No. SpaceShipOne used a hybrid rocket engine, with a solid fuel (HTPB, rubber) and a liquid oxidizer (nitrous oxide). Apparently, SpaceShipTwo (the vehicle that Scaled Composites is developing for Virgin Galactic) will also use a hybrid engine.
And MirCorp (who organized Tito's flight) sometime quite before that.
Actually, Dennis Tito's flight to the ISS was brokered by Space Adventures, not MirCorp. (Tito originally signed on with MirCorp, which was to fly him to Mir, but had to change plans when Russia decided to scuttle Mir. There is still some dispute between the two companies as to who should get credit for the deal.) Space Adventures also arranged Mark Shuttleworth's ISS flight a year later. The company has been around since the late 90s.
Calling Iridium profitable is a very interesting use of the word profitable.
It's the same definition of profitability used elsewhere: to first order, the company's revenues exceed their expenses. (Since the company is not public, it is not required to publicly report the magnitude of those profits, so we have to take the company at its word about its status.) It should be noted that the company in question here is Iridium Satellite LLC, which is not the same as Iridium LLC, the company that went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in August 1999 after going billions of dollars into debt deploying the system. Iridium Satellite LLC was formed by a group of investors who spent on the order of $25-50 million to purchase the assets of Iridium LLC--including the satellite constellation--and operate them as a new company. It's a bit of a technicality, but it's the nature of capitalism that new companies are often formed out of the ashes of failed ones.
...the likelyhood that a direct replacement system will be launched is extreemly close to zero.
Such skepticism is certainly not unwarranted. However, the probability that Iridium will be able to deploy replacement satellites next decade as the existing satellites fail will depend on a number of factors, including but not limited to: market viability, entrance of new competitors (satellite or terrestrial) into those markets, company cash flow and profitability, the ability to obtain outside financing (investments, loans, etc.), satellite manufacturing costs, satellite launch costs, health of the existing constellation, and deployment schedule requirements. To conclude that that the odds of Iridium deploying a replacement system are "extremely close to zero" implies that you have evaluated these and other factors. Care to share the details of your assessment?
Are they replacing satellites that have reached EOL ?
Iridium currently has about a dozen spare satellites in orbit, in addition to the 66 operational spacecraft. While the earliest spacecraft have reached their originally-estimated EOL, the satellite constellation remains quite healthy, and company officials have indicated (based on independent studies) that the existing constellation should remain fully functional until around 2014. This gives the company plenty of time to plan launching replacement satellites, not to mention arranging financing (made easier by the fact that the company is now profitable and is free of the billions of debt the original Iridium rang up during the 1990s.)
If you're curious, Globalstar, Iridium's main satellite telephony rival, is in a similar situation: its constellation is in good shape, although with more on-orbit failures than Iridium. Globalstar has eight spare spacecraft on the ground they will likely launch in the next few years to supplement their existing constellation and keep it operating into the next decade.
Those interested in the various alternatives to repairing or replacing the Hubble Space Telescope may be interested in this article from a few weeks ago that reviews an interim "Analyses of Alternatives" report by a third party, the Aerospace Corporation. This report concludes that a robotic repair mission would cost about the same as a shuttle repair mission or building and launching replacement telescope(s), but carries a far lower probability of success. It should be noted that this is an interim report, and according to one source the final report may look more favorably on robotic repair options.
If they paid a hypothetical $30 per hour for the volunteer labour, the total cost would still be only $8.5 million.
$30/hour (USD or CAD) seems absurdly low for a fully-burdened labor rate, particularly for engineers and other professionals. With more reasonable labor rates the total "cost" of the effort would more likely be US$12-15 million, within about a factor of two of SpaceShipOne. That's still an impressive accomplishment, assuming Wild Fire successfully flies.
While the SpaceShipOne people have spent $20 Million on their attempt, DaVinci has spent considerably less.
True, but if one assigns a fair market value to tens of thousands of hours of volunteer labor reportedly spent on the project, the difference between the two becomes much smaller.
If they win, they'll make a profit and be able to throw one kick ass party.
Hopefully the project has its eyes on longer-term goals than the short-term profit realized by winning a prize.
If this is based on the feasibility of commercial space flights, my vote is for the one that does it first and makes money.
That analysis is flawed primarily because it confuses development costs with operational costs: while Wild Fire may be cheaper to develop than SpaceShipOne, it could end up being more expensive to operate. (Reliability, in addition, is an issue for obvious reasons.) In any case, this is a moot point because neither Rutan nor Feeney plan to put their first-generation suborbital vehicles into commercial service, electing instead to develop larger second-generation vehicles capable of carrying more passengers.
Is the SpaceShipOne team planning for a rapid turnaround (48hr? 72hr?) to try and grab the XPrize before DaVinci has a chance?
Burt Rutan has suggested that the second SS1 flight could be as early as October 4. (Note the historical significance of the date.) If so, then the only way da Vinci could win is if they have a very tight turnaround time: no more than about 48 hours. Given the October 2 Wild Fire flight will be its very first, that short of a turnaround time may be infeasible.
Besides, the L1 is already used for scientific purposes -- amongst others, SOHO and ACE are in halo orbits around the Lagrange point, and I'm sure the scientists who rely on them (including some of my work colleagues) wouldn't welcome L1 becoming a junk yard.
SOHO and ACE are positioned at the Earth-Sun L1 point, about 1.5 million km Sunward of Earth, not the Earth-Moon L1 point discussed in the article.
China announced they were going to put a man in space and on the moon. Suddenly the US announced they were going to the moon and to Mars.
Actually, the Chinese government hasn't said they are planning to send humans to the Moon. Indeed, in recent weeks they have made it clear that they have no plans for human lunar missions for the foreseeable future.
It's not hard to connect the dots when there are only two.
I believe the aphorism you are looking for is, "If you want to draw a straight line, plot only two points."
While the Titan 2 has been retired and the Titan 4 is being phased out, those vehicles are not operated by NASA, nor are they commercially avaiable. They are built by Lockheed Martin for the US Air Force.
Ariane: unreliable, and run by a baby NASA that speaks French
Ariane is operated by Arianespace, although they do receive some funding from ESA to support development of the Ariane 5.
Pegasus: NASA
Pegasus is built and operated by Orbital Sciences Corporation.
Russian launchers: you're kidding right?
Russian launch vehicles, built by a number of Russian firms, are often an economically-attractive alternative to US and European boosters. Nothing funny about it.
If NASA gets out of the launch services business then the implication is that it will sell off a large part of its launch service infrastructure.
NASA has been out of the "launch services business" for some time. The Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990 requires NASA to purchase launches of satellites from the private sector expect in those cases where unique attributes of the payload require it to be launched by the shuttle. The only launch vehicle that NASA operates is the shuttle, and had already been forbidden from launching commercial payloads by an executive order in the aftermath of the Challenger accident.
At one time NASA (somehow) explicitly denied any private company from returning a payload to Earth.
Do you have a source for that 60% number? I did a search, and the most current numbers I found were for 2002, when ESA had 41% of commercial space launches (down from 50% in 2001).
To be pedentic, ESA's market share for commercial launches is 0%, as the agency doesn't conduct commercial launches. Most likely the poster is referring to Arianespace, which operates the Ariane launch vehicle. ESA and Arianespace have a close relationship, which can create confusion like this, but the two are indeed separate entities.
As for statistics, in 2003 there were 17 commercial launches, according to FAA/AST (see page 8 of the PDF file). Europe had four of them (three Ariane 5 launches and the final Ariane 4 launch), while the US and Russia had five apiece. The remaining three commercial launches were conducted by Sea Launch, an international consortium; these are sometimes counted as US launches since Boeing is the lead company in Sea Launch, and the launches are licensed by the FAA.
Vega is a LEO (Low Earth Orbit) launcher. There isn't a commercial market for low earth orbit satellites.
There actually are markets for commercial LEO satellites, although they are neither as large as for GEO satellites nor as large as was forecast several years ago, during the era of Iridium, Teledesic, and the like. There is some demand for commercial remote sensing satellites, as well as for the replenishment/replacement of existing LEO communications satellites, such as Globalstar and ORBCOMM. In addition, some governments without launch capability procure launches from US, European, and Russian companies for their satellites.
Those curious to know more about the LEO (and GEO) commercial launch markets should review the 2004 Commercial Space Transportation Forecasts, published last month by the US Federal Aviation Administration's Office of Commercial Space Transportation and its industry advisory group. This year's report forecasts a demand for over 100 commercial NGSO (non-geosynchronous orbit) satellites and over 50 commercial NGSO launches in the 2004-2013 period.
Customers are actually pushing the envelope on the other end. Maybe a 25 ton launcher...
There is actually not much demand for vehicles as large as described above. The growth in communications satellite mass has levelled off given technical issues with the latest series of large satellites (notably the Boeing 702), as well as overcapacity in the satellite communications market in general. (In fact, there is a small but profitable niche market for small communications satellites, like Orbital's STAR series.)
The article "The myth of heavy lift" offers some strong arguments against the development of heavy-lift vehicles, particular those that could only serve NASA's exploration programs. ("The cost of medium lift" offers a counterpoint.)
Wouldn't it be more economical to lauch many small payloads at once using a large rocket, e.g. Ariane 5.
Contrary to another response, this is as much a logistical issue as anything else: you need to find enough small payloads going to the same orbit at the same time to make this worthwhile. Coordinating this would be a significant challenge, particularly given the paucity of small payloads in general. Arianespace routinely dual-manifests larger communication satellites (that is, launch two at a time on an Ariane 5), and this alone can cause some scheduling complications.
Yes. Usually Rokot or Dnepr launches (old refurbished Russian ICBMs) are bought for small and cheap payloads, but they aren't exactly reliable...
Actually, if you look at their launch records both the Rockot and the Dnepr are quite reliable. (Beware the dangers of small sample statistics, however.) Care to share your analysis regarding why these specific boosters are not reliable?
Actually, SRS doesn't have a commercial spaceport license yet. In fact, it still needs to be built! (Which is why the first X Prize Cup might be held at nearby White Sands, a federal facility.)
Also, while CSXT's GoFast rocket is certainly the first amateur rocket to reach space, that doesn't make it the first private rocket to make it into space.
The original poster called this the "first-ever private spaceport", but it's not clear this is true, depending on one's definition of private. It is certainly not the first commercial spaceport: FAA/AST has issued commercial spaceport licenses for years to facilities in Alaska (Kodiak), California (Vandenberg), Florida (Cape Canaveral), and Virginia (Wallops). Mojave, though, would be the first commercial inland licensed spaceport.
XCOR Aerospace is not a competitor for the Ansari X Prize.
Technically, Scaled does not need a spaceport license to perform its flights from Mojave. (Recall that Scaled already has a launch license from AST.) As far as the FAA is concerned, SpaceShipOne's launch "site" is the White Knight carrier aircraft, which takes off from Mojave under an experimental airworthiness certificate, as I recall. Thus Scaled does not need to wait for Mojave Airport to get a spaceport license.
Both the newest Boeing Delta and Lock-Mart Atlas use license-built Russian engines with nary a design change.
Partially correct. While the Lockheed Martin Atlas 3 and Atlas 5 use the Russian RD-180 engine, the Boeing Delta 4 uses the RS-68 engine in its first stage, designed and built by Boeing's Rocketdyne subsidiary. Both vehicles use variants of the RL10 upper stage engine from Pratt & Whitney, another US company.
Indias moon ambitions were said to be restricted to only firing a unmanned galileo type mission to the moon.
India is developing Chandrayan-1, its first robotic lunar mission, but has no manned program of any kind, let alone a human mission to the Moon. It's not clear what the source of the claim in the AP article is, but don't count on accuracy or detail on such issues from mass media wire services.
Also i thought GSLV - the satellite launch vehicle was totally indigenously built, Though WIRED seems to claim that the engine was Russian!
The GSLV currently uses a Russian-built cryogenic engine for its upper stage. The engine they tested Friday is indigenously developed.
While the National Review article might be news to most Slashdotters, this is not news for those who have been following the ongoing space policy review by the Bush Administration. In late October SpaceRef.com first reported that a likely outcome of the policy review would be a call for resuming human flights to the Moon, with a Presidential statement on the issue coming as early as the Wright Brothers centennial speech at Kitty Hawk. On Monday SpaceRef.com followed up that original report with a new one, stating that "the return to the Moon by U.S. astronauts possibly by the end of the next decade" had become the "default" position of those planning the new policy. The National Review article doesn't add anything these two SpaceRef reports already provided.
There is no guarantee, though, that these reports are accurate. On Sunday the Orlando Sentinel reported (alternate link) that any new national space policy would differ little from current plans. This report was based on an analysis of internal NASA documents obtained by the newspaper along with interviews with those in the know. This report is actually not necessarily contradictory with the new SpaceRef report: if you're not planning to send people back to the Moon until the end of the next decade, there's little you need to do differently in the near term.
If you're curious about the current interest (or obsession) some have with crafting a new "vision" for NASA, I recommend the articles "The vision thing" and "Vision revision" at The Space Review. (Disclaimer: I'm the author.:-) This should give you an idea that while many in Washington believe there needs to be a new national space policy or vision, there is little consensus about what that should be. Thus, don't expect any major changes soon.
The problem with incremental development of RLVs is that there's a huge leap between the size and difficulty of putting something into space for five minutes (as in the current X-prize contenders) and putting it into orbit (as in the shuttle). That will make it difficult to evolve our way into a commercial space program.
If you attempted to go directly from an X Prize-class suborbital RLV directly to an orbital RLV, I would agree with you. However, there are intermediate steps along the way, notably suborbital RLVs with varying amounts of crossrange. Most of the X Prize vehicles are designed to take off and land at or very near the same place. Following generations of suborbital RLVs could be designed to travel downrange hundreds or thousands of kilometers, perhaps as incremental/scaled-up versions of X Prize-class vehicles. (Indeed, the X Prize organizers have discussed having, as a follow-on to the X Prize, a "Y Prize" that would require vehicles to also travel some distance downrange.) This opens up new markets, like rapid cargo delivery, and also pushes the designs of the vehicles closer to what's required for an orbital RLV. There will still be a leap from suborbital to orbital vehicles, but with careful design it need not be a huge one.
This incremental approach is also applicable beyond suborbital RLVs. Elon Musk's SpaceX has a similar incremental approach for its orbital launch vehicles, from the Falcon to the Falcon Heavy to an even larger vehicle that would use the two Falcon stages as upper stages. Note that Musk also has an interest in human spaceflight, and those requirements are being incorporated into the design of the Falcon and its successors.
Slashdot Mirror
SpaceshipOne does, in fact, use kerosene
No. SpaceShipOne used a hybrid rocket engine, with a solid fuel (HTPB, rubber) and a liquid oxidizer (nitrous oxide). Apparently, SpaceShipTwo (the vehicle that Scaled Composites is developing for Virgin Galactic) will also use a hybrid engine.
And MirCorp (who organized Tito's flight) sometime quite before that.
Actually, Dennis Tito's flight to the ISS was brokered by Space Adventures, not MirCorp. (Tito originally signed on with MirCorp, which was to fly him to Mir, but had to change plans when Russia decided to scuttle Mir. There is still some dispute between the two companies as to who should get credit for the deal.) Space Adventures also arranged Mark Shuttleworth's ISS flight a year later. The company has been around since the late 90s.
Calling Iridium profitable is a very interesting use of the word profitable.
It's the same definition of profitability used elsewhere: to first order, the company's revenues exceed their expenses. (Since the company is not public, it is not required to publicly report the magnitude of those profits, so we have to take the company at its word about its status.) It should be noted that the company in question here is Iridium Satellite LLC, which is not the same as Iridium LLC, the company that went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in August 1999 after going billions of dollars into debt deploying the system. Iridium Satellite LLC was formed by a group of investors who spent on the order of $25-50 million to purchase the assets of Iridium LLC--including the satellite constellation--and operate them as a new company. It's a bit of a technicality, but it's the nature of capitalism that new companies are often formed out of the ashes of failed ones.
Such skepticism is certainly not unwarranted. However, the probability that Iridium will be able to deploy replacement satellites next decade as the existing satellites fail will depend on a number of factors, including but not limited to: market viability, entrance of new competitors (satellite or terrestrial) into those markets, company cash flow and profitability, the ability to obtain outside financing (investments, loans, etc.), satellite manufacturing costs, satellite launch costs, health of the existing constellation, and deployment schedule requirements. To conclude that that the odds of Iridium deploying a replacement system are "extremely close to zero" implies that you have evaluated these and other factors. Care to share the details of your assessment?
Are they replacing satellites that have reached EOL ?
Iridium currently has about a dozen spare satellites in orbit, in addition to the 66 operational spacecraft. While the earliest spacecraft have reached their originally-estimated EOL, the satellite constellation remains quite healthy, and company officials have indicated (based on independent studies) that the existing constellation should remain fully functional until around 2014. This gives the company plenty of time to plan launching replacement satellites, not to mention arranging financing (made easier by the fact that the company is now profitable and is free of the billions of debt the original Iridium rang up during the 1990s.)
If you're curious, Globalstar, Iridium's main satellite telephony rival, is in a similar situation: its constellation is in good shape, although with more on-orbit failures than Iridium. Globalstar has eight spare spacecraft on the ground they will likely launch in the next few years to supplement their existing constellation and keep it operating into the next decade.
Those interested in the various alternatives to repairing or replacing the Hubble Space Telescope may be interested in this article from a few weeks ago that reviews an interim "Analyses of Alternatives" report by a third party, the Aerospace Corporation. This report concludes that a robotic repair mission would cost about the same as a shuttle repair mission or building and launching replacement telescope(s), but carries a far lower probability of success. It should be noted that this is an interim report, and according to one source the final report may look more favorably on robotic repair options.
If they paid a hypothetical $30 per hour for the volunteer labour, the total cost would still be only $8.5 million.
$30/hour (USD or CAD) seems absurdly low for a fully-burdened labor rate, particularly for engineers and other professionals. With more reasonable labor rates the total "cost" of the effort would more likely be US$12-15 million, within about a factor of two of SpaceShipOne. That's still an impressive accomplishment, assuming Wild Fire successfully flies.
Considering that it's launcing from Saskatchewan, not Alberta I rather doubt it
Well, Kindersley is close to the border with Alberta...
While the SpaceShipOne people have spent $20 Million on their attempt, DaVinci has spent considerably less.
True, but if one assigns a fair market value to tens of thousands of hours of volunteer labor reportedly spent on the project, the difference between the two becomes much smaller.
If they win, they'll make a profit and be able to throw one kick ass party.
Hopefully the project has its eyes on longer-term goals than the short-term profit realized by winning a prize.
If this is based on the feasibility of commercial space flights, my vote is for the one that does it first and makes money.
That analysis is flawed primarily because it confuses development costs with operational costs: while Wild Fire may be cheaper to develop than SpaceShipOne, it could end up being more expensive to operate. (Reliability, in addition, is an issue for obvious reasons.) In any case, this is a moot point because neither Rutan nor Feeney plan to put their first-generation suborbital vehicles into commercial service, electing instead to develop larger second-generation vehicles capable of carrying more passengers.
Is the SpaceShipOne team planning for a rapid turnaround (48hr? 72hr?) to try and grab the XPrize before DaVinci has a chance?
Burt Rutan has suggested that the second SS1 flight could be as early as October 4. (Note the historical significance of the date.) If so, then the only way da Vinci could win is if they have a very tight turnaround time: no more than about 48 hours. Given the October 2 Wild Fire flight will be its very first, that short of a turnaround time may be infeasible.
Besides, the L1 is already used for scientific purposes -- amongst others, SOHO and ACE are in halo orbits around the Lagrange point, and I'm sure the scientists who rely on them (including some of my work colleagues) wouldn't welcome L1 becoming a junk yard.
SOHO and ACE are positioned at the Earth-Sun L1 point, about 1.5 million km Sunward of Earth, not the Earth-Moon L1 point discussed in the article.
China announced they were going to put a man in space and on the moon. Suddenly the US announced they were going to the moon and to Mars.
Actually, the Chinese government hasn't said they are planning to send humans to the Moon. Indeed, in recent weeks they have made it clear that they have no plans for human lunar missions for the foreseeable future.
It's not hard to connect the dots when there are only two.
I believe the aphorism you are looking for is, "If you want to draw a straight line, plot only two points."
Titan: NASA
While the Titan 2 has been retired and the Titan 4 is being phased out, those vehicles are not operated by NASA, nor are they commercially avaiable. They are built by Lockheed Martin for the US Air Force.
Delta: NASA
The Delta is built and operated by Boeing.
Ariane: unreliable, and run by a baby NASA that speaks French
Ariane is operated by Arianespace, although they do receive some funding from ESA to support development of the Ariane 5.
Pegasus: NASA
Pegasus is built and operated by Orbital Sciences Corporation.
Russian launchers: you're kidding right?
Russian launch vehicles, built by a number of Russian firms, are often an economically-attractive alternative to US and European boosters. Nothing funny about it.
If NASA gets out of the launch services business then the implication is that it will sell off a large part of its launch service infrastructure.
NASA has been out of the "launch services business" for some time. The Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990 requires NASA to purchase launches of satellites from the private sector expect in those cases where unique attributes of the payload require it to be launched by the shuttle. The only launch vehicle that NASA operates is the shuttle, and had already been forbidden from launching commercial payloads by an executive order in the aftermath of the Challenger accident.
At one time NASA (somehow) explicitly denied any private company from returning a payload to Earth.
NASA has no regulatory authority over commercial spaceflight. That responsibility lies with the FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation.
Do you have a source for that 60% number? I did a search, and the most current numbers I found were for 2002, when ESA had 41% of commercial space launches (down from 50% in 2001).
To be pedentic, ESA's market share for commercial launches is 0%, as the agency doesn't conduct commercial launches. Most likely the poster is referring to Arianespace, which operates the Ariane launch vehicle. ESA and Arianespace have a close relationship, which can create confusion like this, but the two are indeed separate entities.
As for statistics, in 2003 there were 17 commercial launches, according to FAA/AST (see page 8 of the PDF file). Europe had four of them (three Ariane 5 launches and the final Ariane 4 launch), while the US and Russia had five apiece. The remaining three commercial launches were conducted by Sea Launch, an international consortium; these are sometimes counted as US launches since Boeing is the lead company in Sea Launch, and the launches are licensed by the FAA.
Vega is a LEO (Low Earth Orbit) launcher. There isn't a commercial market for low earth orbit satellites.
There actually are markets for commercial LEO satellites, although they are neither as large as for GEO satellites nor as large as was forecast several years ago, during the era of Iridium, Teledesic, and the like. There is some demand for commercial remote sensing satellites, as well as for the replenishment/replacement of existing LEO communications satellites, such as Globalstar and ORBCOMM. In addition, some governments without launch capability procure launches from US, European, and Russian companies for their satellites.
Those curious to know more about the LEO (and GEO) commercial launch markets should review the 2004 Commercial Space Transportation Forecasts, published last month by the US Federal Aviation Administration's Office of Commercial Space Transportation and its industry advisory group. This year's report forecasts a demand for over 100 commercial NGSO (non-geosynchronous orbit) satellites and over 50 commercial NGSO launches in the 2004-2013 period.
Customers are actually pushing the envelope on the other end. Maybe a 25 ton launcher...
There is actually not much demand for vehicles as large as described above. The growth in communications satellite mass has levelled off given technical issues with the latest series of large satellites (notably the Boeing 702), as well as overcapacity in the satellite communications market in general. (In fact, there is a small but profitable niche market for small communications satellites, like Orbital's STAR series.)
The article "The myth of heavy lift" offers some strong arguments against the development of heavy-lift vehicles, particular those that could only serve NASA's exploration programs. ("The cost of medium lift" offers a counterpoint.)
Wouldn't it be more economical to lauch many small payloads at once using a large rocket, e.g. Ariane 5.
Contrary to another response, this is as much a logistical issue as anything else: you need to find enough small payloads going to the same orbit at the same time to make this worthwhile. Coordinating this would be a significant challenge, particularly given the paucity of small payloads in general. Arianespace routinely dual-manifests larger communication satellites (that is, launch two at a time on an Ariane 5), and this alone can cause some scheduling complications.
Yes. Usually Rokot or Dnepr launches (old refurbished Russian ICBMs) are bought for small and cheap payloads, but they aren't exactly reliable...
Actually, if you look at their launch records both the Rockot and the Dnepr are quite reliable. (Beware the dangers of small sample statistics, however.) Care to share your analysis regarding why these specific boosters are not reliable?
Actually, SRS doesn't have a commercial spaceport license yet. In fact, it still needs to be built! (Which is why the first X Prize Cup might be held at nearby White Sands, a federal facility.) Also, while CSXT's GoFast rocket is certainly the first amateur rocket to reach space, that doesn't make it the first private rocket to make it into space.
Both the newest Boeing Delta and Lock-Mart Atlas use license-built Russian engines with nary a design change.
Partially correct. While the Lockheed Martin Atlas 3 and Atlas 5 use the Russian RD-180 engine, the Boeing Delta 4 uses the RS-68 engine in its first stage, designed and built by Boeing's Rocketdyne subsidiary. Both vehicles use variants of the RL10 upper stage engine from Pratt & Whitney, another US company.
Indias moon ambitions were said to be restricted to only firing a unmanned galileo type mission to the moon.
India is developing Chandrayan-1, its first robotic lunar mission, but has no manned program of any kind, let alone a human mission to the Moon. It's not clear what the source of the claim in the AP article is, but don't count on accuracy or detail on such issues from mass media wire services.
Also i thought GSLV - the satellite launch vehicle was totally indigenously built, Though WIRED seems to claim that the engine was Russian!
The GSLV currently uses a Russian-built cryogenic engine for its upper stage. The engine they tested Friday is indigenously developed.
While the National Review article might be news to most Slashdotters, this is not news for those who have been following the ongoing space policy review by the Bush Administration. In late October SpaceRef.com first reported that a likely outcome of the policy review would be a call for resuming human flights to the Moon, with a Presidential statement on the issue coming as early as the Wright Brothers centennial speech at Kitty Hawk. On Monday SpaceRef.com followed up that original report with a new one, stating that "the return to the Moon by U.S. astronauts possibly by the end of the next decade" had become the "default" position of those planning the new policy. The National Review article doesn't add anything these two SpaceRef reports already provided.
There is no guarantee, though, that these reports are accurate. On Sunday the Orlando Sentinel reported (alternate link) that any new national space policy would differ little from current plans. This report was based on an analysis of internal NASA documents obtained by the newspaper along with interviews with those in the know. This report is actually not necessarily contradictory with the new SpaceRef report: if you're not planning to send people back to the Moon until the end of the next decade, there's little you need to do differently in the near term.
If you're curious about the current interest (or obsession) some have with crafting a new "vision" for NASA, I recommend the articles "The vision thing" and "Vision revision" at The Space Review. (Disclaimer: I'm the author. :-) This should give you an idea that while many in Washington believe there needs to be a new national space policy or vision, there is little consensus about what that should be. Thus, don't expect any major changes soon.
According to the Houston Chronicle, among other sources, the incident took place at 1:59 am CST (0759 GMT) Wednesday.
The problem with incremental development of RLVs is that there's a huge leap between the size and difficulty of putting something into space for five minutes (as in the current X-prize contenders) and putting it into orbit (as in the shuttle). That will make it difficult to evolve our way into a commercial space program.
If you attempted to go directly from an X Prize-class suborbital RLV directly to an orbital RLV, I would agree with you. However, there are intermediate steps along the way, notably suborbital RLVs with varying amounts of crossrange. Most of the X Prize vehicles are designed to take off and land at or very near the same place. Following generations of suborbital RLVs could be designed to travel downrange hundreds or thousands of kilometers, perhaps as incremental/scaled-up versions of X Prize-class vehicles. (Indeed, the X Prize organizers have discussed having, as a follow-on to the X Prize, a "Y Prize" that would require vehicles to also travel some distance downrange.) This opens up new markets, like rapid cargo delivery, and also pushes the designs of the vehicles closer to what's required for an orbital RLV. There will still be a leap from suborbital to orbital vehicles, but with careful design it need not be a huge one.
This incremental approach is also applicable beyond suborbital RLVs. Elon Musk's SpaceX has a similar incremental approach for its orbital launch vehicles, from the Falcon to the Falcon Heavy to an even larger vehicle that would use the two Falcon stages as upper stages. Note that Musk also has an interest in human spaceflight, and those requirements are being incorporated into the design of the Falcon and its successors.
Jeff Foust
The Space Review