And exactly does one come to own an asteroid? Is planing a flag good enough?
Space property rights are a very murky and ambiguous area, but one which should get resolved if we want to have any hope of expanding out there permanently. An article by Sam Dinkin in the Space Review on Property rights and space commercialization has a fairly nice overview of the issues. A quote:
Space property rights will probably not spark a space transportation boom that will rival the railroad boom, the airplane boom, or the automobile boom. But there will be no boom if there are no property rights. Leaving the regulatory regime the same is a recipe for continued sclerosis.
If we do nothing, space will look a lot more like Antarctica than Alaska. Without property rights there will not be adequate investment and space resources will be underutilized. Establishing property rights in space will cost millions, not billions, and can be done decades ahead of any commercialization or colonization. It's time to set the stage to break out of the exploration mode of Columbus and get on with establishing the regulatory regime to lay the foundation for the next Plymouth Rock.
What do you want them to do, come up with some project that requires no manpower and resources whatsoever?
I'd like a project which uses competitive fixed-cost contracts with money being given for meeting specific milestones, rather than the typical cost-plus boondoggle contracts which reward inefficiency and delays.
Some people have been speculating that the choice of name is a nod to Robert Zubrin, whose Mars Direct plan has some parallels with NASA's new mission designs. From the blog of Chair Force Engineer:
The irony of it is that Ares was also the name of the booster in Robert Zubrin's proposed Mars mission, "Mars Direct." Further, Zubrin's Ares (publically unveiled in 1990) is almost the same as NASA's Ares-5, launched in 2005.
The differences between the Zubrin and NASA boosters are very subtle. Both are built from the Shuttle fuel tank and boosters, with an upper stage mounted axially on the vehicle.
The biggest difference is the propulsion arrangement. Zubrin used four stock shuttle engines (SSME's) mounted in a pod where the shuttle orbiter's tail would normally be. Theoretically, Zubrin's propulsion pod could re-enter the atmosphere and be recovered. Ares 5 goes to the more expensive step of designing a "low-cost, expendible SSME." The five engines are mounted axially underneath the hydrogen tank. While this is a more efficient arrangement, it requires more extensive modifications to the shuttle's launch pad.
There are other differences as well. Zubrin originally proposed using the now-moribund Advanced Solid Rocket Motors, while NASA goes with 5-segment SRB's. NASA stretches the shuttle's tank, while Zubrin uses the same volume of propellants on the first stage tank as the shuttle does. NASA has an 8.4 meter diameter upper stage (to match the first stage,) while Zubrin went to 10 meters for his (matching the Saturn V's diameter.)
An open question is the definition of "J-2X," the engine that will be used for the second stage of Ares I (The Stick) and Ares 5. While the engine is a modern replacement for the J-2 on the Saturn V's second and third stages, it's a mystery to me whether it will have any commonality with the old J-2 or J-2S. One wonders if the European Vulcain engine, fitted with a nozzle extension to compensate for upper atmospheric & vacuum conditions, would fit that bill. Of course, I smell the odor of "not invented here" creeping up on this idea.
While many groups of space enthusiasts have been disappointed with Project Constellation, Zubrin's Mars Society should not be one of them. Michael Griffin's NASA has joined Zubrin and his Zubrinistas, worshipping at the Church of Heavy-Lift.
A number of private spaceflight firms which are periodically posted about on slashdot are looking for students to hire as summer interns, as well as full-time jobs. These companies are looking for folks with expertise in a variety of areas, from web design, to aerospace/mechanical engineering, to programming. Here's a few links (courtesy of RLV News), with descriptions of what the company does:
* SpaceX: Orbital rockets which are drastically cheaper than the competition, with plans for building manned orbital rockets. They should be launching their first rocket next month. * Blue Origin: Suborbital vehicle company started by Amazon.com's CEO, Jeff Bezos. * Masten Space Systems: Suborbital launch vehicles. * Rocketplane Limited: Suborbital spaceplanes
Also, a few more hiring only for full-time jobs: * Bigelow Aerospace: Inflatable space station modules for orbital research and tourism. Out of all the private spaceflight firms, they probably have the most resources. * Scaled Composites: Burt Rutan's company and winner of the X Prize. They're currently working on building SpaceShipTwo for Virgin Galactic. * SpaceDev: They build microsatellites and propulsion systems. * TGV Rockets: Suborbital launch
Re:The price is prohibitive here as well
on
Portable Wi-Fi Hotspots
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· Score: 2, Informative
If you had RTFA you would have known that most cell wireless providers offer "unlimited" access plans for about $60 - $80 per month which is expensive but not outrageous.
Alas, at least in my experience, it's definitely "unlimited" rather than truly unlimited. I used to listen to Shoutcast and other internet radio stations regularly on my Treo 600, but after a few months of this got a phone call from Sprint PCS telling me to stop using up so much bandwidth.
I think with the whole Kwajalin fiasco, he's starting to learn some of the hard lessons that the big boys learned back in the 1940's and 1950's, and why it really is so expensive to do this stuff.
Could you elaborate on what you mean by "Kwajalein fiasco"? If you're referring to the hitches he's had in getting to his first launch, could you elaborate on what makes them different from the hitches regularly experienced by other launch companies?
I'd have to disagree. As far as space companies go, I'd say that SpaceX is almost absurdly informative. Can you point me to the pages for Boeing and Lockheed-Martin where they describe and analyze in detail why their launches were delayed or failed?
And his website sucks. While it's kind of pretty, there's almost no content. The news, in particular, is weak --three sentences and movie that won't play on Linux about the most recent static firing.
You're probably looking for the updates page. There's a good bit of commentary and videos there, especially if you go into the archives. For (very) unofficial info there's Kwajalein Atoll and Rockets, maintained by Elon's brother Kimbal. Of course, despite his photographs he insists that he's in a basement somewhere in Colorado, and not actually at the Atoll.;)
I contrast this with Carmack's spectacular Armadillo Aerospace site. All of his successes, failures, dead ends, oopses -- all presented in more detail than any sane person could ever want. With Carmack, you really feel like you can understand the process as much as you can without picking up a welding torch.
Sure, that's Carmack, but he's very much the exception rather than the rule. In fact, John Carmack is the only spaceflight person I can think of who comments more than Elon Musk.
SpaceX is not new, but in a speech at Virginia Tech, Musk talked about the company's troubles and its lawsuit against Boeing and Lockheed as he tries to get a slice of the valuable Air Force contracts."
Unfortunately, it looks like the suit against the merger of Boeing & Lockheed's launch operations (effectively creating a launch monopoly) has been dismissed. Some comments from RLV News (a fantastic space news resource, btw):
From the description of the decision, it sounds like a Catch-22 situation. The judge is saying that you can't sue to stop the formation of a monopoly until you have built your system and proved that it is capable of competing against the monopoly. However, in a monopoly situation, especially in such a capital intensive area as rockets, it can be extremely difficult to raise the money to build your system if potential investors see that you will be kept out of a primary market. Talk about a barrier to entry!
In this case, Elon Musk has said he will build the Falcon 9 regardless, but it's a shame he has to enter a playing field tilted against him from the start.
An additional comment from the Space Law Probe: The court did not address the merits of SpaceX claims. (Nor, by the way, did the judge make note of whether a successful Falcon launch might have made a difference in the analysis or ruling, as some will no doubt wonder.)
Personally I think the company that will make the most headway and profit in space is the one which devises a way to get us there for much less per kg.
That's pretty much SpaceX's business plan... reducing launch prices by at least an order of magnitude
Why? You can't survive off of antimatter. O2 is rather helpful in that sense.
The typical Singularitarian answer would probably involve you uploading your consciousness via a Moravec transfer into a robot, which would then be able to survive off the antimatter without any need for oxygen. Or something.
I'm a big fan of Elon Musk, who started SpaceX with the money he got from selling PayPal to eBay. He's a pretty good example of someone who grew up with dreams about space who's trying to make those dreams a reality. I think his efforts with towards dramatically decreasing the cost of space launch are quite important, and crucial for his (and my) long-term goal of making humanity a multi-planet species.
A number of people have been complaining about Musk and his three launch scrubs in the past few months, where the countdown was terminated for various reasons before the rocket left the ground. It should be noted though that these sorts of delays are pretty much the norm for the launch business. For example, there were eleven separate attempts to launch the ARGOS satellite on a Boeing Delta II rocket.
This set of notes by Michael Belfiore from their pre-launch press conference for their launch attempt late last year is a pretty interesting read and gives great insight into what Musk wants to do with SpaceX. Some excerpts:
SpaceX's second Gen rocket engine will be the biggest rocket engine in the world, though not the biggest in history. The F1 engine that sent people to the moon is no longer in production, so Musk doesn't count that....
Q: What customers will you put on Falcon 9? A: We haven't thought a lot about it because it's speculative, but big customers would be NASA, Bigelow Aerospace, which is launching its first subscale space station module next year, and potentially people who just want to go to orbit and just spend some time on orbit. Also we could do a loop around the moon, which actually wouldn't require a huge rocket. [Space Adventures recently cut a deal with the Russian Space Agency to do just that, so that may be what inspired Musk to say that.]...
Q: When will you go to space? A: I'm not doing this to go into space myself, per se. I want to help build a space faring civilization. It would have been very easy for me to pay to go to the International Space Station myself. I want to help other people get to space....
Musk: The expansion of life on earth to other places is arguably the most important thing to happen to life on earth, if it happens. Life has the duty to expand. And we're the representatives of life with the ability to do so....
Q: When will you fly cargo missions to the space station? A: I hope in the next 3 to 4 years....
Another question from me: Are you developing a manned vehicle right now, or have you thought that far ahead yet? A: I can't comment on that right now....
Q: What's next in the entreprenurial space field? A: Lots of people doing things--Paul Allen [who funded SpaceShipOne], Jeff Bezos with Blue Origin, John Carmack with Armadillo Aerospace...Musk thinks we're heading toward a Netscape moment, when someone turns a profit, and hopefully it'll be SpaceX, and then investment capital will start to flow in.
The former CEO of paypal just dropped a $100k matching challenge to the singularity challenge. Transcend humanity first, then the stars are nothing in comparison. Why terraform for oxygen when you can run on antimatter?
Don't get me wrong -- I kind of like the Singularity Institute. However, could you point me towards some of the technological advancements they've been responsible for recently, or some of their research publications? As far as I can tell, there's zero.
Since there's already been a few of the inevitable complaints/jokes about PayPal, let me be the first to remind people that Elon Musk sold PayPal to eBay several years ago, and no longer has any sort of affiliation with the company.
The argument that it's "as close as we can get" just doesn't make sense to me. If you can't simulate any of the environment variables (literally), then the test is almost completely useless. A submarine sucks at traveling on land, but it's not bad for getting around underwater.
Um... it's not like they're going to take the winning vehicle, toss it on a booster as-is, and see if it'll land on the moon. The thing is supposed to be a technology demonstration. The lunar environment isn't exactly the same as what they'll be testing this thing in, but it'll be close enough that we'll be able to improve our knowledge about what technologies and techniques will work well for lunar exploration.
I maintain that this test requires engineers to provide a solution for a completely different set of variables than is appropriate.
I'm not sure why you think aerodynamics is such a big deal. For the sorts of VTOL rocket-powered vehicles we'll probably see in this competition, aerodynamics is just another source of maneuvering noise, which any proper control algorithm should be able to deal with.
It just seems like flight is a lot more difficult on earth because of its atmosphere where you have to worry about things like aerodynamics.
Sure, it might be more difficult, but it's still going to be easy enough that there's probably going to be at least one likely winner. For example, a couple years ago John Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace demonstrated the vehicle shown in this video, which climbed to 134 feet and landed back down less than foot away from the landing point. A new vehicle with straightforward improvements should be able to win the prize.
You can see in the video that there's definitely some wind blowing across the vehicle, but the control system is able to account for it. Although his methodology is sometimes haphazard, Carmack's software-based control system is superb and should be able to handle the "atmosphere complications" you mention.
Since the moon does not have an appreciable atmosphere, if the system can meet the goals on earth it shouldn't have any problems on the moon.
Not only that, but the energy required to enter orbit is somewhat more than that required for short-term hovering. I suspect that the energy cost of hovering at a certain altitude in Earth's gravity and entering orbit in lunar gravity are probably somewhat similar. Anybody with a better understanding of orbital mechanics than me care to do the calculations?
One really big thing they're overlooking in their challenge is the fact that lunar gravity is only 1/16 of Earth's. Doing this on Earth is ridiculously difficult by comparison.
The gravity is lower, but it's probably safe to assume that a vehicle coming in to land on the moon is going to have a -much- higher initial velocity, and it needs to get rid of that velocity to keep from crashing. When you take that into account, the energy requirements are probably pretty similar.
It doesn't mention this in the article submission, but it should be noted that this $2 million prize is an Alliance Challenge in NASA's Centennial Challenges program. Basically, NASA provides the prize money if there's a winning vehicle, while the X Prize Foundation is responsible for actually organizing the event. NASA has stated that they'd like to offer larger-scale competitions and prizes in the future, but they're trying out these smaller ones first.
Also, there's already a couple of groups which look like they'll have a decent chance of winning the lunar lander competition, including John Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace (Carmack is the co-founder and lead programmer for id Software). Here's a quote from an article about last year's X Prize Cup Expo, where the ideas for a lunar lander challenge were first being discussed:
John Carmack, who makes his money as a video-game developer and spends some of it as the leader of Texas-based Armadillo Aerospace, said the lunar-lander challenge "certainly sounds like something up our alley." Armadillo is developing a vertical-takeoff-and-landing rocket capable of bringing passengers to the edge of outer space.
California-based Masten Space Systems is also working on a vertical-launch craft, and Michael Mealling, vice president of business development, said Masten was interested in both challenges. "It just so happens that the flight plan [for the competitions] matches our development cycle exactly," he told MSNBC.com.
SpaceDev, a company which builds microsatellites and propulsion systems (including the rockets on SpaceShipOne) has a neat 3D lunar lander simulator (binary link) on their website. It's kind of neat to play to get an idea of the control side of the problem.
According to this page, by Prof. Bernard Cohen, burning coal (the primary source of electrical power) is responsible for around 10,000 deaths per year. You would need to have an average of 25 meltdowns a year for nuclear power to kill as many people.
Nuclear waste is scary, but it is very possible that the CO2 released by burning oil is more dangerous.
It's not just the CO2 from fossil fuels which is dangerous -- coal (the primary source of electrical power) contains a significant quantity of radioactive isotopes. The burning of coal is actually responsible for more radioactive waste than nuclear power, and the radioactive waste from coal goes straight into the atmosphere.
So is google.org going to start by shutting down or opening up google.cn?
It's possible that China might end up shutting down google.cn for them. It seems the Chinese government isn't too happy with google.cn being the only Chinese search engine that tells users what's being censored.
Slashdot Mirror
And exactly does one come to own an asteroid? Is planing a flag good enough?
Space property rights are a very murky and ambiguous area, but one which should get resolved if we want to have any hope of expanding out there permanently. An article by Sam Dinkin in the Space Review on Property rights and space commercialization has a fairly nice overview of the issues. A quote:
Space property rights will probably not spark a space transportation boom that will rival the railroad boom, the airplane boom, or the automobile boom. But there will be no boom if there are no property rights. Leaving the regulatory regime the same is a recipe for continued sclerosis.
If we do nothing, space will look a lot more like Antarctica than Alaska. Without property rights there will not be adequate investment and space resources will be underutilized. Establishing property rights in space will cost millions, not billions, and can be done decades ahead of any commercialization or colonization. It's time to set the stage to break out of the exploration mode of Columbus and get on with establishing the regulatory regime to lay the foundation for the next Plymouth Rock.
What do you want them to do, come up with some project that requires no manpower and resources whatsoever?
I'd like a project which uses competitive fixed-cost contracts with money being given for meeting specific milestones, rather than the typical cost-plus boondoggle contracts which reward inefficiency and delays.
Some people have been speculating that the choice of name is a nod to Robert Zubrin, whose Mars Direct plan has some parallels with NASA's new mission designs. From the blog of Chair Force Engineer:
The irony of it is that Ares was also the name of the booster in Robert Zubrin's proposed Mars mission, "Mars Direct." Further, Zubrin's Ares (publically unveiled in 1990) is almost the same as NASA's Ares-5, launched in 2005.
The differences between the Zubrin and NASA boosters are very subtle. Both are built from the Shuttle fuel tank and boosters, with an upper stage mounted axially on the vehicle.
The biggest difference is the propulsion arrangement. Zubrin used four stock shuttle engines (SSME's) mounted in a pod where the shuttle orbiter's tail would normally be. Theoretically, Zubrin's propulsion pod could re-enter the atmosphere and be recovered. Ares 5 goes to the more expensive step of designing a "low-cost, expendible SSME." The five engines are mounted axially underneath the hydrogen tank. While this is a more efficient arrangement, it requires more extensive modifications to the shuttle's launch pad.
There are other differences as well. Zubrin originally proposed using the now-moribund Advanced Solid Rocket Motors, while NASA goes with 5-segment SRB's. NASA stretches the shuttle's tank, while Zubrin uses the same volume of propellants on the first stage tank as the shuttle does. NASA has an 8.4 meter diameter upper stage (to match the first stage,) while Zubrin went to 10 meters for his (matching the Saturn V's diameter.)
An open question is the definition of "J-2X," the engine that will be used for the second stage of Ares I (The Stick) and Ares 5. While the engine is a modern replacement for the J-2 on the Saturn V's second and third stages, it's a mystery to me whether it will have any commonality with the old J-2 or J-2S. One wonders if the European Vulcain engine, fitted with a nozzle extension to compensate for upper atmospheric & vacuum conditions, would fit that bill. Of course, I smell the odor of "not invented here" creeping up on this idea.
While many groups of space enthusiasts have been disappointed with Project Constellation, Zubrin's Mars Society should not be one of them. Michael Griffin's NASA has joined Zubrin and his Zubrinistas, worshipping at the Church of Heavy-Lift.
A number of private spaceflight firms which are periodically posted about on slashdot are looking for students to hire as summer interns, as well as full-time jobs. These companies are looking for folks with expertise in a variety of areas, from web design, to aerospace/mechanical engineering, to programming. Here's a few links (courtesy of RLV News), with descriptions of what the company does:
* SpaceX: Orbital rockets which are drastically cheaper than the competition, with plans for building manned orbital rockets. They should be launching their first rocket next month.
* Blue Origin: Suborbital vehicle company started by Amazon.com's CEO, Jeff Bezos.
* Masten Space Systems: Suborbital launch vehicles.
* Rocketplane Limited: Suborbital spaceplanes
Also, a few more hiring only for full-time jobs:
* Bigelow Aerospace: Inflatable space station modules for orbital research and tourism. Out of all the private spaceflight firms, they probably have the most resources.
* Scaled Composites: Burt Rutan's company and winner of the X Prize. They're currently working on building SpaceShipTwo for Virgin Galactic.
* SpaceDev: They build microsatellites and propulsion systems.
* TGV Rockets: Suborbital launch
If you had RTFA you would have known that most cell wireless providers offer "unlimited" access plans for about $60 - $80 per month which is expensive but not outrageous.
Alas, at least in my experience, it's definitely "unlimited" rather than truly unlimited. I used to listen to Shoutcast and other internet radio stations regularly on my Treo 600, but after a few months of this got a phone call from Sprint PCS telling me to stop using up so much bandwidth.
I think with the whole Kwajalin fiasco, he's starting to learn some of the hard lessons that the big boys learned back in the 1940's and 1950's, and why it really is so expensive to do this stuff.
Could you elaborate on what you mean by "Kwajalein fiasco"? If you're referring to the hitches he's had in getting to his first launch, could you elaborate on what makes them different from the hitches regularly experienced by other launch companies?
I'd have to disagree. As far as space companies go, I'd say that SpaceX is almost absurdly informative. Can you point me to the pages for Boeing and Lockheed-Martin where they describe and analyze in detail why their launches were delayed or failed?
;)
And his website sucks. While it's kind of pretty, there's almost no content. The news, in particular, is weak --three sentences and movie that won't play on Linux about the most recent static firing.
You're probably looking for the updates page. There's a good bit of commentary and videos there, especially if you go into the archives. For (very) unofficial info there's Kwajalein Atoll and Rockets, maintained by Elon's brother Kimbal. Of course, despite his photographs he insists that he's in a basement somewhere in Colorado, and not actually at the Atoll.
I contrast this with Carmack's spectacular Armadillo Aerospace site. All of his successes, failures, dead ends, oopses -- all presented in more detail than any sane person could ever want. With Carmack, you really feel like you can understand the process as much as you can without picking up a welding torch.
Sure, that's Carmack, but he's very much the exception rather than the rule. In fact, John Carmack is the only spaceflight person I can think of who comments more than Elon Musk.
SpaceX is not new, but in a speech at Virginia Tech, Musk talked about the company's troubles and its lawsuit against Boeing and Lockheed as he tries to get a slice of the valuable Air Force contracts."
Unfortunately, it looks like the suit against the merger of Boeing & Lockheed's launch operations (effectively creating a launch monopoly) has been dismissed. Some comments from RLV News (a fantastic space news resource, btw):
A judge has dismissed the lawsuit by SpaceX against the Boeing / Lockheed plan to form the United Launch Alliance to provide most all of the large payload launches for the Air Force for the next several years: SpaceX vs. Boeing and Lockheed Lawsuit Dismissed - NasaSpaceFlight.com - Feb.17.06.
From the description of the decision, it sounds like a Catch-22 situation. The judge is saying that you can't sue to stop the formation of a monopoly until you have built your system and proved that it is capable of competing against the monopoly. However, in a monopoly situation, especially in such a capital intensive area as rockets, it can be extremely difficult to raise the money to build your system if potential investors see that you will be kept out of a primary market. Talk about a barrier to entry!
In this case, Elon Musk has said he will build the Falcon 9 regardless, but it's a shame he has to enter a playing field tilted against him from the start.
An additional comment from the Space Law Probe: The court did not address the merits of SpaceX claims. (Nor, by the way, did the judge make note of whether a successful Falcon launch might have made a difference in the analysis or ruling, as some will no doubt wonder.)
Personally I think the company that will make the most headway and profit in space is the one which devises a way to get us there for much less per kg.
That's pretty much SpaceX's business plan... reducing launch prices by at least an order of magnitude
Why? You can't survive off of antimatter. O2 is rather helpful in that sense.
The typical Singularitarian answer would probably involve you uploading your consciousness via a Moravec transfer into a robot, which would then be able to survive off the antimatter without any need for oxygen. Or something.
I'm a big fan of Elon Musk, who started SpaceX with the money he got from selling PayPal to eBay. He's a pretty good example of someone who grew up with dreams about space who's trying to make those dreams a reality. I think his efforts with towards dramatically decreasing the cost of space launch are quite important, and crucial for his (and my) long-term goal of making humanity a multi-planet species.
...
...
...
...
...
...
A number of people have been complaining about Musk and his three launch scrubs in the past few months, where the countdown was terminated for various reasons before the rocket left the ground. It should be noted though that these sorts of delays are pretty much the norm for the launch business. For example, there were eleven separate attempts to launch the ARGOS satellite on a Boeing Delta II rocket.
This set of notes by Michael Belfiore from their pre-launch press conference for their launch attempt late last year is a pretty interesting read and gives great insight into what Musk wants to do with SpaceX. Some excerpts:
SpaceX's second Gen rocket engine will be the biggest rocket engine in the world, though not the biggest in history. The F1 engine that sent people to the moon is no longer in production, so Musk doesn't count that.
Q: What customers will you put on Falcon 9?
A: We haven't thought a lot about it because it's speculative, but big customers would be NASA, Bigelow Aerospace, which is launching its first subscale space station module next year, and potentially people who just want to go to orbit and just spend some time on orbit. Also we could do a loop around the moon, which actually wouldn't require a huge rocket. [Space Adventures recently cut a deal with the Russian Space Agency to do just that, so that may be what inspired Musk to say that.]
Q: When will you go to space?
A: I'm not doing this to go into space myself, per se. I want to help build a space faring civilization. It would have been very easy for me to pay to go to the International Space Station myself. I want to help other people get to space.
Musk: The expansion of life on earth to other places is arguably the most important thing to happen to life on earth, if it happens. Life has the duty to expand. And we're the representatives of life with the ability to do so.
Q: When will you fly cargo missions to the space station?
A: I hope in the next 3 to 4 years.
Another question from me: Are you developing a manned vehicle right now, or have you thought that far ahead yet?
A: I can't comment on that right now.
Q: What's next in the entreprenurial space field?
A: Lots of people doing things--Paul Allen [who funded SpaceShipOne], Jeff Bezos with Blue Origin, John Carmack with Armadillo Aerospace...Musk thinks we're heading toward a Netscape moment, when someone turns a profit, and hopefully it'll be SpaceX, and then investment capital will start to flow in.
The former CEO of paypal just dropped a $100k matching challenge to the singularity challenge. Transcend humanity first, then the stars are nothing in comparison. Why terraform for oxygen when you can run on antimatter?
Don't get me wrong -- I kind of like the Singularity Institute. However, could you point me towards some of the technological advancements they've been responsible for recently, or some of their research publications? As far as I can tell, there's zero.
Since there's already been a few of the inevitable complaints/jokes about PayPal, let me be the first to remind people that Elon Musk sold PayPal to eBay several years ago, and no longer has any sort of affiliation with the company.
But a lunar lander needn't be (and shouldn't be confined to) an aerodynamic design.
I should also add that Armadillo Aerospace's vehicle is definitely -not- an aerodynamic design, and doesn't need to be.
The argument that it's "as close as we can get" just doesn't make sense to me. If you can't simulate any of the environment variables (literally), then the test is almost completely useless. A submarine sucks at traveling on land, but it's not bad for getting around underwater.
Um... it's not like they're going to take the winning vehicle, toss it on a booster as-is, and see if it'll land on the moon. The thing is supposed to be a technology demonstration. The lunar environment isn't exactly the same as what they'll be testing this thing in, but it'll be close enough that we'll be able to improve our knowledge about what technologies and techniques will work well for lunar exploration.
I maintain that this test requires engineers to provide a solution for a completely different set of variables than is appropriate.
I'm not sure why you think aerodynamics is such a big deal. For the sorts of VTOL rocket-powered vehicles we'll probably see in this competition, aerodynamics is just another source of maneuvering noise, which any proper control algorithm should be able to deal with.
It just seems like flight is a lot more difficult on earth because of its atmosphere where you have to worry about things like aerodynamics.
Sure, it might be more difficult, but it's still going to be easy enough that there's probably going to be at least one likely winner. For example, a couple years ago John Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace demonstrated the vehicle shown in this video, which climbed to 134 feet and landed back down less than foot away from the landing point. A new vehicle with straightforward improvements should be able to win the prize.
You can see in the video that there's definitely some wind blowing across the vehicle, but the control system is able to account for it. Although his methodology is sometimes haphazard, Carmack's software-based control system is superb and should be able to handle the "atmosphere complications" you mention.
Since the moon does not have an appreciable atmosphere, if the system can meet the goals on earth it shouldn't have any problems on the moon.
Not only that, but the energy required to enter orbit is somewhat more than that required for short-term hovering. I suspect that the energy cost of hovering at a certain altitude in Earth's gravity and entering orbit in lunar gravity are probably somewhat similar. Anybody with a better understanding of orbital mechanics than me care to do the calculations?
One really big thing they're overlooking in their challenge is the fact that lunar gravity is only 1/16 of Earth's. Doing this on Earth is ridiculously difficult by comparison.
The gravity is lower, but it's probably safe to assume that a vehicle coming in to land on the moon is going to have a -much- higher initial velocity, and it needs to get rid of that velocity to keep from crashing. When you take that into account, the energy requirements are probably pretty similar.
It doesn't mention this in the article submission, but it should be noted that this $2 million prize is an Alliance Challenge in NASA's Centennial Challenges program. Basically, NASA provides the prize money if there's a winning vehicle, while the X Prize Foundation is responsible for actually organizing the event. NASA has stated that they'd like to offer larger-scale competitions and prizes in the future, but they're trying out these smaller ones first.
Also, there's already a couple of groups which look like they'll have a decent chance of winning the lunar lander competition, including John Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace (Carmack is the co-founder and lead programmer for id Software). Here's a quote from an article about last year's X Prize Cup Expo, where the ideas for a lunar lander challenge were first being discussed:
John Carmack, who makes his money as a video-game developer and spends some of it as the leader of Texas-based Armadillo Aerospace, said the lunar-lander challenge "certainly sounds like something up our alley." Armadillo is developing a vertical-takeoff-and-landing rocket capable of bringing passengers to the edge of outer space.
California-based Masten Space Systems is also working on a vertical-launch craft, and Michael Mealling, vice president of business development, said Masten was interested in both challenges. "It just so happens that the flight plan [for the competitions] matches our development cycle exactly," he told MSNBC.com.
SpaceDev, a company which builds microsatellites and propulsion systems (including the rockets on SpaceShipOne) has a neat 3D lunar lander simulator (binary link) on their website. It's kind of neat to play to get an idea of the control side of the problem.
Are they gonna ban radio stations now cause it might be cancerous?
Now that you mentioned this, they're going to wrap the university in alumin(i)um foil.
According to this page, by Prof. Bernard Cohen, burning coal (the primary source of electrical power) is responsible for around 10,000 deaths per year. You would need to have an average of 25 meltdowns a year for nuclear power to kill as many people.
Nuclear waste is scary, but it is very possible that the CO2 released by burning oil is more dangerous.
It's not just the CO2 from fossil fuels which is dangerous -- coal (the primary source of electrical power) contains a significant quantity of radioactive isotopes. The burning of coal is actually responsible for more radioactive waste than nuclear power, and the radioactive waste from coal goes straight into the atmosphere.
So is google.org going to start by shutting down or opening up google.cn?
It's possible that China might end up shutting down google.cn for them. It seems the Chinese government isn't too happy with google.cn being the only Chinese search engine that tells users what's being censored.