If not, then Paul Allen and a few more billionare who have vision (those that venture out of their area) will own this new industry.

And yes, it will happen.

To both groups

[BCW2]

Go baby go.

Good luck and God Bless.

enough crew room?

[Anonymous Coward]

looking at the da vinci homepage i see the crew cabi n is "1.42 meter (56 inch) diameter sphere" and this is for 3 people in preasure suits ? who are they sending up? midgets?

Re:Population pressure? More like population vacuu

[Anonymous Coward]

Maintain?

I assure you. Birthrates may be dropping, but population growth isn't anywhere NEAR zero, let alone in the negatives.

da Vinci Project has only spent $337,000?!

[theluckyleper]

Looks like it's largely a volunteer project, on the cheap...

I wonder if those are Canadian dollars, too.

Not sustainable - where will the get the helium?

[Ungrounded Lightning]

But their rocket won't fire its engines until it's already 80,000 ft off the ground and tethered beneath a reusable, piloted helium balloon. It will hang in an 80 up angle. [...]

A helium-fueled cold gas-reaction control system (RCS) will give the ship attitude control.

That's nice, except for one thing: Where are they going to get the helium? As I understand it that's a very scarce resource (wells in US and "The Former Soviet Union") only, with a rather limited capacity.

When the weight comes off the piloted launch balloon it's going to head up big time unless they vent much of the helium (or it's a collapsable pressure-vessel design). And using jets of helium for attitude control will be a big consumer of it, too.

Fix those two issues and it looks much better - but still not great. Going up with the ballon doesn't consume energy because you're neutrally bourant. But if you're not going to dump the helium you have to compress it to get back down, and THAT takes as much (or more) energy as lifting the rocket you just launched with an electric elevator.

It's still 'way better than rockets from the ground. But it's still a lot of fuel to take up just to compress the helium so the balloon can get back down.

Yes of course you re-compress

[Corpus_Callosum]

And you just dropped a 7200 lb rocket. Size of the compressor is not an issue.

Venting the helium isn't a big deal either, btw: It's not like Helium is rare or anything.

Re:Yes of course you re-compress

[Moofie]

Isn't it? My understanding is that there is exactly one source of helium on Earth (in Amarillo, TX) and it's not trivial to extract it.

Am I operating on bad info?

Re:Host humans on computers first.

[Anonymous Coward]

Assuming the requirements (assumedly duplicating the electrical signals in the third ventricle between the lobes of the thalamus) allow for durable containers, we can travel to the center of the sun even!

No offense, but I can tell you with full authority that the thalamus has nothing to do with "hosting" consciousness.

Re:Second Place

[subtropolis]

So, if Rutan's team doesn't claim the prize, you figure this would be some consolation to them? Gee, that's awful kind of you!

Baloon only good for suborbit joyride

[soldeed]

But If you need to place something in a specific orbit, the imprecise flight path of a baloon will make you burn more fuel adjusting your orbit.

Left on Red

[uberdave]

It is also legal in Ontario to turn left on a red.

Re:Left on Red

[Anonymous Coward]

only at a pair of one ways :P

Re:Host humans on computers first.

[meringuoid]

If you could make a conscious machine, you could look into it and see two parts pushing on each other and you could point to it and say "that's a thought."

Rubbish. The Mona Lisa is just blobs of pigment on canvas. Surely, then, I should be able to point to a particular blob of pigment and say "that's beauty"?

Nope: because beauty in the case of the Mona Lisa is an emergent quality of the whole system of blobs. Same, I suspect, with thought.

And if the brain is not a conscious machine, what is it? A device to cool the blood?

Not that overcrowded

[mykdavies]

Places like India and China are intensely crowded already.

That's not strictly true - here's some interesting comparisons (mainly from Wikipedia).

Population density (people per square km)

Monaco 16329
Hong Kong 6771
South Korea 491
Netherlands 477
India 319
UK 246
Germany 231
China 133
France 110
Iraq 55
US 32
Canada 3

Re:Not that overcrowded

[mforbes]

Valid point, and thanks for the data points (I would never have guessed that Monaca had that high a population density!)... but my argument still stands. Some places are more crowded than others-- and likely to stay so-- and it's not the crowding that will cause our problems in the future, it's the scarcity of resources.

Re:Not that overcrowded

[Anonymous Coward]

Monaco doesn't surprise me, IIRC, it's really nothing more then a single city that is it's own country.

Run the numbers against say, Manhatten, or the Los Angeles city limits.

Re:Not that overcrowded

[The Flying Guy]

The first five or so would still rate higher and it is not like South Korea and The Netherlands are city states (although sometimes .nl where I live does feel like it)

Even if one get the prize...

[SWTP_OS9]

I hope all of the teams keep going to where they do launch. Even if Rutan or the Candians do win shortly.

It would be a bigger sucess if a good precentage of the whole xprize group get a launch off.

Re:Is this supposed to be a new form of mass trans

[stiggle]

Erm - learn your history.
Lindburgh was not the first to fly the Atlantic, it was Alcock and Brown.

http://www.aviation-history.com/airmen/alcock.ht m

Captain John Alcock and Lieutenant Arthur Whitten Brown, in a modified Vimy IV they made the first non-stop aerial crossing of the Atlantic. They took off from Lester's Field, near St. Johns, Newfoundland on June 14,1919. They landed June 15,1919 at Clifden in Ireland. The time for the crossing was sixteen hours, and twenty seven minutes.

The news of the adventure spead like wildfire and the two men were received as heroes in London. For their accomplishment they were presented with Lord Northcliffe's Daily Mail prize of £10,000 by Winston Churchill who was then Britain's Secretary of State. A few days later both men were knighted at Buckingham Palace by King George V for recognition of their pioneering achievment.

Re:Is this supposed to be a new form of mass trans

[rittblatt]

I rather think Alcock and Brown http://www.aviation-history.com/airmen/alcock.htm were ahead of Lindbergh, although his solo effort was a no less remarkable achievement.

Re:Host humans on computers first.

[StrawberryFrog]

Read The Emporer's New Mind, by Roger Penrose.
It's impossible to make a conscious machine.

You mean, Penrose thinks it's impossible to make a conscious machine.

If you think your brain is a conscious machine, then you're wrong.

That is a locical concusion from "It's impossible to make a conscious machine", therefor the premise must be wrong, since the only other alternative is an explanation of the human mind that involves ghosts, spooks, spirit, phologiston, soul, or some such unscientific, ill-defined nonsense.

Leibniz pointed this out 400 years ago. If you could make a conscious machine, you could look into it and see two parts pushing on each other and you could point to it and say "that's a thought." But you can't, and never will.

Whyever not? I can write a chess-playing computer program, step through it in a debugger, see two variables pushing on each other, and say "that's a chess move decision". It's alll just electrons, but it's also a decision. Where is the imposiblity?

Please learn how to make links.

[Anonymous Coward]

Please learn how to make links.

<a href="http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/ CTVNews/1089949545116_85358745/?hub=Canada">Quebec gov't happy with right-on-red law change</a> and <a href="http://freespace.virgin.net/john.cletheroe/u sa_can/driving/right.htm">Right Turns On Red Lights</a>

(without any spaces put there by Slashdot) yields: Quebec gov't happy with right-on-red law change and Right Turns On Red Lights

Note that it is usually less typing to make a link than to add "remember to remove the spaces from the URL" (or something similar) to the end of your post.

Suborbital Airliners are not Rutan's Idea

[serutan]

I have no web references to offer, but suborbital airliners have been under discussion for years. In the version I remember best, the plane takes off from a regular runway and climbs to 40,000 feet, where it refuels in midair from a tanker. Then it goes into a steep, powerful climb out of the atmosphere. After the engines shut down, leaving only enough fuel for a powered approach and landing, the plane flies through a zero-gravity arc, re-enters the atmosphere, glides to low altitude and lands under power.

It is claimed that this proposed scheme would lower the cost of commercial airline flight for many reasons: Fuel cost would be lower because the boost engines would run for a much shorter time than jet engines and would use cheaper fuel, despite burning it faster. With midair refueling the plane would not have to be built to carry all the fuel it needs. Because of shorter flight times (2 hrs max to anywhere) the planes would be much simpler inside, with denser seating, little or no carry-on luggage space, and no food, restrooms or other amenities. People would be strapped in like astronauts (or sardines) for the duration of the flight and not allowed to leave their seats, which would improve in-flight security.

Don't forget #SpaceShipOne CHAT coverage!

[pandelirium]

This is a reminder to all who are interested...

The #SpaceShipOne chat is still operational and will cover the upcoming 'X-Prize' flights. The response was overwelming for the Jun21 flight and is hoped that even more will join us this time around and make it an even bigger success. Support the flights!

The server : irc.freenode.net
The room : #SpaceShipOne

See you there... ;)

John B. -> Pandelirium
Admin/Moderator/OPs - SpaceShipOne CHAT
irc.freenode.net/spaceshipone

Re:Is this supposed to be a new form of mass trans

[DataCannibal]

"Alcock and Brown." Reading those names reminds me of quite a few schoolboy jokes from many years ago that one couldn't possibly repeat nowadays.

I think Sammy Davis Jnr was involved in one of them.