Posted on 10/05/2004 3:53:55 AM PDT by ckilmer
Annual Competition for Public Space Flight
1 hour, 4 minutes ago U.S. National - AP
By JOHN ANTCZAK, Associated Press Writer
MOJAVE, Calif. - Hoping to build on the momentum sparked by SpaceShipOne's dash into space, supporters of opening the heavens to civilians are turning the winner-take-all race into an annual competition that might further fuel imaginations.
AP Photo
AFP Slideshow: X Prize Space Launch Competition
Rocket Wins $10M Prize for Trip to Space (AP Video)
The privately owned SpaceShipOne won the $10 million Ansari X Prize on Monday by blasting into space for the second time in five days, a feat considered the first stepping-stone in the direction of public spaceflight.
The X Prize, offered to the first team to get into space twice in a 14-day span, will now evolve into a regular competition called the X Prize Cup. In May, organizers selected New Mexico to permanently host the X Prize Cup.
"It's irrefutable, the economic development potential," said Peter Mitchell, director of the New Mexico Office for Space Commercialization, during a press conference Monday.
More than two-dozen teams worldwide began projects in hopes of winning the original X Prize, and prize founder Peter Diamandis said the purpose of the Cup competition is to keep such groups going.
The first X Prize Cup will be held in 2005-06 at New Mexico's White Sands Missile Range, a vast military installation. It will then move to an area 30 miles north of Las Cruces, where a facility dubbed the Southwest Regional Spaceport will be built.
Teams will compete in five different categories to win the overall cup: Fastest turn around time between the first launch and second landing, maximum number of passengers per launch, total number of passengers during the competition, maximum altitude and fastest flight time.
Diamandis said it is envisioned that prizes will grow to the multimillion-dollar range. Organizers hope it becomes one of the largest space-related events on the calendar, drawing hundreds of thousands of people to cheer for their favorite team.
International Fuel Technologies of St. Louis, Mo., announced Monday that it has signed on as the event's first major sponsor. "IFT has just secured a new position in the new frontier," said Chief Executive Officer Jonathan Burst.
Terms of the sponsorship weren't divulged.
SpaceShipOne proved that privately funded spaceflight is indeed possible. The craft left the Mojave Airport north of Los Angeles at dawn aboard a mother plane named White Knight that carried it to an altitude of 46,000 feet.
From there it was launched on a half-hour flight that took it to an altitude of more than 62 miles, the height generally considered the border between the atmosphere and space.
After the spaceship landed, Diamandis said the altitude was official, and that SpaceShipOne's team had claimed the prize by being the first to make two such flights within the required 14 days.
"This is the true frontier of transportation," said Marion C. Blakey, head of the Federal Aviation Administration (news - web sites), who stood near the runway to watch the flight. "It feels a little bit like Kitty Hawk must have."
White House press secretary Scott McClellan said President Bush (news - web sites) called to congratulate the SpaceShipOne team. Astronauts aboard the international space station also sent their best wishes.
Last week, Richard Branson, the British airline mogul and adventurer, announced that beginning in 2007, he will begin offering paying customers flights into space aboard rockets like SpaceShipOne.
Branson said he had a deal, worth up to $25 million over 15 years, to license the technology that led to SpaceShipOne. Fares will start at more than $200,000, and SpaceShipOne designer Burt Rutan will build the spaceship.
The thing that I don't understand is why, if this group of private individuals can put a small, cheap (relatively) craft into space, for virtually nothing ($25 million), NASA, with its billions, has never done the same.
Because anything government does is, by it's very nature, costly and inefficient.
Its not their $$$$$, after all. Why should they do anything cheaply?
There is already talk about the FAA getting involved in thise recent endeavor..
FAA is considering whether it should institute "safety" regulations covering such space flights..
Rutan, et al, has responded by saying such regulation will place undue financial burden on it's newborn industry..
Such regulation may actually kill it before it can get on it's feet and start becoming financially viable..
The thing that I don't understand is why, if this group of private individuals can put a small, cheap (relatively) craft into space, for virtually nothing ($25 million), NASA, with its billions, has never done the same.
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if its not your money then cost is no object.
this has always been the case and always will be.
the proper role of government is to cultivate industry--that said I think some of the best money the US government spends is on research--both as spending on federal labs and as grants to universities and corporations for research purposes. As well, it has been a new innovation of nasa and darpa lately to create competitions for set projects which give out prize money for the winners. I have seen darpa papers that show that for every 1 million they pay out in prize money--they have to spend 12 million to administer the project. However, the research work that's generated by teams competing for the prize is worth about 120 million.
for that reason I think that any focused federal research project should include research funding for federal labs, research funding for universities and prize money.
my favorite targets for this approach would be research to kill the costs of producing hydrogen and desalinized water.
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