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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.
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...
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
" 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.
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.
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 -
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
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).
When you have $50 million dollars, you can run your own space contest and demand that the winner perform their orbit attempts while wearing "I'M WITH STUPID" T-shirts. Bigelow has the $50 million right now so he gets to make his own rules.