TheAgitator.com
Privatizing the Space Race
Friday, June 4th, 2004In May 1996, a group of venture capitalists announced the inception of the Ansari X Prize, $10 million award which will be given to the first viable, privately built passenger spacecraft. The idea was born out of the aviation prizes offered in the early 20th century to engineers and pilots who set new milestones in the burgeoning field of airplane travel. The X Prize Foundation hopes that, by offering financial incentives to private space developers, they can spur the growth of private space travel and make recreational space travel a reality in the next several years.
The prize is only funded through January 1, 2005, which doesn’t give the hardworking competitors–more than 20 as of now–much time to get their craft up and running. However, several of the teams are already making impressive strides and may well achieve the prize goals before the end of the year. The frontrunner at this point is team headed by Burt Rutan, the designer of the Voyager airplane, the first to circle the earth non-stop without refueling. For the past several years, Rutan and his dedicated staff have been working full-time on the spaceship project, funded by Microsoft founder turned futurist Paul Allen.
No matter who wins this competition, and even if no one does, this is a clear example of how with the right incentives, privately developed technology can far surpass anything that government science has to offer. Already, several of the competitors have managed to innovate in ways that NASA has never considered, toward the goal of making space travel cheap and safe. Keep an eye on this one, because soon, anyone with a few hundred thousand dollars may be able to take a ride on a rocketship.
(cross-posted at The 50 Minute Hour)
With examples like this its a wonder that people everywhere aren’t loudly proclaiming the benefits of private competition and the free market.
Nit: Ansari, with an ‘i’ on the end.
This prize has already shaken loose about an order of magnitude more money than the purse. Paul Allen has put up $20-30 million, and other teams are into it for multiple millions each. I’m pretty sure that both the Canadian teams have spent well over a million, ditto Starchaser, Armadillo has spent just over a million, and so on.
Equally important, the Ansari X-Prize has vaulted the prize idea onto NASA’s radar. The Millenium Challenges are prizes (purse and objectives to be determined) for spaceflight relevant accomplishments. The way NASA is doing it isn’t the smartest (time limits, for example, and the total amount of money isn’t anywhere near large enough – only $20 million), but it’s a start.
This is the way technology development used to be done, and it worked great.
“No matter who wins this competition, and even if no one does, this is a clear example of how with the right incentives, privately developed technology can far surpass anything that government science has to offer. ”
The X prize, while definately being a big positive, should not be oversold. In the 1950s, the US achieved sub-orbital flight in just six years after Sputnik. Just ten years after that, we landed men on the moon and returned them safely. All at enormous cost, of course.
JPL and NASA, while big, ungainly, and expensive, routinely send probes to other planets. No private agency has of yet even demonstrated the mastery over science and engineering to do this.
Don’t tout the X-prize as something monumental. It may seed a developing, self-supportive space market, but don’t count on it.
“Keep an eye on this one, because soon, anyone with a few hundred thousand dollars may be able to take a ride on a rocketship.”
Well, I have news for you. Space is big. And most of it is empty. It’s so big, that it would take months or years of high-velocity travel just to get anywhere interesting (like Mars for example). And truly, there isn’t a whole lot to see, anyway. Space is boring. And extremely dangerous. Space Tourism is a retarded concept!
Space Tourism is a retarded concept!
To each their own: Personally, I think Branson and Colonial Williamsburg are retarded tourism concepts, and yet (unlike Disney’s California Adventure) more and more people keep going back…
sorry, last post mine…
Space Tourism is a retarded concept!
Dennis Tito paid ~$20 million for a ride to ISS, as did Mark Shuttleworth, and at least two other people whose names I’m forgetting. I personally know people who’ve paid to fly to the edge of space in a russian fighter. A friend of mine has already taken deposits for suborbital lobs in the vehicle he’s developing (first flights next year). Space tourism is not just not retarded, it’s going to make some people very rich.
I’ve always said that I wanted to see the planet from the outside by the time I die, and thinking about how it may actually be possible makes me as happy. Anybody interested in this stuff should check out Transorbital.net and read about the Trailblazer mission and the imagery and video it’ll send back. We’ve come so far in the past 50 years, why stop now?!
interesting follow-up
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/rutan_launchdate_040602.html
Is that quite so true? Do you really think they can’t do it, and not that they won’t? It’s not like NASA has its own special breed of engineers they grow in vats, you know. I rather think that no private agency has yet demonstrated the gargantuan amounts of cash required. Cost of the Apollo project (as given by Wikipedia.org): $25.4 billion. Even if it only cost a private entity one tenth as much, private entities usually want to see some kind of return on their $2.5B.
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