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Rules Set for $50 Million America's Space Prize
An anonymous reader wrote in to say that The rules have been set for Robert Bigelow's $50 million 'America's Space Prize'. The gist of it is that the winner needs to get a crew of five people up 400km, complete two orbits of the Earth, and then do it again within 60 days. I've got a gremlin and a huge rubber band... now if I only had 4 friends!
..until Rutan does this?
I've got a gremlin and a huge rubber band... now if I only had 4 friends!
;)
The confessions of a true geek, eh Taco?
That said, the time frame for this thing seems a little too high -
And one more thing. They have to do it by Jan. 10, 2010.
I'm not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing -- 3 years might have been nice, but 5 years seems a little too long to me.
Anyway, this is really good. Hopefully, the space race has started again!
PS - why the _HELL_ is Slashdot having an applet in the ads? It freezes up my browser in Windows for a while. It's getting to be a pain. At the very least, provide some way of turning off Applet ads.
Wow, no more than 20% expendable and attain a real orbit. I have a feeling this money is safe.
Yeah, sure, and the moment you start sucking gigawatts of wind power out of the atmosphere, you'll be shifting the climate in new and interesting ways. Then you'll get a new generation of enviro-nutters on your case.
My take on these type of awards is that the cash prize is just there to try to encourage both the small and inventive teams as well as help pay back some of the bills accrued by the big teams. The real reward will come a few years AFTER the competition, but the award will help keep the company solvent from point A to B.
Basically, this isn't like a lottery or something where if you spend $11 to make $10 you loose, instead you got to do $11 worth of science for only $1 and more importantly you might be able to move your company/team towards a future where you can make 10x-100x times the award per year or more...
There's a huge difference between flying a neato rocket plane like "SpaceShipOne" and actually achieving Low Earth Orbit. This will be a much more difficult challenge!
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
The contestant must have its principal place of business in the United States of America.
Isn't this is very restrictive and unfair?
Now, using a rubber band would be impractical -- when you apply an impulse to an idealized orbit, the trajectory will change but it will always return to the same point at which you applied the impulse. Therefore your Gremlin would crash into the Earth's surface. You would need a second rubber band floating in space to actually reach orbit.
Now, this is *unless* you take advantage of perturbations of a second body -- like the Moon -- to alter your trajectory enough to bring the perigee up to 400 km. This is what I am assuming you meant.
Sincerely,
Pedant McGee
I don't think the prize money is enough. It cost about half that to attain something much less by SpaceShipOne. My guess is that it will cost closer to $100 mil to do such a thing and claim the prize. Furthermore, I think the timespan is too short. It took 8 years for someone to claim the Ansari prize. How can we expect something much difficult to be accomplished in much less time? Sure, some of the development is in place by the teams that lost, but there are many hurdles to be overcome for orbital flight.
A blog like any other.
If one does not maintain velocity, one's orbit will degrade and one will fall back to earth. It's similar to what happens when you throw a ball up in the air...if you were to throw it into orbit, it would just come right back down, because there is nothing to impel it to continue at that elevation.
The end of Middle East conflict? In your dreams...
When the Arab nations realize they can't eat sand and can't afford to import food because their oil is worthless, there'll be hell to pay.
It forces the builder to design something new, instead of just another overgrown ICBM from the 1950s.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
This has been tossed around for a bit.
What if there was X-prize for something like cold fusion? Would there be a flurry of activity to produce a cheap, pollution free energy source?
Space is great. The tech spinoffs are great. But for an increasingly crowded world. Wouldn't a race for cheap energy make more sense?
" The risks involved increase polynomially the longer the craft is active."
I don't mean this the way this sounds, but I think you made this up completely. You may be right. But I don't see any data to support this.
"If people die in the course of attaining this prize"
People die skydiving, scuba diving, bungee jumping, skiing... all the time. Unlike many people, I don't think the loss of a spacecraft with 6 people on board is any more tragic than the loss of 6 people in a minivan accident on the freeway.
"say goodbye to private space travel and hello to new laws and regulations."
New laws and regulations are inevitable anyway. Or did you think Virgin Airlines (Branson) is just going to fire up Spaceship one and start taking reservations? Its really hard getting FCC certified for any kind of commercial flights.
"The chilling effect from "Columbia" is nothing compared to what will happen if a private attempt goes wrong."
What chilling effect? The space shuttle is a piece of crap; it should be grounded because its too expensive.
"This contest also has the potential to create an international incident."
So does fingerprinting and retina scanning all foreigners entering the country, but that doesn't seem to have stopped us.
Stop worrying about the sky falling.
WTF are you talking about? What does Burt have anything to do with this? Also realize that by moving the contest rules to the U.S., this will have the potential to bring great minds at one central location to tackle the task. It's a fact that materials, services, and general cooperation is much better in the U.S. than abroad. But yes, it is also very America-centric, but hey, if you have $50 mil, start your own contest with your own rules, instead of bitching about someone else's. It should also be noted that Bigelow is doing this for the promotion of his own inflatable modules, not for the betterment of humanity.
A blog like any other.
How else could you solve so many problem with a 10 million dollar prize. If Burt Rutan was focused on a lightweight scalable wind turbine - My guess is we'd be there by now. Instead we've invented a private version of the vomit comet.
Let's see:
Invention #1, if it can be invented, will provide cheap and unlimited energy to the world population. Profit value: Gajillions.
Invention #2, if it can be invented, will provide trips to low Earth orbit for the lucky few who can afford it. Profit value: a few million a year.
Seems to me the key phrase here is "if it can be invented" and not "10 million dollar 'prize' for inventing it". There is a heck of a lot more of a prize in cash terms waiting for invention #1 without a group of hobby enthusiasts offering anything. Doesn't appear you thought before you ranted.
Expendable = unnecessary = wasteful
Perhaps the organizers wish to not pollute or rape the earth to get this task completed, but instead want to see it done in the most efficient way possible.
This kind of thinking amazes me. I wonder if DeSoto, Columbus, Magellan or Marco Polo had to worry about such ramifications.
Humans, by thier very nature, are explorers. If someone wants to strap a raocket to thier butt and blast themsellves into space, so be it. People will die in the name of exploration... Five hundred years ago losing five men on an expedition would mean relatviely little (impact to thier families notwithstanding). Why is it so different today. Do our lives now mean that much more than then?
Of course, I understand the need to keep others safe. If the aforementioned butt-rocket man were to accidentally explode over my house and injure my family I'd be pissed. But let's not take this to the extreme.
Exploration and risk go hand in hand. Something tells me there is a happy medium between the two that will allow us to explore while mitigating the risk to others.
For the record, yes I would strap a rocket to my butt in a heart beat if I thought I could get into space, orbit and return safely.
Apples and Oranges.
They should pursue both inventions. Why does everyone think that a space program is the entity stopping other inventions from happening? It's not. NASA is not stopping the creation of efficient wind power. God damnit. Bitch about the military's budget instead. Stop messing with the real estate investment opportunity of a lifetime.
Moderation: +1 pwnage
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Others have already pointed out that you have attributed the prize to the wrong person.
The rest of your statement is absurd. Don't like an American contest like this? Scrounge together your own 10 million and offer a contest of your own. Surely there are rich companies and coporations in your part of the world that can pony up the cash?
When I look to donate money to a cause, I don't donate to an "adopt an african child" program, I donate to a local foodbank. When I volunteer time, I don't go to South America and build schools, I help Habitat for Humanity.
I can't help the whole world, and these charities and organizations focus on my neighbours and the people in my community. One could even say that my actions are not altruistic, as these are the same neighbours and community my children and family live in. They may one day need the help of these services.
Not every action and event has to be balanced for some metric of global fairness.
A desire to foster innovation and advancement in your own country is only reasonable. Since this is private money, it can be used any way he wants to.
- sarcasm is just one more service we offer -
I think his point is that the way it is worded, the winner must achieve that velocity, but they don't actually have to complete two orbits around the Earth. It's the velocity that is required, not the orbiting. So maybe they could orbit just once, then land, because they did achieve the required velocity.
Queens of the Stone Age - they rule
uhh, I believe that he was talking about the right wing commentator Bill OReilly
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Look at it this way: he/them could build another $50M house with 20 bedrooms, 50" plasma display in each room and five swimming pools, instead of funding this prize.
For one, (very) efficient Wind Power Station itself would give immediate cash prize to any inventor. From the market. If it doesn't happen, perhaps it can't be done in foreseable future.
And, perhaps for someone "putting your eggs in more than one basket" is more important goal than taking care of energy distribution. I understand that "worthy goals" are not universal, but you're free to set your own prize, or nag the wealthier of us to set one.
Robert
Bastard Operator From 193.219.28.162
"Is it wrong for America just to care just about itself?" Nope. If America doesn't care about America, no one else will. It's human nature to want to see the mighty fall. Nationalism isn't a bad thing. And besides, is anyone saying there is nothing Euro-centric? That all things should be global?
True - but the trade-routes went through there too, so it was worth fighting for. The only bit that matters in that respect now is the Suez Canal; otherwise, we have lots of alternatives these days for importing Eastern goods!
How is this a better idea? Bigelow needs a way to get tourists into orbit to visit his space hotels; his dream. Can you think of a more cost effective why of achieving this goal? A better wind power station would not help one bit.
If you are saying that in general money could be spent on more altruistic goals, then that may be true, but it has no relevance to this conversation. You might as well go bitch at people for spending money on new SUVs instead of funding wind research. It's their money, they can spend it how they wish.
If you truly believe in a prize for wind power then you should found an organization to fund a W-Prize and start stumping for donations, much like the founder of the X-prize did when he wanted to help further space travel. Corporate donations for such a concept might not be that hard to obtain, I can see big oil companies signing up for the good advertising, for example.
And as you tread the halls of sanity, You feel so glad to be, Unable to go beyond. I have a message, From another time..
I think the math suggests that 2000 difference may be better spent on sustainable power generation because it indicates that the affordable-effeciency gains for the current refridgerator have been exploited. If the remaining choice is non-cost effective exploits or more cost effective generation - then the smart money goes with the higher cost/benefit.
AIK
...why is it open only for Americans?
I think people forget that Burt Rutan's company is probably the leading candidate to win this US$50,000,000 prize.
Scaled Composites did a lot of development work for both the McDonnell-Douglas Delta Clipper and Lockheed Martin Venture Star projects. This means Scaled Composites already has enough technical knowledge to start work on a space vehicle to win this prize as soon as they get enough funding to pull it off (Paul Allen's Vulcan Ventures could easily part with the US$200,000,000 estimated development cost; Allen's group paid US$30,000,000 to develop the X-Prize winner).
"Another set of the rules for the prize require that any contestant reside and do business in the United States."
If you can only win it if you live and do business in The United States of America, then calling it "America's Space Price" isn't that misleading - so many people call "USA" "America". Well except if you live elsewhere in the continent of America.
If it makes you feel any better, you can consider this payback for the EU nixing the Boeing/McDonnell Douglas merger just to give Airbus a leg up.
That was dirty pool.
m-
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
We're all overlooking one key fact:
It must also demonstrate the ability to dock with Bigelow Aerospace's inflatable space habitat and be able to stay docked in orbit for up to six months.
This prize is not an act of goodwill - it is subcontracted commercial R&D! Presumably this "Bigelow Aerospace" (doesn't that sound like something out of the Jetsons?) company is in need of a launch vehicle, and finds it cheaper to launch a "contest" than to develop the vehicle themselves. Remember, Rutan & Co. spent well more than $10 million developing SS1... it's likely Bigelow will actually save money if the contest is completed successfully...
As far as I can tell, the rules say "5 people", but the rules do not say anything about have said people "Return alive from orbit", nor anything at all about them "being alive at launch time".
So, in theory (if not in spirit) you could win by shipping up 5 dead people.
MeThinks this is what happens when you write rules without a lawyer present.
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The thing is Burt Rutan isn't into designing wind turbines - he's into designing airframes. If there had been a $10M wind turbine prize, Burt Rutan wouldn't have been a competitor - it's not one of his interests.
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While this may seem like a rip-off, everything is much more open than a typical commercial R&D subcontract. Those are usually done like NASA has done things, or worse, especially for the sub-contractor.
At least in this situation everything is going to be out in the open, you don't have to worry about missing deadlines, because the deadlines are something that you set personally. It may be influenced by competition, but even then it is quite straight forward, and if you miss the prize because somebody else beat you to that... that is simply the rules of the game. Normally if this were an R&D subcontract like you were implying, there would be the primary contractor or customer who would be breathing down your neck asking for status reports every couple of days, if not daily or hourly (depending on how anal the customer is and mission critical the project is).
On the other hand, I agree that this is a very cost-effective solution in terms of getting needed components on a very visible project. It would be impressive if GM or Ford did something similar in terms of building a hydrogen-fueled engine or even a major utility company in regards to highly efficient power generation. Set the specific requirements and guarentee a certain minimum buy of the power generated from such a facility, such as a wind farm, geothermal vents, or even a nuclear power plant with an established maximum of nuclear waste generation. There is some real engineering that could be accomplished using this model that would be incredibly effective.
This could even be done for software components that implement a certain technology. Just for instance, if you set up a contest to pay for the first implementation of a new audio or video codec that also has features X,Y,Z (like a plug-in to winamp, and LGPL libraries, etc).
The main requirement here to do such a contest is that 1) the discussion of the project can be done publicly and 2) the resulting product while complimentary to your product line, does not directly compete with what you do for your main line business or with the industry (when a large number of corporate sponsors are involved).
In this case with Bigelow Aerospace, they really need to have these spacecrafts available, but don't really intend to build and fly them.
Not every engineering challenge can be solved this way, but there are a number than can be done. This is also why Thiokol won't be a sponsor (although perhaps a competitor?), because this does directly compete with what they do for a business.
Let me help further that point.
Spreading the Word (w/photos)
Col. Gary Brandl: Satan lives in Fallujah
In preparation for the attack, Christian Heavy Metal.
As for other interesting Iraq news for today:
US forces demolish a hospital and target another for releasing casualty figures; 70 journalists are embedded for the invasion; mot of the troops doing the invasion have no major combat experience; and a Georgia man commits suicide at Ground Zero to protest Bush and the war in Iraq.
"Now we're getting to Science -- I love this!" -- Dr. Steven Chu, Energy Secretary confirmation hearings.
This is not a hidden agenda. It's the explicit goal of a company that wants to (gasp!) make a profit.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....