Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
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.
Virgin Galactic (Richard Branson's $21m investment in 5 passenger craft from Scaled Composites) will be naming its first two vehicles
:)
"VSS Enterprise" and
"VSS Voyager" (where VSS is Virgin SpaceShip).
So yes, I suspect that the thought had crossed their minds
Its not very aggressive considering its going to be a tin can that probably wont even be close to what a manned vehicle would require and its probably launching on existing boosters, variants of Titan, Delta or Atlas. Chances are they are going to be underpowered for doing much past LEO. They sure aren't a Saturn V or the kind of heavy lifter you could get out of the Shuttle stack if you throw away the Shuttle and replace it with a big cargo module.
Me personally I'd like to see them just launch a shuttle external tank in to LEO and get it there half full of Hydrogen and Oxygen, hang a couple nozzles and a credit card swiper on it and turn it in to a gas station in space. Then put a simple, reusable space tug up there, a couple engines, two tanks and frame, that refuels in space and round trips to the moon and the L points on a weekly basis and NEVER reenters the atmosphere.
The CEV is also not very aggressive considering it will be another 6 years before it does anything even remotely useful assuming it isn't axed before then. Whats wrong with that picture, 3+ years to first flight and 9+ until a flight that actually does something. It stinks.
"When NASA gets the kind of funding it did during the 60's "
If the Russian Space Agency gets the kind of funding NASA is getting today they will do some wonderful things. An obvious example is they have already settled on one design and are bending metal on a full scale mockup. Don't think Boeing or Lockheed are past the computer generated fantasy stage.
Half of the money and time going in to the CEV flyoff is probably throw away unless they use parts of both designs which almost never happens.
I hate to break it to you but you are NEVER going to throw enough money at anything to keep NASA, Boeing and Lockheed happy. The more money you throw the more they will devour. ISS, the B-2 and the F-22 have all proven then. In the Apollo era there were lots of idealists in the space business, now there are a lot of bureaucrats building empires, and contractors trying to pad their bottom lines.
A lean budget probably ends up being faster and more efficient since it keeps the project from being a towering pile of bureaucracy and waste. Kelly Johnson and Burt Rutan both succeed by ruthlessly keeping the number of people working on the project to the essential minimum. Unfortunately Lockheed and Boeing will probably just produce and underfunded towering pile of bureaucracy, just based on track record.
@de_machina
You are assuming that the CEV will even be built. The U.S. Constitution absolutely guarentees that there will be two more Presidential administrations between now and then, possibly more, and requirements that Congress will have to do annual budgetary approval on the project simply add to the issues. That and the recent history NASA has shown toward developing new manned spaceflight vehicles would seem to indicate that the CEV is doomed to almost certain failure.
The only glimmer of hope that it might succeed is indeed the fact that the Shuttles are being forced into retirement, and I don't see any movement in Congress to change that, particularly when even the strongest supporters of manned spaceflight are trying to kill the Shuttle program. Being without a manned space vehicle would essentially make NASA a museum caretaker, and an aviation research agency. I think you would find public support for NASA to drop almost completely if the manned spaceflight program were disbanded, and most people at NASA seem to realize that as well.
I do support the development of the CEV at the moment, but there are competitive pressures put on NASA contractors now that have never been in the government space arena before. If the CEV starts to show the kinds of failures in management that the Shuttle program is [in]famous for, there are several other groups in private industry that might just be able to provide a cheaper alternative to getting crews up to the ISS and LEO in general. Five or six years from now (when the Shuttles get hopfully sent to the Smithsonian) it will be a lot more clear just who is a major contender in manned spaceflight and what launch options are going to be available. It would be ironic if NASA astronauts had to book a flight on Virgin Galactic to get to the ISS. I pray that NASA doesn't screw up that bad.