The X-Prize has been captured! Now what?

Great Debates
1

Burt Rutan’s SpaceShipOne repeated its performance and broke the 62 miles limit within 14 days of the initial flight…and won the $10 million X-prize. Yeah!! :slight_smile: Kudos to Rutan and the team.

A privately owned and funded company has done what only 3 other NATIONS has been able to do…and done it for a mere $20 million, instead of the billions spent by the US, USSR and China to achieve the same thing. Does this mark the beginning of the privatization of space? Will investors begin putting down capital to companies like Rutan’s Scaled Composites?

I was watching The Learning Channel last night documenting SpaceShipOne in the lead up to the flight. In it Rutan said he already has an orbital version (basically just a scaled up version of the mothership and SpaceShipOne) that will carry 7 passengers into low earth orbit…into ORBIT!!! Unbelievable. And he was saying the cost will be only a bit larger than the original investment for SpaceShipOne, as a lot of the development and research of the design has already been done.

So, are we on the verge of an explosion into space? Space tourism? Privatization of transport of materials or personnel to the ISS? What’s going to be the next X-prize in space to fall? Its exciting times from my perspective…what’s your take on it?

-XT

2

I can see that it’s exciting, but I can’t really see anything coming of this. First, this is just 100 km up, not nearly high enough for orbits. Let’s take for granted, for the moment, that orbital flight is next. Why? To take billionaires into space? Maybe they’ll get the price down so that mere millionaires can afford it. So what? It’s just high-tech bungee jumping.

There is still a vast difference between low Earth orbit and any kind of real exploration - LEO is just a couple hundred miles away, but interplanetary space is BIG!

3

Why? Let me give you a for instance. Say that Rutan really has another design for an orbital version. Lets say he can make such a craft for, lets say $30 million, and lets guess that such a flight will cost…oh, say $100k per shot (just a WAG on my part). Lets say he can get a contract with NASA to ferry astronauts and or supplies up to the ISS, saving NASA boatloads of money while at the same time making boatloads of money in return. That would be more than simply taking ‘billionaires into space’, no? There are many possibilities financially for an orbital vehicle that can ferry people and materials into space relatively cheaply…something that the US, China and Russia CAN’T do at present. Each shot to space costs millions.

Of course, the heavy lifting will still need to be done (for the time being) by the government…I’m not saying we’d eliminate it completely. But ferrying PEOPLE and some materials up is now a possibility.

That’s just to start…but it IS a start.

-XT

4

NASA saving money would be great…so long as the savings weren’t translated immediately into tax cuts for the rich that left the deficit right where it is…

5

It looks like the next step will be the $50-million America’s Space Prize. The goal is to put a manned space vehicle in orbit by the end of the decade.

I think the point is more than sending millionaires into space. Getting private companies to develop lower cost access to space would make it more practical to launch people and satellites. The most expensive part of sending a vehicle anywhere in the solar system is just getting it into orbit. If it’s cheaper to put something into earth orbit, it makes it cheaper to launch stuff to the moon and the planets.

It also increases the range of potentially profit-making ventures that currently are not being done because of the tremendous expense of getting there. Space hotels, medicines and materials that can be made in zero g and perfectly round ball bearings. :slight_smile:

6

Woops…that should have been that Rutan has an orbital version on the drawing board, not one already built. I misspoke there…sorry.

Its not about saving NASA money (their budget is so small relative to other government agencies that its a drop in the bucket)…its about the privatization of space starting with low earth orbit and expanding outward. Does no one else get it…a PRIVATE company has done what only major GOVERNMENTS have been able to achieve in the past…sent a man into space! And they did it cheaply and efficiently! This is a major victory for capitalism and privatization…to show that a private company can do what was in the exclusive realm of only governments…and only MAJOR governments at that! And they did it better and cheaper to boot!

-XT

7

Whoa, whoa, whoa. It’s easy to be cheaper when NASA and Russia have already laid much of the groundwork. This is a major accomplishment, and I do hope for the privatisization of space, but it would never have happened if not for government space dollars, and it’s still not time to scrap NASA.

That’s what government science programs should be for, I think, to prod science forward in areas that capitalists aren’t interested in, as there’s no apparent immediate reward, until rewards start to appear, and even background is amassed to make it within the reach of private reseacrhers.

8

I sort of agree. While the two cases aren’t comparable, no one predicted from the Wright brothers 120 ft. first powered flight that someday planes carrying 300 people and weighing close to 300 tons would take off in Los Angeles and land in Europe.

9

Thing is, though, that further private exploration of space depends on there always being money available to fund these prizes. If you want to consider possibilities such as a permanent moon base or a mission to Mars and eventually missions to the asteroids and the outer planets, the profit motive, if it exists at all, won’t manifest for a while. For instance, suppose that there are in fact metal deposits in the asteroids, and suppose that it’s physically possible to mine them and ship them back to Earth and earn a profit doing so. Even if all this were true, to make it happen you would first need exploratory missions to the asteroid belt, then you would need to ship a tremendous amount of mining equipment out there (which could only be done after spending a truckload to develop mining equipment that could operate in such an environment), and only after the metal actually started to get produced could you start running ships back and forth delivering it. So where is the initial investment money going to come from?

10

I think what Rutan has shown is that you can reach space for orders of magnitude less money than the government typically spends on space shots. Once that lesson sinks in, there are plenty of people, companies and organizations that, it turns out, do have the money to invest in space ventures. By showing that space can be had cheaply, Rutan has hopefully shown that it can be made proifitable as well.

11

Nor did anyone at the time of the Wright Bros’ first flight predict airplanes that would be used to saturation-bomb major cities, nor helicopters that would be used for strafing and rocket launching. Sorry to be such a downer – and in fact I’m very much a spaceflight fanatic – but we have to consider all the implications of technological progress. Especially if it has the potential to make access to space so inexpensive that even, say, North Korea or Iran or a private multinational corporation could afford it.

12

So would the solution to the possibility of an aggressive enemy using technological advances be to turn our back on technological advances?

It doesn’t matter how low the level of technology, it will be used for aggression starting with a rock which can be used as a hammer to make a dwelling or as a missile to kill someone. A stick can be a lever or a club. A surgeon’s scalpel can also cut up someone pretty badly.

So in considering all of the implications of technological progress, do we hamper technology or do we try to remove the things that make others aggressive?

13

I’m not saying that. I’m saying, from now on we’d better start Watching the Skies.

14

I’m about as stoked about this as you can get, and I’m as big a proponent of private space flight as you’re likely to find, but I have to point out that there is a HUGE difference between what Rutan just accomplished and actually building an orbital craft.

Rutan’s ship:

  1. Has no heat shield to speak of. It’s highest speed was something like Mach 3. To make orbit, you need to be going just about ten times faster.

  2. Has no life support suitable for space flight.

  3. Does not scale well. You can’t just make one ten times bigger and fly into orbit. That would require a ‘mothership’ ten times bigger, and would require about 100 times more fuel.

  4. Has primitive reaction controls - nothing like what would be needed for orbital manoevering.

Attaining orbit isn’t five times harder than what Rutan just accomplished - it’s about 100 times harder.

And then to actually accomplish anything in orbit, you need docking hardware, airlocks, space suits, special tools, etc. All the things NASA had to develop from scratch and engineer through trial-and-error.

I believe that private industry can go into space cheaper than the government can, especially since they can leverage much of the hardware NASA has already built. But not THAT much cheaper. If SpaceShipOne cost $27 million to build, I’d have to think an orbital ship will be at least ten times that much money.

But the beauty of the way Rutan is doing it is that he’s attaining his capability slowly, in a self-financing way. Richard Branson has given him another 27 million to build the next generation of SpaceShipOne, which will essentially be a bigger suborbital ship. With that, they are going to fly up to seven passenger at a time, maybe once a week, for a cost (initially) of $200,000 each, decreasing to maybe $30,000 as the development costs are recouped.

The money from those flight can be sunk into an R&D program for an orbital ship, and proving that there is money to be made at space tourism might bring in the big bucks from companies like Hilton. Branson estimates the suborbital tourist market at around 600 million, just for the initial $200,000 phase. There are a lot of millionaires out there. If they can show a profit of a couple of hundred million dollars, and then float a proposal for an orbital system, they can get venture capital or even megabuck investments from entertainment moguls and corporations.

In the meantime, Rutan will develop competency in space flight, work out the bugs, bring down the costs, improve the designs, etc.

So I think it’ll happen. One day there will be private orbital ships. But it’s not going to be soon, and it’s not going to be cheap. By the end of the decade? Possibly - on a scale similar to SpaceShipOne’s (i.e. an experimental ship optimized for the prize flight, lacking any other systems needed for general use).

You aren’t going to see passenger orbital flights for 15-20 years, if then. It’s just a huge engineering challenge. SpaceShipOne was simply an envelope expansion of building high altitude aircraft - something Rutan is very good at. Building real orbital spaceships is a whole 'nuther thing.

But if anyone can do it, it’s Burt Rutan. Here’s hoping for his long healthy life - he’s starting to get a little long in the tooth to be starting a new phase of his career. Hope he takes good care of himself.

15

Let me present – Ta Da! NORAD

16

If I was to get just a little cynical, I would just say that SpaceShipOne is an amusement park ride for the ultra-rich.

The Government should build a cheap small craft with a big honkin’ rocket, strap in a test pilot with a death-wish and cross their fingers… Oh wait! They did do that over 40 years ago with the X-15!

17

Also, United States Air Force Space Command.

18

Several of the X-Prize contenders have said that they intend to follow through with their programs, which is a good sign, IMHO.

Also, Sam, if Rutan’s saying that he’s got an orbital craft on the drawing boards (like he says he does), that I’d lay dollars to donuts that he’s already started building it.

19

Normally, I’d agree with you. Rutan is notorious for his secrecy. You usually don’t find out what he’s working on until a prototype rolls out of his hangar. But planning for an obital ship is a big, big deal. He could have one on the ‘drawing boards’ but it could be intended for construction starting in five years.

However, I do think Rutan is trying to work extremely quickly here. He knows he’s no spring chicken - he must be over 60 now - maybe 65. If he wants to go into orbit while he’s healthy, he’d better have something flying in the next ten years.

I’d like a cite for the quote that he’s got an orbital ship on the way. My understanding is that his next project is ‘spaceship two’, an evolutionary upgrade of SpaceShipOne that will be bigger and incorporate the lessons learned from the flgiht test of SS1, but still be suborbital.

20

He showed both a mock up and the technical specs for it on The Learning Channel program last night. It will hold 7 passengers and be quite a bit larger. He didn’t go into the detail about the heat shield…I got the impression it would be a combination shield and ‘feather’ design like what they use for re-entry on SpaceShipOne.

Rutan claims he’ll have it up and running within 5 years (for whatever thats worth)…and HE claims it scales fine Sam…again, for whatever its worth for him to say that. I think he’ll do it…the incentive is there ($50 million prize for going orbital…not to mention a LOT of business he could generate).

How much did that project cost again? Hm…

Only if you assume thats as far as it will go. I guess at Kitty Hawk people said ‘well, not to be cynical, but I think its just a high priced amusement rid for the ultra-rich…’.

-XT