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Personal Spaceflight Leaders Form New Federation
Neil Halelamien writes "A number of entrepreneurs in the nascent commercial space industry are establishing the Personal Spaceflight Federation, an industry group which will work with federal regulators to come up with standards to promote crew and passenger safety. The founders include both suborbital and orbital spaceflight entrepreneurs, such as Armadillo Aerospace's John Carmack, Scaled Composites's Burt Rutan, SpaceX's Elon Musk, and t/Space's Gary Hudson. Commentary available on MSNBC, Space.com, and Space Race News. In related news, NASA is looking at commercial options for resupply of the International Space Station."
I wonder if they considered United Federation of Planets. Even just for a fleeting moment?
Is Armadillo Aerospace's John Carmack the well-known game programmer?
I thought Enterprise was cancelled? We still need to invent the warp drive, make first contact, and impress those aliens with how well humans can all get along.
...it's not led by Zap Brannigan.
Earn a free iRiver
Any day now, credit card companies will start offering Frequent Flier Light-Years, or something like that...
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
What is the big deal with flying into space? Space tourism is about as interesting as sitting in your cubicle with added nausea to keep you on your toes.
The goal ought to be a real destination, the Moon, Mars, some asteroid, but without government money, that isn't going to happen.
So the next best thing is to make a space "plane" that can transport passengers from New York to Sydney in less than an hour. NASA had plans for something like that (someone can provide a link, I'm sure), but scrapped it in favor of Bush's latest drive to get to Mars (or the moon, I forget).
Who wants to sit on a thousand pounds of explosives and not go anywhere? Space flight ought to be seen as a means to an end, not the end itself.
Trade Federation?
They haven't even gotten there yet and they're already looking for reasons to control who goes there and how. Safety is the given reason but it will take a lot to convince me that setting themselves up as "recognized" experts/authority figures isn't the true motivation. That's a bankable position to be in.
"We're in! Let's close the door behind us"
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
I can see a nice business here.
The catch line would be something like, "For those with nothing left to buy on Earth..."
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It's a long way to tip a rary.
Now the damn government is going to regulate another thing. I'm sick and tired of all this regulation.
...and this may be the only time in my life that I say this...That even though the government has completely dropped the ball on space, that corporations are going to be able to close the gap.
Who will "do it" in space first?
Join me in iClod. (http://www.iclod.com/)
A friend of mine wrote up this massive history of the world starting in 2001 and going until 2100, covering society and technology as it evolves bit by bit. He did this in 2001, and so far he's had a stunningly good track record of hitting actual events within several months of reality. He got the actual month of Spaceship One winning the X-Prize, predicted the ESA would lose a probe to Mars... and he predicted something very similar to this announcement happening in early 2005 as well...
I'm not saying he's Nostradamus or anything, but... um... if you live in France, now might be a good time to move abroad...
The world's only surviving livewriter.
i think it would be great if non-government companies could get a big chunk of the future of spaceflight. maybe the whole thing will be because of the money, but because of that, those companies will have to make spaceflights cheaper, so more people may enjoy a spaceflight in the near feature.
The old Playstation game "Martian Gothic" told the tale of some early Mars bases in a near-future scenario...where said bases were created by a corporation and not NASA or the like. That sort of future is looking more and more likely.
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
Think about the hype around someone hijacking a space ship and crashing it into a capitol city/landmark of their choise...
- We have recieved reports that Mars is harbouring terrorists.
Oh, sure, they're all cute and fuzzy when their young ... what happens when their all grown up, big and successful and looking after their own special interests?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
A number of entrepreneurs in the nascent commercial space industry are establishing the Personal Spaceflight Federation, an industry group which will work with federal regulators to come up with standards to promote crew and passenger safety.
Wow! That's great! It's good to see that they've shunned lobbiests.
It isn't like these guys aren't here to craft laws to make themselves richer. Instead, they want to promote safety, just like the Cigarette industry!
http://www.xprizenews.org/index.php?p=764
9 -656
Rep. James Oberstar [D-MN]) introduced a new bill:
H.R. 656: To amend title 49, United States Code, to enhance the safety of the commercial human space flight..
To amend title 49, United States Code, to enhance the safety of the commercial human space flight industry.
You can track and check for latest updates related to this bill at:
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h10
This could be one of the first concerns for the leaders from the newly emerging Personal Spaceflight Industry that announced their intent to organize an industry federation to design and uphold the standards and processes necessary to ensure public safety and promote growth of the personal spaceflight industry.
" NASA is looking at commercial options for resupply of the International Space Station."
:) Or more realisticly the Russians can just undock the modules they built and control from the NASA tidbits and let them burn up. Their modules are a full, self contained space station, a Mir2 if you will and they don't actually require the American parts.
I think the Russians are way ahead of NASA on both keeping the ISS going, and on the CEV.
The Russians are going to be showing a full scale model of their Kliper reusable capsule at the Paris air show this June.
This is their planned replacement for the venerable Soyuz. It will carry 6 astronauts or 700 kilos of cargo. The article sounds like they are a little cagey on the schedule, it just says a few years. I'll bet you they have a manned launch about 5 years sooner than the CEV.
If they hang one of these on the ISS as an emergency vehicle they will enable bringing the ISS up to nearly its planned manning level, and might actually allow people to do research on the thing, instead of spending all their time maintaining as the 2-3 man crews have been doing.
Kind of looks to me like Russia is planning to go it alone when the U.S. gives up on the ISS and the shuttle. The other source of friction is that since Russia is trading with Iran and the U.S. has embargoed Iran NASA is officially forbidden from having any financial relationship with the Russian Space agency. I wonder if they will have to paint a white line down the middle of the ISS and have a U.S. half and a Russian half
For comparison to Kliper, the CEV is going to have Lockheed and Boeing launched an unmanned, half baked prototype in 2008, pick a winner between the two and wont have a manned launch, probably just to LEO, before 2014 at the earliest.
By contrast NASA went from a nearly standing start to putting a man on the moon in way less than 10 years in the '60's when it had never been done before. In summary, NASA, Boeing and Lockheed are today, officially pathetic. As nearly as I can tell the CEV, and the Bush Moon/Mars initiative is mostly just an excuse to pump money in to the pockets of Boeing and Lockheed and put the milestones that count so far out there it will be a miracle if they program isn't killed before they actually have to do anything serious for the subsidies.
@de_machina
He seems to be missing from the group... "Sir" Richard Branson is also a no show.
For the price of one shuttle launch, NASA could offer a very hefty, very inviting prize to private companies that can deliver a suitable payload to orbit and the ISS. NASA might offer some more modest sub-prizes for lesser accomplishments (e.g., delivering a small crew with no payload to ISS).
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Ding ding ding.
If this were Delta, American Airlines, and JetBlue, wouldn't we be screaming blue-bloody-murder that airlines can't be trusted to develop safety regs? What about chemical companies and chemical handling procedures? Corporations and financial reporting standards? Nightclubs and fire safety regs?
There are hundreds if not thousands of examples where businesses (and entire industries) of all sizes willfully (and gleefully) ignore the public interest, safety, and so on.
This seems like an excellent way to make sure there are space-company-friendly rules in place, by writing them before anyone else does and saying "well, ours are already written, and we're the experts!" Wrong. Much as I dislike NASA- they are the experts, they've been down the "safety" path before (including the pressure to go on with the show routine; do we honestly think things won't be WORSE with a corporation making that decision?) and they've been working with commercial travel(aka airlines) for a long, long time. They're certainly more qualified than John Carmack.
Please help metamoderate.
United Federation of Planet.
If Carmack can join, without a successful flight, where do I sign up? I'll boldly go!
--
make install -not war
No, John Carmack is a complete neophyte aerospace engineer-wannabe with money to waste. Why Burt Rutan would offer his coattails to these other clowns I'll never know.
an ill wind that blows no good
as long as they only control their part of space i don't care
They make a couple successful flights and now it's an "industry"? Come on...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Damn you, I wanted to be the first to make that joke! : )
Maybe they aren't allowed to influence the cultures of the countries in which they crash?
You can't take the sky from me...
I've been waiting for four years to see how the Federation was formed. Now that the stupid Temporal Cold War or Lack of Original Plot Ideas War or whatever it was is finally over, the show is finally getting good.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
What's John Carmack all about? Is it good or is it whack?
"Without government money, that isn't going to happen."
What a load of crap. Spaceflight isn't something the government needs to be involved in except perhaps to regulate externalities. It's affordable to private industry, it's being developed in a mature market economy, and the potential rewards are sufficient to drive investement without any government intervention.
It is imperative that we get an extra-terran human colony but the government is the wrong institution to do it. I will grant that government funding in the early days of the space program was crucial but it's time to let private industry take over.
-- Too lazy to get a lower UID.
I can't think of one single new industry (if you really wanna call it that -- how about "exploratory push"?) that was helped by creating safety measures before people pushed ahead. That's the whole problem with the space industry. We started concerned about saftey and then haven't really gone anywhere. Were the early trans-atlantic sailors concerned with safety? how about early pioneers of flight? automobile developers? nope nope nope. They were pushed by a drive to get something done and frankly lots of people got killed or injured, and that's tragic, but they did get something done. If you look at any major human developement the safety measures came much later, after the new technology or territory or whatever was well developed. Hell we didn't have seatbelts required in cars until the 70's(?), well after the auto was largely fully developed. Shipping is still plagued with mis-haps due to largely inadequate safety reg for commercial ship building.
;-)
Now look at space exploration. We've only lost a handful of astronauts due to massive safety efforts from day one -- and that's great! meanwhile we've done little more than throw some rocks up in the sky and watch them fall back down. If we'd taken some real risks -- put some willing guys on the end of a bomb and chucked 'em out there and see what happens, then we'd probably be a lot farther along than we are today. True , we'd have lost a lot of people, but its sort of the price you pay to develop something.
I would think that commercial exploitation would be opposed to early safety reg for just these reasons. Its generates more upfront cost, lowers your initial ROI and generally makes it a big PITA to get things done.
that said, I'm not gonna sit on top of time bomb anytime soon...
man, I feel like mold.
The wikipedia entry says "Michael Kelly" is a founding member, and links to this bibliography. That's some trick, him being a founding member, as the bibliography says he died in 1826....
He must have flown his privately funded spacecraft too close to a time warp.
. . . watch a rerun of Trek while the wonders of the universe flash past the windows?
Frankly, I'm convinced the space elevator is the way of the future. It's clearly showing significant potential and even NASA has begun to take it seriously.
If they'd spend more money on getting a space elevator built and less money on rockets, we'd be in much better shape.
Let's face it, sticking people or anything else on top of a big firecracker is always going to be really dangerous and really expensive. The space elevator will be cheap (over the long haul) and very safe in comparison.
Why don't we just concentrate on getting that built? Then all you need is little orbital ships that can ferry people and crews around. And since these orbital ships can either be ferried by the elevator or built in orbit from ferried components, you're talking a significantly safer way of dealing with space in almost every way.
Yes, we have some advances to make to actually build it, but if we spent nearly as much money on researching the needed advances as we do on maintaining the space shuttle fleet, we'd probably have the research done pretty quickly.
What happened to the entrepeunerial spirit here in the US. Why all of this worry up front of what the government thinks. This country used to be lead by innovation and the government would figure a way to deal with the consequences. Now we have become a nation that first thinks of regulators and liability first and innovation might just find it's way into the equation.
High-altitude ballooning would offer all of the advantages of conventional-powered recreatonal space flight, i.e. great view, exposure to ionizing radiation, with none of the pitfalls, i.e. contrails of burnt tire exhaust, unconrollable vomiting. Just put on yer space suit, tie a few balloons to a lawn chair, and you're good to go. Don't even need a space suit up to about 55 thousand feet (the limit at which you can pressure-breathe O2).
As for the commerical uses, I've been on a plane load of puking tourists, thanks; I'll stick to cattle class on a 747.
Carmack builds a large base on Mars to conduct some shady experiments, and, well, you know the rest?
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
Shortly after the WW1 and before commercial air travel became popular, "barnstorming" aviators would "buzz" small towns or county fairs, using of one of the local farm fields as a temporary runway, and offer airplane rides to customers. These flights didn't have a "real destination". The purpose was not travel, but experience.
The emerging space tourism industry is about to begin it's "barnstorming" days, selling rides for the experience, not the destination. Initially it will only suborbital flights. Soon, they will be competing for altitude and duration of weightlessness records. Then someone will start offering a "once around" package.
Space flight as a means to an end is not going to happen until you have and end with meaning. Why "sit on a thousand pounds of explosives" to go to the moon? There's nothing there but grey rocks and dust. Mars, same thing, but the rocks are red. There's no real destination, no purpose in going except for the experience of being there, and that won't change until we get some sort of permanent outpost set up there.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
The exciting part is how NASA is looking for commercial companies to carry stuff up to the space station.
If you want capitalists to do anything for you, the first step is to create some demand...
That would be a good idea except for one small problem: we don't have a cable strong enough for the job. Maybe someday someone will make it, maybe not.
I'll agree that we should work for it, but until it is made we should not put all our eggs in one basket. Even then we need some rocket work because the cable needs to be replaced once in a while. (What if it break, and your replacement breaks too?)
I think we have cable strong enough for a mars elevator. Would be interesting to send a space elevator to Mars now (meaning in several years after we build it) and once that is in place use it for future missions there.
that is all muthachuckas
industry group which will work with federal regulators to come up with standards to promote crew and passenger safety.
Which, of course, is formed by those already in the industry who, incidently, may have financial reasons to want tighter regulations thus raising the bar for others who may want to get in the new space race.
Of course, that isn't completely accurate, but it paints an interesting picture of the situation.
-Adam
Everyone else was pretty much able to duplicate the internal combustion engine-powered glider, but only the Wrights managed to run enough tests under a high enough rate of evolutionary change (enabled by their hands-on experience in their bicycle shop) that they could solve the all-important control problem.
Similarly, the thing that will really open space to private enterprise will be a group that figures out how to run a steady stream of test flights at a high rate with evolutionary changes enabled by flexible design/fabrication.
Seastead this.
Ah, that's just what we need. A fledgling industry, operating in large part in a region over which the government can't even claim legitimate authority (space), and the industry leaders are cowing down and working with them, which will give an appearance of legitimacy to further unconstitutional regulation of private industry. Let common law do it's thing. If a spaceship blows up, the company is liable for damages, and will be sued out of existence faster than any federal regulator could shut them down. A piece of spacecraft falls on and damages private property, same deal. It's not that hard to figure out, and it certainly doesn't require government intervention.
So this is the Birth of a Federation?
[o]_O
Virgin Galactic's web site has a new computer-generated
0 0002175.png 0 0002215.png 0 0002260.png
video available, which shows the full flight profile of the Virgin
Galactic craft. It's available for streaming at the bottom of this
page:
http://www.virgingalactic.com/news.asp
I took the liberty of capturing just about all the key frames from the
video, and posting them on the web:
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~neilh/virgingalactic/
The most interesting images are seen right after the question "What
Next?" flashes on the screen. These are images of what appear to be a
Virgin Galactic space station, with a SpaceShipOne-style craft docked.
Of course, they're probably complete vapourware for now, but they
certainly look interesting:
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~neilh/virgingalactic/
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~neilh/virgingalactic/
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~neilh/virgingalactic/
I've been told that these some of these images also appeared on the Discovery Channel's Black Sky: The Race for Space DVD, with descriptions from Burt Rutan.
And how much funding has Kliper received so far? My impression is that they haven't received even a fraction of the 10 billion roubles they say they need. Even if they got that much money, they wouldn't expect a first launch of the vehicle until 2010.
There's some more info on the Kliper over at Astronautix.
Seriously, in the 90s NASA had several abortive projects which got about as far as (or farther than) the Kliper is now. Some examples are the Lockheed Martin X-33, the Orbital Sciences X-34, the McDonnell Douglas DC-X, and the Scaled Composites X-38. Most of these had insurmountable technical difficulties, although my personal suspicion is that the DC-X and X-38 could have evolved into very nice systems. Unfortunately, when it comes to government projects, the funding situation is king.
Already been done. From Here:
THE MEMBERSHIP REWARDS PROGRAM FROM AMERICAN EXPRESS LETS CARDMEMBERS ROCKET INTO ORBIT THROUGH SPACE ADVENTURES LTD.
NEW YORK, March 03, 2004 -- American Express today announced that cardmembers enrolled in its Membership Rewards program can now redeem points with Space Adventures Ltd., the world's leading space flight experiences and space tourism company. For the first time, cardmembers can touch the edge of space and revel in the weightlessness of Earth's orbit by using points to get there, adding to the universe of already abundant experiences Membership Rewards enrollees can enjoy.
"Space Adventures is the latest of many unique experiences we offer to fuel our enrollees' imaginations and prompt our cardmembers to ask not just what they can do with points, but how far they can go with them," said Chris Lynch, vice president, Rewards Management at American Express. "Without dipping into their wallets, cardmembers can redeem for an almost limitless number of things -- like a journey to the cusp of space or a rejuvenating day at a luxurious spa -- and use points to cover the costs."
American Express is offering three Space Adventures packages to enrollees who wish to experience the sights and sensations of space travel:
* Zero-Gravity Flight (1,000,000 points): Experience weightlessness by traveling in a specially outfitted jet aircraft that is used to train astronauts to work and test equipment in a weightless environment.
* Edge of Space Flight (3,000,000 points): Fly in a MiG-25 supersonic jet at up to two-and-one-half times the speed of sound (Mach 2.5) and above 80,000 feet, where one can see the curvature of the Earth and the blackness of space.
* Sub-Orbital Space Flight (20,000,000 points): Reserve your seat now for a ride aboard a sub-orbital spacecraft that will climb to an altitude of 62 miles, expose you to experience several minutes of weightlessness and treat you to Earth views from space.
Isn't this old news:
/ tas.htm
http://www.tip.net.au/~davidjw/libdata/ALPHABET/T
1. Make the airlocks compatible with each other and the NASA stuff.
2. Make the Oxygen and Nitrogen fittings standard, and not mechanically interchangable.
3. Develop the equivalent to the Guard frequency (international rescue radio channel), but for spacecraft.
Chip H.
feel that we just need to kill off NASA right now?
I mean.. its just sad. It really is, the way it's going these days. From the hubble to the ISS, it's just not right.
Try not to let life get in the way of living.
Since I first ran across dustrunners some years back, the site has been up and down most often than a yo-yo. For months after I'd arrived, it seemed to be some sort of pseudo-reality game - a rather intriguing one - until it suddenly disappeared, that is.
Long story short, it's been doing that ever since: appearing out of the haze from time to time, oozing appeal and promises, only to vanish again sometime later.
While you say the actual history of dustrunners/the show is 'way too depressing to put on a web page', some of us are very interested in what actually happened.