X-Prize flight Monday

It's a great victory for free enterprise.

It's funny that on all sci-fi mankind is usually united on a single government, but that might just not be the best way to go.

It's cool that WC have independent human systems, more than a single big government, and a lot of private companies.

Hey, it the politically correct people got their way, no one could fly their own ship, with their own guns. No Privateer on Star Trek. No money, no private ships, no free economy, and everyone works for the government.
 
It's pointless.

This is like trying to power a modern carrier vessel by rigging it like a Napoleonic Frigate but with really really big masts.

Wrong way of going about this whole space development thing.

Barking up the wrong tree? Yeah that's the cliched way of putting it.
 
At least it's a direction. Now that private industry sees it can be done, and relatively cheaply... it'll evolve.
 
It's not a great victory for free enterprise because there was nothing preventing free enterprise from shooting stuff into space. Private companies can and do make orbital launches routinely - the barrier is and continues to be that there is nothing profitable about shooting a man into space.

It's not a great scientific breakthrough - if Boeing had a good reason to shoot a guy into space then they could... this neither adds a previously impossible theoretical ability nor makes anything previously economically viable likely.
 
I suppose it would be impractical at that. Perhaps it was the cost issue... then again, without somewhere for the thing to go that airplanes can't already reach... heh
 
There's a purpose on developing space technology. And private companies can probably do it better and cheaper. There's much to be gained.

The government has the skill of using taxation to waste money on any project, what makes it hard to compete with. So yeah, it's a big victory for free entreprise.

And if it's pointless to go to space, why should government use public money to do that, anyway?
 
There's a purpose on developing space technology. And private companies can probably do it better and cheaper. There's much to be gained.
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Yes, there is. The X-Prize stuff wasn't developing space technology, though - because the technology behind this grand event already existed to both the government and the private sector.

The government has the skill of using taxation to waste money on any project, what makes it hard to compete with. So yeah, it's a big victory for free entreprise.

And if it's pointless to go to space, why should government use public money to do that, anyway?
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Firstoff, a suborbital flight isn't "going to space" in any reasonable sense. It's a fun stunt that has no scientific or industrial benefit. Sticking someone in low earth orbit gives you a very unique laboratory setting and a chance to do some science (which I would further argue is generally useless compared to what could and should be accomplished in terms of exploration.) -- but this isn't remotely what was or could be accomplished by SpaceShipOne.
 
The only way we can get true private sace travel is with tourism. Tourins is the purpose of the X-Prize and SpaceShipOne. The prize existed to show that there are people willing to pay to go into space. Everythign else was planned to be the result of feeding the needs of tourism.
 
I'd pay $5,000 to go into space even just to orbit a few times and come down...wouldn't most of you if you had the money? There's definitely money to made by corporations who can provide the means to get up there.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
Yes, there is. The X-Prize stuff wasn't developing space technology, though - because the technology behind this grand event already existed to both the government and the private sector.
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Well, I understand your point. Of course tech to perform those flights has been around for some time.

But it is new technology because they did it in a much cheaper way. The problem is not just technological, but economical. It's also about the accomplishment, for a private organization to perform that flight.

Come on, just because it doesn't fit in on your "preconceived notions" doesn't make it less important. :rolleyes:
 
Delance said:
Come on, just because it doesn't fit in on your "preconceived notions" doesn't make it less important. :rolleyes:
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Eh, I don't entirely agree with LOAF (or you, for that matter - I'm kinda in the middle on this one), but it's not really fair to say that he's only saying its unimportant because of his "preconceived notions" (whatever they may be). After all, he did explain quite clearly and reasonably why he thinks the whole thing was unimportant.

As for me... well, it's hard to get excited about suborbital flight, no matter who performs it. And I don't think this event will go down in history books - nor should it. Quite arguably, this is a far less important event than when... uh, that guy whose name I can't remember bought a trip to MIR. That was the true start of the privatisation of manned space travel. That having been said, SpaceShipOne is definitely a notable continuation of this process. As most right-thinking people will agree, private enterprise can go to Mars faster and cheaper than a government-funded organisation like NASA. They haven't, because there is no reason to do it. Space tourism, which can finally develop thanks to the X-Prize, offers that reason - and that is important.
 
Quarto said:
That was the true start of the privatisation of manned space travel.
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Who owns MIR and the rocket that took the guy there?

LOAF said:
Yeah, I have no idea what that means.
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The "preconceived notion" was to consider irrelevant all the things that made it special. So, if someone doesn't care that it was done by private citizens with no government support, in a much cheaper way, and on an area that previously was basically a state monopoly, they certainly will think it's pointless.
 
Delance said:
Who owns MIR and the rocket that took the guy there?
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Not important - what matters was that here for the first time was proof that yes, there were indeed people out there willing to pay unbelievable shitloads of money to go into space for a few hours. This was the first-ever case where somebody actually made money (or rather, recovered a small portion of their costs) by transporting people into space - and, as you surely agree, the possibility of profit is an exceedingly important motive for private companies.
 
By reducing the cost required to launch a vehicle into space you make it more publicly available. As it becomes more publicly available you have more and more people who are interested in doing it ($5,000 for an hour's suborbital spaceflight is easier to justify than $20,000 for the same [don't quote me on those figures because I really didn't know good before and after example figures]). As more and more people are interested in doing it, more and more private entities are interested in providing the service in order to bring in some of that income.

But I mean, even if the cost doesn't go down, you still have the overbearing mass of the public who mostly probably never even considered private spaceflight. Had they sat down and thought about it they probably would have figured it possible but they simply had not until the flights of Spaceship One.

Competition among private sectors will lower costs and raise quality even higher. ("For the same price, we can bring you 1500 feet higher and keep you in space 5 minutes longer than they can!")

Although it seems to be a trend that mass transportation of cargo usually precedes mass transportation of public when new forms of transportation are invented. Since the first suborbital flight of Spaceship 1 back in June I have found it likely that we would be shooting UPS and Fedex stuff into suborbit long before we start shooting large amounts of people. I mean, Next-Day Suborbital from Hong Kong... wouldn't that be something else?
 
Who owns MIR and the rocket that took the guy there?
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Oddly enough, a corporation - RSC Energia. (When the Soviet Union broke up a huge portion of their space program became privatized.)

The "preconceived notion" was to consider irrelevant all the things that made it special. So, if someone doesn't care that it was done by private citizens with no government support, in a much cheaper way, and on an area that previously was basically a state monopoly, they certainly will think it's pointless.
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That isn't remotely what I said or what "preconceived notions" means. The private sector has been making space launches (*orbital* space launches) for many, many years - this changes nothing about the technology or the cost assosciated with them, which continues to be the sole factor prohibiting private manned spaceflight.
 
I gotta say I think the whole thing is cool. Ground breaking? No. Foundation shaking? Nope. Revolutionary? Not really. However.....I like seeing private enterprise in action in this way. I don't like seeing space travel/exploration monopolized by and solely in the hands of the world's governments. I think the entire X-Prize challange could spur even greater things in the future. Remember how the Internet got its start? :D
 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3722596.stm

It's official, folks - this is meant for the most expensive, 7-minute joyride you'll ever pay for. :D

'No experiments' for SpaceShipOne
By Irene Mona Klotz
in Mojave, California


Burt Rutan, the man who designed and masterminded the X-Prize winning SpaceShipOne, says the craft will only be used for people, not experiments.


The team has turned down offers, including from the US government, to do scientific experiments on flights.

Rutan says SpaceShipOne's task will be to focus on test flights for the commercial passenger craft that will be operated by Virgin Atlantic Airways.

Virgin has ordered five, five-passenger spaceliners over the next three years.

Scientific experiments are often done in zero or micro-gravity conditions to examine the impacts of weightlessness. Nasa's space shuttles used to carry out many of these kinds of experiments on their missions.

Museum space

Even before SpaceShipOne captured a $10m prize for successfully completing two suborbital spaceflights, offers to use the ship were pouring in.


Richard Branson and Burt Rutan
My gut tells me that the additional flying we may do on this airplane before it goes to the Air and Space Museum should be focused on developing the very best space tourism vehicle
Burt Rutan
Mojave Aerospace Ventures, the partnership owned by Burt Rutan and Paul Allen that oversees the SpaceShipOne programme, plans to tell the suitors, which include the US government, "No."

It is not that Rutan wants to turn the craft into a "hangar queen" - at least not yet.

Eventually, he wants SpaceShipOne displayed alongside another one of his airplanes, Voyager, which flew non-stop around the world without refuelling in 1986.

Voyager is currently on display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space museum in Washington, DC.

Before SpaceShipOne is retired, however, it has one very important mission left. It is to serve as the test flight vehicle for a new series of commercial passenger spaceliners that will be operated by Virgin Atlantic Airways.

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"My gut tells me that the additional flying we may do on this airplane before it goes to the Air and Space Museum should be focused on developing the very best space tourism vehicle," Rutan said.
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