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After the X Prize
rscrawford writes "'Robert Bigelow, chief of Las Vegas-based Bigelow Aerospace, is apparently setting higher goals for private spaceflight endeavors with America's Space Prize, a $50 million race to build an orbital vehicle capable of carrying up to seven astronauts to an orbital outpost by the end of the decade,' according to Space.com. Anyone think it'll happen?"
...it's getting them down in one piece that's difficult.
Short version: No
Long version: Yes
Their space shuttle can do it, and they could sure use the extra funding.
The end of the decade timeline is just stupid. Kennedy gave Nasa more time to build the Apollo program and that cost many billions of dollars. To get it done so quickly.
A month after Duke Nukem: Forever goes Gold...
Having something go up to the edge of space and back is relatively easy compared to going into orbit then coming back down again.
For the technically minded, here's a short article with the specifics.
I wonder if Scaled will be able to tackle this too. I sure hope so, they've been an inspiration so far. I realize it's more than twice the amount of people, and they'd have to go much higher up to get to an orbiting station, but they've come so far with this competition.
-Jesse
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
Which members of nsync and backsteet boys are going to be on it?
In a digital world there can be only one..
The one, the only, MrDigital.
With John Carmack, anything is possible. We've all seen how he has changed the PC Gaming Industry... and for those that don't know, he had a 9 second Ferrari also... so he excels in everything that he does. Fact or opinion, John Carmack is a God. Aarmadillo Aerospace is going to win it.
"Instant gratification takes too long." - Carrie Fisher
Although the energetic requirements are an order of magnitude higher for orbital spaceflight, this $50 million prize is almost an order of magnitude higher than the $10 million X-prize. The economic payback seems higher as well, since there are lots more reasons (both reasearch and tourism) to go to orbit than there are in sub-orbital spaceflight.
Isn't this obvious? I'll bet of you scratch the surface- this is an award from the Casino History. Hoping to draw even more clients, the outpost will be a small hotel, complete with casino, in Geocentric orbit above Nevada, with your trip comped on a $5 million buy in of chips....
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Robert Bigelow, Astro-Gigalo.
Is that Dec 31, 2009 or Dec 31, 2010?
That you're going to need a rocket big enough to get your spaceplane into orbit, but small enough to not have to be tossed off into the atmosphere every time. This is a *very* big problem.
from his brother's less than honorable occupation...
I saw this story this morning on CNN about Virgin going into this kind of thing...
I don't know about the privitization of this...I think it makes it too...hmm..what's the word - Republican.
I think it would be unlikely, as whoever tries it only has about 5 years to start developing it, and I'm sure an orbiting capsule will take a while to build, and design. The only way I could see it happening is if a large corporation gets on board i.e. Boeing or Lockheed. Of course, surprises do happen, and it'd be a nice surprise.
The Boeing Delta II rocket (one of the smallest we have) can launch about 4.9 metric tons into LEO, and goes for about 10 million per launch (IIRC). Its safety record over the past decade is such that it could probably be man rated. Now if you figure seven astronauts at 100 kilos each (these are BIG boys with their space suits! ;-)), then you've got about 700 kilos in cargo. If you can fit a useful craft in the remaining 4.2 metric tons, you'd have a very inexpensive launch solution.
Perhaps something like this could be scaled down rather than a flyable craft? Although I am kind of partial to lifting bodies. Bring on the Dynasoar!
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Fact or opinion, John Carmack is a God.
I call opinion. We won't have a definitive answer unless someone stabs him in the heart and he doesn't bleed.
I think this is a great idea, but is the prize money enough? NASA should pony up another 50 mil -- they could use the help delivering supplies to the space station, and it's a no-lose proposition for them.
Rutan has already talked about going orbital, and there is a lot of buzz about this subject from all sorts of people. It is a good time to be alive!
More details available from SpaceFlightNow, which is actually a re-print of an Aviation Week & Space Technology article.
Well I don't reckon it's beyond possibility certainly. If the X prize is won next week then the sponsorship boost from the publicity could be astronomical, especially if passengers start to be taken up.
As for when people start dying, I reckon all the people likely to go up in the near future will be adults who are well aware of the risks they are taking and are more than happy to take their chances for the experience of flying into space. People die mountaineering, people die skiing. Lets try to keep some perspective.
Mention the Lord of the Rings one more time and I'll more than likely kill you.
...would have been able to get Doom III out before Far Cry.
Of course we think it will happen.
As long as someone can sell X units of Y product of service that costs less than X * Y to provide, then they will try to get that business model off the ground (pun intended).
If we can make a wheel, we can make 2. If we can make 2, we can make a bicycle. So if we finally can get a commercial program to send up 3 people, there should be a way to get 7 people up there.
If people can scam people from their money, why can't someone raise money for an X-Prize type prize?
submitter should not ask loaded questions in their submission... but oh yeah, I forgot. we haven't yet learned any manners...
This is completely false. This is not a sig.
What happens when people start dying?
They go to Heaven. Or possibly Hell.
Seriously, what's the point of the question? People die in privately-funded adventures from time to time. But if they want to do it, that's their business. Perhaps they seek historical notariety, perhaps they look forward to possible commercial gains, or perhaps they just want that "extreme thrill" that nobody else has. Either way, it's their money/life, and it's not hurting anybody else, so it's their choice.
http://publicvoidlife.blogspot.com
IMHO, the folks over at JP Aerospace have the best chance at the prize. The big unknown for them of course is whether or not they will be able to assemble (and fly) the super-sized airships into LEO.
Plain and simply, companies and ppl LOVE competition. They also like being #1. In addition, there is a lot of money to be made in Space. There are launches of satillites. There will be a shot for the moon and hopefully for Mars. And if we go back to the skylab concept that was started in the age of President Johnson, then we will see many space stations.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I wonder if a larger scale version of spaceship one would do?
And here are some links for them:
Main Page
PDF Summary of their LEO plan
America's Space Prize, citizens of other nations need not apply.
I reckon all the people likely to go up in the near future will be adults who are well aware of the risks they are taking and are more than happy to take their chances for the experience of flying into space.
... with family who will sue the operators of the spacecraft regardless of the wishes of the deceased or any signed waivers.
Actually, I would take "all" out of "all the people" above. I expect most will understand the risk. Many people just have no concept of risk, and will give up their lives foolishly because they think that nothing bad can happen to them.
New Soddom!
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
"Robert Bigelow, chief of Las Vegas-based Bigelow Aerospace..."
I'll take some from the cold tank.
In the last interview I saw with Burt Rutan, he said that he's at the same stage on an orbital vehicle as he was for SS1 a few years ago. I seem to remember that he said that he was expecting to start construction in 2008/2009.
What will be interesting to see if they can come up with a vehicle that could rendevous with the ISS; the orbit really was poorly chosen for jeverybody except for Russians.
Reaching ISS could seriously be the next challenge.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
From source inside group - He's been hiring scientist types instead of engineer types, and having them work on demos instead of focusing on a well thought-out plan to build flight hardware. Too bad, since he has enough money to buy people capable of making him what he wants. Scaled has proven that you just need to throw money at smart space tech interested engineers to build real hardware, since all the tech needed has been in textbooks since the 70's. In-fighting scientists do not build spacecraft, they build grant proposals...
This is probably why he's decided to stop trying to build his own launch platform and see if someone else will make him one. Of course, once cheap transport is available, they'll be plenty of other hotel groups looking into orbital habitats, groups have been playing with that idea for decades. Again, too bad for Bigelow, since he could have gotten there first.
People die in crashing cars, in sinking ships and crashing aeroplanes. It's unfortunate and tragic, but it does happen and it doesn't stop us from travelling by those means again. It does make us try to make it safer. Of course people will die in space. Do you honestly expect no accidents will happen? It must be as safe as possible, of course. But not so safe that we'll never fly (the safest way to do anything, is to not do it at all).
At $150,000 per flight, I would think most people with that kind of money have at least a small appreciation of what risk means.
Astronomical boost.. yeah, that's the ticket... that should get us into space!
That's exactly what happened with early Jet Liners. It didn't stop air travel then, and I doubt it would stop space travel now. It would pretty much have to be a possible setback that should be expected and planned for.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Death didn't scare away or stop many of the early aviators or test pilot's after WWII. Almost all of the streets in Edwards Air Force Base are named after test pilots killed in accidents.
People dying may put off a few more people in this day and age, but it won't scare away the ones who believe in pushing manned space flight forward or those who want the adrenaline rush.
Now, if one of the rockets or space craft fall onto a city, that will affect private space flight programs (Maybe they'll just outsource it to India...).
Well, if someone is putting up money to get to a station by the end of the decade, I wonder if they plan on putting a station up there by then? Considering the ISS will probably STILL not be completed, other than having a useful crew retrieval (not rescue) vehicle, what's the point?
yes ... as long as that orbital outpost is an asteroid headed towards earth.
Rockhound : You know we're sitting on four million pounds of fuel, one nuclear weapon and a thing that has 270,000 moving parts built by the lowest bidder. Makes you feel good, doesn't it?
Just like Star Trek said....
It will be a "Joe Blow" who comes up with the warp drive...
And not NASA....
It's left blank because I have nothing to say to you punks!
After seeing Burt Rutan talk this summer, I think that if anyone can do it, he can. And also, he hinted at the fact that why would he stop after making only one spacecraft, when he has designed over 40 airplanes. My guess is that he already plans to make an orbital craft after he wins the Ansari prize, even without this new offering.
It's the Shuttle, of course.
The trick isn't building such a spacecraft. That's been do-able since the 1960's. The trick is figuring out how to make a profit operating the damn thing.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Why is everyone complaining about this prize? Oh no, earth orbit, it's too hard! Let's just take our X-prize, go home, and never launch again. Waah waah.
WHAT THE HELL.
If anyone on the planet would say "wonderful, now we've got an incentive to get to the next stage", I'd think it would be the people here on Slashdot - but all of a sudden it's too difficult to reach orbit, with a fifty million dollar budget, in half a decade?
Did anyone really look at the X-prize and say "Oh, that's easy, no problem"? Then why are you looking at this and assuming it will be a problem? There's a lot of time to work on it and at least one group that's already a significant fraction of the way there.
If you think it's hard, okay, sure, no argument, it's hard - but how many times have you learned something new by practicing easy stuff over and over again? It's an opportunity to invent some new low-cost fabrication and launching techniques. It's research. And possibly, it'll even lead to true commercial spaceflight.
I think this is a fantastic turn of events. I can't wait to see who decides to tackle it.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
on wether we have the attitude of the 1900 (you have nothing to fear, but fear itself), or if we still have the attitude that we now seem to have (terrorist behind every bush; 1.5-2 years to be back in space; etc.etc.etc). Hopefully, we will go back to how we were with early aviation.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"People die mountaineering, people die skiing. Lets try to keep some perspective."
Yes, but those are important economic activities from which we all benefit, launching space ships is just for foolish thrill seekers.
-dak
Union of Skiing Sherpas Against Space Flight
USSASF
Interorbital Systems (IOS) is already aiming at that goal. Now I can't base my comment on anything but their website and the X-Prize site, but it seems that their Neptune rocket will be capable of doing the things specified. They plan to launch their Nano SLV in 2005 (testing and further development is in progress) It being the first privately developed launch vehicle capable of putting sattelites into LEO. Their site states that theyr aim is having the Neptune ready for space tourism by 2006. A wee bit optimistic maybe, but - still - they may have a head start.
.jpg page) home page.
Their X-Prize page and their (WARNING! all
Look a monkey!
BTW -- read the backup material. This is a really cool story.
What happens if 10 years from now we have a private space station (or, horror of horrors 2 or 3 stations) with tourists going up and still the ISS isn't completed? How are all of us going to feel about all of those tax dollars we're pouring into the shuttle and ISS now?
Wouldn't it be better take a couple of billion right now and set up a series of prizes that take us from suborbital all the way to mars? You could stretch it over 20-30 years, and make the prizes high enough to keep the independents in the game. Isn't this better than putting all of our tax money in one basket and hoping the basket holds up?
Make chaos work for you, not against you.
... Purgatory, for people who haven't made up their minds yet as to which way they want to go.
Orbital is going to take some serious doing beyond what Rutan et al have come up with.
Armadillo has a lot better shot at it than Virgin.
Seastead this.
NASA has announced its own intentions to offer cash prizes for private space accomplishments through its Centennial Challenges office, which may offer prizes that range from $250,000 to $30 million. Potential challenges could include soft lunar landings and asteroid sample return missions, NASA officials have said. This seems like it would have been a bit of a better story then this asshole looking to find a partner for his inflated space hotels.
By offering the $50 million prize he is essentially forcing someone else to do research and development. He already promised to dump $500 million into the space hotel project, so he really can't afford to put another couple of hundred million into something else.
The same thing that happened in the early days of aviation when people died a lot in mishaps. The allure was strong enough that people kept doing it anyway.
To some extent, I think that's going to be one of the biggest benefits of opening up the space race to private concerns - if it's a government program and someone dies, it results in a slowdown of everything while a massive investigation takes place and no progress is made on future research and development. If it's a private program and someone dies, someone else will take up the mantle and continue on while the original group is still working on fixing the cause of the fatality. When it's a private matter, then there is less incentive to be careful, and I think risk-taking is sort of necessary to get anywhere in this field.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
The problem is, its not the same thing. Jet liners weren't, and aren't, about going up in the air for the novelty of it, and then coming back down. This space "travel" thing is all kinds of goofy. Tons of cash just to go up and come down? zzzzz Tons of cash to go to an orbital space station? More appealing, but people don't go to hotels to see the hotel....and they don't go to resorts with beautiful views but are forced to stay locked in your room or else you die. A Cruise Liner would be the best parrallel, assuming you're not on the boat to visit anything -- but will the orbital station be THAT elaborate, with ballrooms and dining halls and gambling? That would be pretty advanced....
IMO space travellists should be looking for the tech for suborbital ultrafast business flights, say go from NY to Switzerland in just a couple hours. That's where the money would be.
Moo.
>a href="http://www.jpaerospace.com">JP Aerospace probably can deliver the goods. They're the ultra-high altitude freight blimp-to-orbit project. I hope they go for it.
Tech Public Policy stuff
The problem I have with prizes like the X-Prize and like this one, which have deadlines, is that they encourage people to take risks which they might not otherwise take, in order to hit the deadline.
This is exactly the kind of thinking which caused the Challenger disaster.
Deadlines like those of the X-Prize and this new one create an incentive for unsafe behavior, as is being seen by the Da Vinci Project's insane plan to have their first test flight be a manned prize attempt.
I wish the deadlines would be reconsidered -- competition between teams should be enough to insure urgency.
one of my posts getting modded Funny, Score 5 on /.
Really, the things holding us back from manned space exploration is lack of a reason to do it. If someone found out that you could manufacture CPUs that are twice as fast by doing it in zero-G, I'm sure Intel would have a space station within the decade. If you could make toothpaste that would get your teeth extra white while giving fresh breath that lasts for twelve hours by doing it in zero-G, P&G would have a space station within the decade. But none of these things are true. All the reasons for sending men into space mostly come down to "humans have an innate drive to explore", etc. It's true but that doesn't motivate investors to put together the many millions of dollars needed to do this. That's why governments do it: taxpayers have such low expectations of getting something in return for their tax dollars that governments can build space shuttles, the Big Dig, etc.
Of course, pretty soon we will have to have more manned missions to Mars to figure out what's going on over at Union Aerospace's secret research facility.
they *just* chose a physics engine (saw this press release today)
Norrköping, Sweden - 27th of September, Meqon, an up and comer in the physics middleware industry, announced they have been selected by 3D Realms as the physics engine provider for their long awaited game Duke Nukem Forever.
I think it's quite possible to assume that this new prize will come and go before DNF will be on the shelves...
See, I don't see that being as much of a problem as you'd think.
The point is, once you lower the cost to orbit (As any orbital tourism vehicle would) there's a lot of markets or improvements to markets that can open up.
National Geographic routinely sends out photographers exploring the world. If they could offset the cost of an expedition by magazine sales, you know they'd be launching their own space exploration missions. It's just too expensive right now.
Imagine communications satellites with 100x the power available, antennas signifigantly larger, etc. Suddenly an Iridium-like system can actually penetrate through a building and not require a massive phone. Remember, more decibels of gain means more information can be packed in the same frequency space.
The big thing to remember is that when the Internet finally hit the Average Joe, there were a lot of notions about what it could and couldn't do. It's hard to say what people will build on top of the infrastructure once it's there. But somebody's got to build the infrastructure.
Gentoo Sucks
That kind of cash is going to get a response. Though a one time $ prize will probably be slower than a $ stream. If someone finds a reason to go into orbit that they will have $ flow from - it won't take long at all.
/. should be able to come up with something for that! ;)
I'd say someone needs to offer a prize for finding a way to make orbital and space travel pay!
Someone here on
In the early 1990s research was done on quick turn around vehicles for low cost space access. Two very good articles by Dr. Jerry Pournelle are The SSX Concept and SSTO Revisited.
You may or may not agree with Dr. Pournelle, I sure don't, on a lot of things, but he's spot on about what happened to the SSTO concept, NASA got control of it, let a contract out to Lockheed to develop the X-33, spent a whole bunch of money and didn't produce any real hardware unlike the SSX project which spent 60 million dollars and produced a prototype that was able to take off and land twice with a 26 hour turnaround with a support crew of 14 and which also managed to land safely after a hydrogen explosion tore off part of the aeroshell.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
I'd think understanding what it means to risk ones life almost vanishes at the point where you have that kind of cash - for example, witness how many upper-class people got out of the viet-nam war.
Seriously?!?! The socialist nanny-state has an obligation, nay, a sacred duty to protect them from themselves! We shouldn't ever go into space until the risk is less than 1 in 55 trillion that anyone will be injured. Except of course for highly trained astro-bureaucrats who navigate the proper NASA departmental absurdities.
Thank you, and give me my welfare check.
youre right. countdown to zero-gee porn in 3...2...
Moo.
That's so true. Now I'm a married man.
Although the energetic requirements are an order of magnitude higher for orbital spaceflight, this $50 million prize is almost an order of magnitude higher than the $10 million X-prize. The economic payback seems higher as well, since there are lots more reasons (both reasearch and tourism) to go to orbit than there are in sub-orbital spaceflight.
The problem is that the increase in difficulty is far, far greater than the increase in either energy or delta-v required seems to warrant at first glance.
There are two regimes in which a rocket can operate. In one, the delta-v required for the mission is much lower than the exhaust velocity. In this scenario, fuel is only a small fraction of the total craft weight, and scales linearly with delta-v. This is the easy scenario, and it includes the X prize's "get a rocket to a relative altitude of 100 km".
The second regime, the hard scenario, is the one in which the delta-v required for the mission is much higher than the exhaust velocity. In this scenario, the craft weight is dominated by fuel, and the fuel-to-everything-else ratio goes up exponentially with delta-v. Truly exponentially, not the "this is a quadratic but I'm calling it exponential" variety that I see so often around here. Craft design goes from "really hard" to "damn near impossible" to "outright impossible" very quickly.
Ground-to-orbit is balanced right on the knife-edge of "really hard" and "damn near impossible", and that's only when we use multi-stage rockets. Reusable single-stage-to-orbit chemical rockets are well into the "damned near impossible" regime, even with the advanced composites we have now. If the earth was even a little heavier, we wouldn't be getting off of it with chemical rockets at _all_. Orbital velocity is about 8 km/sec, escape is 13 km/sec, and the highest-Isp chemical rockets have an exhaust velocity between 3 and 4 km/sec (with SS1 having one in the range of 2 or so).
There are ways that you can make the hard scenario marginally easier. One is to use multi-stage rockets, though that's generally pretty much _assumed_ past a per-stage mass fraction of 5:1 to 10:1. Another is to use high-Isp chemical fuels - but these make your craft far more expensive due to handling concerns, and in the limiting case this can even be counterproductive (H2 is a lousy fuel for anything that launches from deep in the atmosphere or under a lot of acceleration, due to low storage density and large tank size). Another is to use as small a craft as possible to take advantage of stress scaling laws, but a) that means an upper-atmosphere launch instead of a ground launch, and b) your minimum cargo weight places a lower bound on the craft weight.
The only realistic options for a 7-human manned craft are a big, expensive multi-stage chemical rocket with disposable boosters (because refurbishing to man-rated spec costs an insane amount of money), or an exotic craft with a high-Isp drive, to push the problem back into the "easy" regime. The only high-Isp craft we can build right now with the required thrust is one with a NERVA-style nuclear drive. A remotely laser-powered craft can work too, and we have a good idea how to build these, but full-scale engineering of these haven't been done yet. Orion is _too_ large scale, and would be even less popular than NERVA.
So, I don't expect any vehicle-based solution to be easy to build or cheap enough to run to make the prize offered a significant attraction.
A single-passenger craft would be much easier, due to reduced craft mass (materials scaling, again).
It would be a shame to award the prize to some old technology that doesn't build on the inherent economies of the reusable first stages being developed by the Ansari X-Prize contenstants.
As Robert Truax told me, people keep studying what the optimal number of stages for an orbital launch vehicle should be and they keep discovering the answer is "2". The first stage is always lower exhaust velocity and cheap per kg. The second stage is always higher exhaust velocity and more expensive per kg.
The ideal first stage derived from the Ansari X-Prize entrants would be one that is cheap to:
Rutan's technology doesn't really fill the bill here because fabricating hybrid rockeet motors is expensive compared to refueling. Also its unlikely his aerodynamic body scales up as cheaply as does simple tankage with vertical takeoff.
As it turns out, John Carmack just reported his team has reached probably the most critical milestone for such a first stage by demonstrating a scaled up version of their methanol/H2O2(50%) mixed monoprop engine.
This could be the really big deal -- not just for manned spaceflight but for cheap access to space generally.
Seastead this.
The Y-prize!
You don't need a lab to make mud.
Some would say that it's a year short of a millenia as mankind surely didn't start at year 0 when Christ died
I really don't want to be the average nitpicky slashdot guy, but AD does not stand for "after death"
If you think about it, most people back then recorded things in either Hebrew, or Latin. AD stands for 'anno domini' in Latin. Therefore, we have BC (which, strangely, seems to actually stand for 'before Christ') to demarc the time before the birth of Jesus Christ, and AD, to mark the time after that event.
Besides, if we did the whole "Before Christ / After Death" thing, we'd miss out on about 34 years while the guy was still kicking around the Middle East, and that wouldn't do, would it!
Oh, and for you politically correct revisionists, there are new terms that don't mark important events based upon one guy's life in one particular religion - historians are starting to use the terms BCE (Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era) which exactly correspond with the BC and AD labels. Pretty stupid, actually...
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
So you're saying "the only way to win is not to play" is wrong?
The submission was a little sparse on the info, and since I've been following Bigelow Aerospace for a while, I feel obligated to share some more info on it. First off, there's an article with better photographs available here, and a press release here. The founder Robert Bigelow was also the founder of Budget Suites of America, and is applying a lot of the cost-cutting tricks he learned from his previous contracting experience to the aerospace industry. He licensed the Transhab technology from NASA (which had previously had its funding cut), and is subcontracting for things like life support from other companies who already have systems running.
The inflatables themselves (photograph here)are quite interesting, with a docking mechanism designed to attach with either a Russian Soyuz, a Chinese Shenzhou, and/or whatever vehicle comes out of the aforementioned America's Space Prize. A one-third size prototype of the inflatable module will be launched on the maiden flight of SpaceX's Falcon V rocket, which is itself a very interesting vehicle (~3000kg into LEO for $12 million, and the first orbital vehicle designed to be man-rated since the space shuttle). The first full-size inflatable habitat will be up by 2008, and it's planned to have a crew by 2010.
What's exciting about this is that the inflatable modules appear to be designed, built, and have undergone some preliminary tests. The outsides of the modules have withstood projectile impact tests fairly well. Pretty much all that needs to happen now is for them to undergo further tests and be launched. Bigelow's use of multiple contractors for the same part will allow him to ramp up production if there's a demand for it, and sell the inflatable modules for ~$100 million each to whoever wants them.
Regarding the prize itself, I'd actually be quite interested to see if somebody ends up just designing a descent capsule and sticks it on a Falcon V.
The difficulty in reaching the ISS's orbit isn't only due to the energy involved, it is also due to trying to achieve the same orbital plane. You could say it's not a big deal because you just launch when the ISS is directly over you, but that doesn't happen very often... If you launch out of plane, then a lot of propellent (ie cargo) is lost getting into the plane and the problem returns to one of energy.
Conversly, redevousing with an object orbiting the equator from a launch point close to the equator is a lot easier with more available time slots and minimum fuel required (for maximum cargo).
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Inflatable space hotels?
Ugh, and to think the Physics building at my alma mater is named after him....
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
I saw "After the X Prize" and thought the next one would be named the "XXX Prize".
The U.S. Constitution needs to be ammended with a "separation of business and state" clause.
Oh, sure...just discount the obvious attraction of zero-gee sex...
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
yeah, refer to my reply to the other reply.
Moo.
I think they'll have a better chanc of handing out the cash if they change the name of the prize. There are quite a few X-prize people who aren't from the US. I don't think it's productive to limit the potential contenders to a single country, even if the limit is only psycological.
Funny, that's the same thing they said about the X prize... the problem is too big for such a meager prize. Fortunately it's not really about the prize money.
If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.
-=sig=-
Buy an SR-71 on the surplus market. Build a replica of the HL-20 (the ISS lifeboat) and put it in orbit with an Inertial Upper Stage, launched at 80,000 feet and Mach 3 by the Blackbird. Recall the Blackbird was built to launch a drone from it's back...
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves
Going to low earth orbit, though, means something. That's useful.
Funny, that's the same thing they said about the X prize... the problem is too big for such a meager prize.
Fortunately it's not really about the prize money.
The problem is that lifting things to orbit is an expensive enough proposition that the barrier to entry for building a launcher is very high. You won't do it unless you have clients willing to pay a lot of money, probably at low volume. The market is also already saturated, unlike the sub-orbital tourism business, with many players and competitive options for cargo launching, and even solutions for non-government man-rated launches (we've been hearing about space tourism through the Russian space agency for years).
So, I'm not sure what this prize is supposed to be encouraging people to do. The companies and other entities in a position to offer man-rated launches either already are, or have decided that it's not in their best interests to do so at this time.
This will remain the case until the nature of ground-to-orbit travel changes (e.g., if someone builds a space elevator or a laser launcher). Both of the examples I give in this paragraph are already being actively investigated, and arguably pursued with some chance of results. The prize addresses neither (I'm pretty sure wording will rule out a scheme with remotely supplied power, though I'm not certain of this).
The reason is simple: Burt Rutan has extensive experience building things that could be applied to a real spacecraft.
Remember the Delta Clipper? Or the aborted X-33 project? They may not be complete successes but it gave Scaled Composites the learning experience that could lead to a cheap reusable Low Earth Orbit space vehicle.
By the way, there is an easy way to do this: launch it on top of a modified 747-200B. Given the large number of 747-200B's that have been retired in the last 3-4 years Scaled Composites could cobble parts from several such 747's and build a launch plane with a powerful rocket engine in the back of the plane, which will allow it to fly steep climbs up to 50,000 feet. Mounted on the top of this modified 747-200B would be a small lifting-body type space vehicle with a small fuel tank beneath that will provide enough fuel to reach LEO with a load equivalent of 6-7 astronauts aboard.
The launch profile would go something like this:
1. The 747 with the space vehicle on the back takes off like a regular 747.
2. Once it reaches 28,000 to 30,000 feet, the rocket engine on the 747 is fired, allowing the 747 to climb at a 45-50 degree angle up to 50,000 feet.
3. At around 52,000 feet, the space vehicle with its attached fuel tank is launched as the 747 approaches the top of its climb.
4. While the 747 falls away, the space vehicle's own rocket engine will use the fuel from the attached fuel tank to reach LEO, jettisoning the tank when it reaches orbit.
5. The space vehicle will return to Earth in a Space Shuttle-style re-entry and land on a conventional runway.
There were serious studies during the 1980's for such a concept by (I believe) Boeing, and if any that could make this concept become reality at a reasonable cost it is Scaled Composites.
'Assholes' are people who sit on the sidelines and jeer at the people who are at least trying to accomplish something.
But aren't there several factors working in favor of this being realistic?
1) There is no specific requirement for ground launch. It seems that most of the X-Prize contestants have taken good advantage of this.
2) The cargo weight of this competition is relatively low. 7 adults isn't peanuts, but we're not trying to haul Hubble up there as well.
3) There is no requirement for extended mission duration. So minimal life-support weight. This is a taxi, not a flying laboratory.
4) There continue to be fairly substantial progress in materials development.
So, the X-33 demonstrated that reusable ground to orbit for a crew was feasible on paper (given a minimum $1B budget) and that this is an incredibly challenging task. But a decade of additional research, removing NASAs overhead and over-engineering, and a much more flexible set of design constraints, and I think you'll see some decent goes at it.
Remember, the X-Prize won't cover the development for anyone - it's a subsidy. Scaled Composites is really after the licensing deal that happened with Virgin, it should be far more lucrative. Scaled is also looking at an orbital craft, so they might be the leader on this next challenge as well. Consider the licensing deal that could go along with this.
umm something like that has
"Recovery of the crew module would be effected by means of a gliding parachute (parawing)." -from the wiki.
And we know how well parawings work....
But aren't there several factors working in favor of this being realistic?
Arguably, but I'm still not convinced, for anything near-term.
1) There is no specific requirement for ground launch. It seems that most of the X-Prize contestants have taken good advantage of this.
2) The cargo weight of this competition is relatively low. 7 adults isn't peanuts, but we're not trying to haul Hubble up there as well.
I'm grouping these, because they're related. The problem is that you need a fuel fraction of around 95% to reach orbit (the SS1 was something more on the order of 50%, if I understand correctly). Most of this will be structure, because the fuel tanks are big. A 2% cargo fraction is IMO extremely optimistic, with 1% being closer to reality. If we say around 70 kg per adult (pretty light), that gives around 500 kg of cargo, bare minimum. That gives a bare minimum craft mass of 50 T or so. Lifting that into the upper atmosphere will be quite tricky. The C-130 Hercules transport plane, by comparison, can carry slightly over 11 tonnes (metric, before anyone claims 12.5 tons). Its altitude ceiling is about 10 km, which is nice, but something like 20 km would be nicer (much thinner atmosphere).
A high-altitude launch is probably required for a craft as light as 50 T, too. It has to plow through 10 T of atmosphere (or more) per square metre of cross-sectional profile area if boosting from sea level. Unless craft profile mass density is much greater than this, it'll suffer considerable losses due to atmospheric drag. Launching at 10 km and 20 km reduces this to about 2.2 and 0.7, respectively. With a very cramped capsule and extremely narrow aspect ratio, you might be able to do a sea-level launch.
Realistically you're going to want something that can lift five times as much as the C-130 to the same altitude. I'm not convinced that that's cheaper than using a larger spacecraft.
3) There is no requirement for extended mission duration. So minimal life-support weight. This is a taxi, not a flying laboratory.
While this is true, it doesn't strongly affect my argument. This is still a very small rocket by spacecraft standards; it's just a lot bigger than SS1.
4) There continue to be fairly substantial progress in materials development.
This is the only thing that I can think of that would make such a craft small and cheap enough to be competitive with existing launch options. The threshold required for real progress to be made is far lower than that needed for, say, a space elevator. We're reasonably confident space elevator grade materials will be mass-produceable within 20 to 40 years, so smaller and cheaper rockets should show up well before then.
So, the X-33 demonstrated that reusable ground to orbit for a crew was feasible on paper (given a minimum $1B budget) and that this is an incredibly challenging task. But a decade of additional research, removing NASAs overhead and over-engineering, and a much more flexible set of design constraints, and I think you'll see some decent goes at it.
The X33 failed partly because of mis-management (arguably), but in large part also because it was trying to succeed at an extremely difficult task (SSTO is not anything I'd like to place money on being practical or (especially) cost-effective for chemical rockets any time soon). We've made considerable materials progress in the last decade, but the pace of change drastic enough to change the engineering picture is slower than that.
We'll get there, especially if we're just trying for multi-stagers with a better mass fraction. However, it'll take time. Look to the cargo-lifting companies for the real improvements, here (they have lots of volume and a shorter production cycle, compared to man-rated lifting).
Remember, the X-Prize won't cover the development for anyone - it's a subsidy. Scaled Composites is really after the licensing deal that happened with Virgin, it should be far more
The simple fact of the matter is that this is the right direction for the US to be taking. The true power of the US has never been the stuff it can do with its civil servants. I am not saying that the government has not done great things, but the crowning achievements really came through the efforts of individuals and yes, corporations. Like it or not, that is how the US gets things done. Not to bring up the -1 flamebait, but Iraq is exactly how the US operates. The US didn't send over a horde of civil servants to fix schools, repair oil wells, and other assorted non-combat stuff. They just throw over a wad of cash and watched as corporations scrambled over each other to get it (well, plus or minus an insurgency... but that is another topic altogether).
The US is just good at using its corporations and entrepreneurs to get things done. Small US corporations and entrepreneurs in particular are extremely skilled at doing a lot with a little. For better or for worse, it is just the way the US operates. The X-Prize is a perfect example of what happens when you use this resource instead of funneling public money into that massive sinkhole that is NASA. The fact that the X-Prize was a private prize and not a government sponsored prize is just hits the point home.
If the US government wanted to do three things to be the first to get into space they would be:
1) Don't get in the way of launches. So long as the spacecraft exploding doesn't pose a public threat, don't stop it. If someone is willing to risk their life flying a less then safe spacecraft in the name of exploration and profit, let them. The only time the FAA should step in is if it poses a serious public danger (IE, launching your nuclear powered spacecraft over LA).
2) Take money away from NASA, pump it into the private sector, and break NASA's monopoly. If the government really wants to spend private funds on space exploration, give it to the private sector in the from of X-Prize like rewards. Further, if NASA is able to do something cheaper then private companies because of subsidies, take the subsidies away. NASA holding a monopoly on space flight can only hurt private endeavors.
3) Encourage other nations to launch their private spacecraft from the US. Give them tax breaks, fewer regulations, lift restrictions on immigration, and whatever else it takes. The strength of the US has never ever been in isolationism. Many of the greatest minds in US history were not from the US. This new centaury will not be any different in that regard. Great minds can appear anywhere. The trick is convincing them that the US is the best place to explore their full potential.
have i missed something or what?
i don't remember reading a news about seven astronauts being stuck in some space-station, and running out of life supplys by the end of decade...
wouldn't it be cheaper to just train new astronauts, than to get those seven down from there...
Have you never thought about why they called it Duke Nukem Forever? Guess how long you'll wait for it!
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Everyone who ever tried installing OS/2 beg to differ... ;-)
yea.. within 4 minutes... so twice then...
Going to space and back in a single stage vehicle is extremely difficult because it requires it to be almost completely made of fuel, leaving little mass for thermal protection system, recovery gear, etc (payload?).
Doing it in a multistage vehicle is difficult because it then becomes much harder to reuse it. Even if you ignore the cost issues of throwing away hardware you really want reusability because otherwise every launch you are using brand new hardware with unknown problems. It's hard to get reliability this way.
A lot of the people looking at CATS (Cheap Access To Space) seem to agree that an "assisted" single stage vehicle is the way to go. Starting at high altitude may not give the vehicle significant savings in kinetic and potential energy but other factors such as drag, pressure losses and structural loads can make a very big difference.
There are several promising designs for an assisted SSTO. One example is is Spacevan 2008. It seems to fit the profile of the America's Space Prize very well. The big kite may seem a bit odd but don't be fooled - it's not one of those "designs" that space crackpots keep promoting. It was designed by veteran space engineer Len Cormier. He is one of those people who really know what they are talking about. It's actually a pretty conservative design using mature and proven technology.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Yes, the rocket/capsule scheme makes getting to and from low earth orbit doable on a somewhat reasonable budget, but low earth orbit is full of space junk; it's not a very smart place to spend your vacation.
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Hang on, let me read that again.
>"That you're going to need a rocket big enough to get your spaceplane into orbit, but small enough to not have to be tossed off into the atmosphere every time"
Erm, sounds just like my agonising "lack of girlfriend" dilemma.
When did they stop dying?
More seriously, I think the first deaths will receive inordinate media coverage. IMOH, this will hamper space tourism somewhat over the short term even though everyone going on those flights will know the risks. But I don't see any lasting damage.
Why the obsession with delta-V. Delta-V may be interesting for projectiles (like ICBMs), but hardly relevant for launching people.
If we're launching people, we can't have any high-G-force accelerations anyway. Heck, you can get really hich with a delta-V of less than 1 MPH - of course it takes a while to get there. Think of the guys using balloons as first stages as an example of low-delta-V to altitiude.
Of course slow accellerations makes all your points about the weight of fuel even more important; so I agree flight to orbit is hard. But delta-V has nothing to do with it.
The technical challenges can be funded by our billionaire playboys. The question is, why? Private enterprise = profit. Where will they possibly make enough money? Let me stand back here. Does anybody seriously think that an orbital Ritz Carlton will make any sense to anybody but millionaires? I think it will be built, and then the taxpayers will have to bail them out. It's the ultimate luxury box in the ultimate Superdome, and the ultimate subsidized sports complex. Entertain your pals over the weekend in lunar orbit!
Meanwhile, the greatest tool for scientific discovery and education, the Hubble, is going to rot in orbit. And the Russians will save the Space Station, if it will be saved at all.
Well it IS called Duke Nukem Forever.
Question: Isn't SS1 effectively a multi-stage vehicle, with White Knight being the first stage?
The key insight in SS1 appears to me that you can make the throwaway stages also function as manned, landable aircraft. If you made a much bigger version of White Knight, Mounted under that a much bigger SS1, and attached to *that* a normal-sized SS1, wouldn't you effectively have a three-stage fully reusable orbit-ready vehicle? Essentially you launch the third stage from the top of the current SS1 hop.
Obviously I'm fully aware that the problems are nowhere near as simple as I'm implying. Quite apart from the fact that you can't simply scale up SS1 or WK and expect them to continue working, SS1 would probably not work very well as a carrier (that's why WK looks so different than SS1) and WK could certainly not feather in the way that SS1 does to get back from the separation point so probably all three vehicles would need to be radically different from the current WK and SS1. But I don't see any problem in principle.
More on XPrize50m... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6187724/?GT1=5472