Ansari X, private sector race to space

Transcription

1 Go! Ansari X, private sector race to space SpaceShipOne, designed and produced by Scaled Composites of Mojave, California, is going to try this month to be the first commercially funded manned vehicle to make it to the edge of space, 62 miles up. The lead designer is Burt Rutan, who designed the Voyager aircraft, the first manned aircraft to fly around the world without landing or refueling. SpaceShipOne is one of 27 different vehicles being made by as many companies from seven countries trying to achieve this feat. Together, all these companies are competing in a contest for $10 million known as the Ansari X Prize. It looks like SpaceShipOne will be the first to go for the gold. A spin-off of this contest will be an annual event known as the X Prize Cup, a space-race competition that will be held in New Mexico, at the newly emerging Southwest Regional Spaceport. Just as many laughed at the Wright Brothers, many have laughed at ideas such as commercial space tourism. Just as the Wright Brothers got the Kitty Hawk airborne, so too are we on the verge of seeing manned commercial space flight. The opportunities are incalculable. June 6, 2004 We honor service and sacrifice. Please click the "Donate" button and contribute $20 or more to help keep this station alive. Thanks. An interesting looking airplane made the news the other day, called the White Knight. You might have breezed by it. Had you looked closely at it, you would have noticed something hanging from its belly. They did it! Whoopee! SpaceShipOne, a 1 of 13 6/5/10 1:19 PM

2 commercial manned vehicle, launched for outer space on schedule on June 21, The goal was to achieve altitude 62 miles and return, and she did it! The flight marked the first time that a non-government spacecraft reached the altitude considered to be the boundary between earth's atmosphere and outer space. See our story for background, and join the countdown! The editor. June 14, 2004 White Knight in captive carry, SpaceShipOne on its belly. Photo courtesy of Scaled Composites LLC That "something" is called SpaceShipOne, a three-seat spaceship that is scheduled this month to demonstrate a 60 second rocket burn that will thrust it from its drop altitude of 50,000 feet to an altitude of 62 miles above Earth, to the edge of space SpaceShipOne is the invention of a California-based research company named Scaled Composites, founded in 1982, formed by a few investors and led by Burt Rutan (shown in photo to right) of Voyager fame. Late last year, it was revealed that Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, has financed the development of SpaceShipOne and its White Knight partner. It is also believed there are other investors but we have had some difficulty pinning this down.. SpaceShipOne is launched from the White Knight turbojet at an altitude of 50,000 ft, it drops into gliding flight and then fires up its rocket engine for more than a minute, climbing steeply, nearly vertically, reaching a speed of 2,500 mph, and then coasts to its objective altitude. The objective altitude for this upcoming flight on June 21, 2004 is 100 km (328,000 ft, 62 Competitors for the Ansari X Prize (click to see imagery of and a writeup about each vehicle) Read company, vehicle name, location Acceleration Engineering, Lucky Seven, Bath Michigan, USA Advent Launch Services, Mayflower, Houston, Texas, USA Aeronautics and Cosmonautics Romanian Association, Orizont, Romania American Astronautics Corporation, Spirit of Liberty, Oceanside, California, USA Armadillo Aerospace, Black Armadillo, Dallas, Texas, USA Bristol Spaceplanes, Ascender, Bristol, England Canadian Arrow, Canadian Arrow, Toronto, Ontario, Canada The da Vinci Project, Wild Fire, Toronto, Ontario, Canada Pablo de León and Associates, Gauchito, Buenos Aires, Brazil Discraft Corporation, Space 2 of 13 6/5/10 1:19 PM

3 miles), after which it will fall back to the atmosphere and land at about 90 mph. (Photo courtesy of Scaled Composites: Image of flight 13P boost from Chase aircraft video). Tourist, Portland, Oregon, USA Flight Exploration, Green Arrow, London, England Fundamental Technology Systems, Aurora, Orlando, Florida, USA IL Aerospace Technologies (ILAT), Negev 5, Zicon Ya akov, Israel Interorbital Systems (IOS), Solaris, Mojave, California, USA Kelly Space & Technology, LBX, San Bernadino, California, USA SpaceShipOne sits on the ramp on its landing gear. Photo courtesy of Scaled Composites LLC This is not fantasy, or vaporware. On May 13, 2004, SpaceShipOne completed a test flight in which pilot Mike Melville reached an approximate altitude of 211,400 feet or 40 miles, the highest altitude ever reached by a non-government aerospace program. Lone Star Space Access, Cosmos Mariner, Hoston, Texas, USA Micro-Space, Inc., Crusader X, Denver, Colorado, USA PanAero, SabreRocket, Fairfax, Virginia, USA Pioneer Rocketplane, Pioneer, XP, Solvang, California, USA Scaled Composites, SpaceShipOne, Mojave, California, USA Starchaser Industries, Thunderbird, Cheshire, England Suborbital Corporation, Cosmopolis-21, Moscow, Russia TGV Rockets, Michelle-B, Bethesda, Maryland, USA Vanguard Spacecraft, Eagle, Bridgewater, Massachusetts, USA Shown just before touchdown at 90 mph, SpaceShipOne returns to the runway. Photo courtesy of Scaled Composites LLC One of the many things that is fascinating about this story is that SpaceShipOne is a private enterprise operating Space Transport Corporation of Washington, USA High Altitude Research Corporation (HARC) from Huntsville, Alabama, USA Blue Ridge Nebula Airlines based outside of Denver, 3 of 13 6/5/10 1:19 PM

4 with private investment. Colorado, USA Politicians talk a lot these days about how they will create so many jobs, when we all know that it is the private sector that creates jobs. As indicated in the introduction, in this case, Paul G. Allen (shown in this photo, courtesy of Vulcan Inc.), a co-founder of Microsoft and now the CEO of Vulcan Inc., has teamed up with the Voyager aviation pioneer Burt Rutan to develop this program. We want to return to this point about creating jobs later. During the course of learning about SpaceShipOne, a whole new world of private manned space flight opened up to us in a program called Ansari X. Ansari X is a $10 million global contest to see which private enterprise can safely send a piloted craft to the edge of space, 62 miles or 100 kms, and repeat the feat with the same craft within two weeks. There are 27 companies from seven countries competing. Eighteen are from the US, three from England, two from Canada, and one each from Brazil, Israel, Romania and Russia. The contest was formerly known as X PRIZE. The name was changed when Amir Anousheh Ansari, shown in this photo on the cover of Working Woman magazine, and her brotherin-law, Amir Ansari, announced a multi-million dollar contribution to the X Prize Foundation. Amir Ansari told MSNBC.com that he saw his family's contribution as a way to help make "an impossible dream" come true. The two are co-founders of the Texas-based venture capital firm Prodea, and they also 4 of 13 6/5/10 1:19 PM

5 co-founded Telecom Technologies Inc., a soft-switch systems company that was acquired by Sonus Networks in The X Prize Foundation is headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, located on Spirit of St. Louis Boulevard named after Charles Lindbergh who flew the first trans-atlantic flight aboard his aircraft, Spirit of St. Louis in It is worth noting that in 1929, governments, individuals, newspapers and major corporations offered more than 50 major aeronautical prizes. Among them was the Orteig Prize, a $25,000 cash prize sponsored by a wealthy hotel owner, Raymond Orteig, for the first person or persons to fly non-stop between New York and Paris. In this photo, you see Charles Lindbergh receiving the Orteig Prize from Mr. Raymond Orteig. The Orteig Prize stimulated not one, but nine separate attempts to cross the Atlantic. As a result of these early aviation prizes, the world's $250 billion aviation industry was created. The Ansari X Prize hopes to spur the creation of a vibrant commercial space industry through the $10M competition You can see how inflation has struck. It would be interesting to debate the differences in degree of difficulty between what the Orteig Prize and the Ansari X Prize want done. The purpose of the Ansari X Prize is to promote the development and flight of spaceships able to provide low-cost commercial transport of humans into space. Some key rules for the competition include the following: Flight vehicles will have to be privately financed and built. Entrants will be precluded from using a launch vehicle substantially developed under a government contract or grant. 5 of 13 6/5/10 1:19 PM

6 Graphic courtesy of Ansari X The flight vehicle must be flown twice within a 14-day period. Each flight must carry at least one person, to minimum altitude of 100 km (62 miles). The flight vehicle must be built with the capacity (weight and volume) to carry a minimum of 3 adults of height 188 cm (6 feet 2 inches) and weight 90 kg (198 pounds) each. The second flight must demonstrate economical vehicle reusability. 6 of 13 6/5/10 1:19 PM

7 Peter Diamondis, the chairman and president of the X Prize Foundation, has described the rationale for the rules of the competition as follows: "Requiring that the vehicle be privately funded and privately constructed means that a large government cannot come in and win the competition in a manner which does not lead to economically viable tourist capability. "We chose 100km altitude because it is beyond the official 50-miles that the US Air Force recognizes as 'worthy of astronaut wings' but not so high that the reentry speed requires exotic heat shielding. "Requiring a vehicle which can fly three people means that X Prize registrants will be designing vehicles which can turn around after the competition and begin to generate revenue traffic following their certification. "Finally, requiring that the same vehicle fly twice within two weeks means that cost per reflight is only the cost of fuel and the limited 'touch-labor' that can be applied in this short period of time. Therefore, we hope that cost per seat will be reasonable and affordable to many." As we read the reports available to us, there are two contests at play here, one called the Ansari X Prize, the other called the X Prize Cup. The Ansari X Prize is the competition for the $10 million cash award. It will go to the first private organization to build and fly a ship that can carry three passengers 62 miles (100 kilometers) into space, return safely to Earth and repeat the launch with the same ship within two weeks. Both flights must be completed by January 1st, 2005, so there is a deadline. Please note that the ship need not carry three people; it can carry only one, the pilot, so long as it demonstrates the capacity to carry three. The X Prize Cup will be an annual event. It's kind of like the "Indy 500" of commercial manned space flight. New Mexico 7 of 13 6/5/10 1:19 PM

8 has been selected as the site for what is being called the X Cup," sort of like the "Super Bowl" trophy. The X Cup will be held at the state s Southwest Regional Spaceport during the same timeframe each year. The first X Prize Cup and Public Spaceflight Exposition is slated for summer of 2005, using the White Sands Missile Range outside La Cruces. We will return to New Mexico and space flight in a moment. The First X Prize Cup is scheduled for summer of The X Prize cup will be much like a race. Each team will compete in a series of races, culminating in a single X Prize winner. Teams will compete for cash prizes in each of the following five categories: Fastest turn-around time. Maximum number of passengers carried on one flight. Total number of passengers carried during the entire X Prize Cup event. Maximum altitude attained. Fastest flight time from take-off to landing. An overall winner based on total points scored in each competition will also be chosen and awarded the X Prize Cup Trophy, which they will retain for one year. The X Prize Cup, a two-week-long event that allows for privately financed, passenger-carrying space vehicles to compete for prizes, will be multifaceted. This is an artist's concept of what one might look like. Courtesy of MSNBC. The Public Spaceflight Exposition will be held in conjunction with the races to provide exciting, entertaining and educational experiences to engage and capture the interest and imagination of the general public. Realistic space experiences and a direct educational outreach to the 8 of 13 6/5/10 1:19 PM

9 public are planned. There is a lot to watch and learn about all this. We urge you visit the Ansari X web site. It is jam packed with good information, including write-ups about, photography of, and internet links to each competitor's entry. There are a couple items to which we want to return. The first has to do with job creation. We have already mentioned that the organizers of the Ansari X hope to spur the creation of a vibrant commercial space industry. This is what capitalism and democracy are all about: creation, in this case, creation of a wholly new and growing space industry, which in turn will create an incalculable number of new jobs, very good new jobs. In this regard, we noted an article by Joan C. Horvath published by the April 2004 edition of Scientific American, entitled Blastoffs on a Budget. Horvath reminds us of the potential, writing this: First transcontinental railroad. The train pictured is the Jupiter which carried Leland Stanford, one of the "big four" owners of the Central Pacific, and other railway officials to the Golden Spike Ceremony. Courtesy of Wilkipedia.com Well into the 1860s, the American West remained divided from the East by the harsh terrain of the country's broad, untamed interior, particularly the steep peaks of the Sierra Nevada. Then four Sacramento merchants began raising money to fund a seemingly impossible project: to build a railroad across the high Sierras and thus unite the continent. Derided by the press, the moneymen, top engineers and politicians, the ambitious enterprise nonetheless overcame daunting technical obstacles and eventually 9 of 13 6/5/10 1:19 PM

10 succeeded. The First Transcontinental Railroad in North America was finished in Since 1859 the most westerly railroad from the Atlantic coast reached Omaha, Nebraska. To connect it with the Pacific coast the Central Pacific Railroad was built from Sacramento, California eastward and the Union Pacific Railroad from Omaha westward, until they met. The rest is history. This, of course, is just one of many examples. The opportunities with regard to space are mind-boggling. Space tourism, remote sensing, and component testing will be some of the services provided by this new class of vehicle. Later versions could provide extremely rapid point-to-point movement of packages and people. Remember, we are not talking government here; we are talking the commercial, private sector. While it is most surely the private sector that creates the most good jobs, it is also as sure that the private sector needs a government in place that creates the right environment for job creation, that is, growth. The Commerce and Transportation departments seem to be doing that for the kinds of enterprises we are talking about here, though we are in no position to evaluate how well.. This chart reflects the historical and projected revenue for each of the industry segments covered in the 2001 "Trends in Space Commerce" report of the Department of Commerce. Overall, the industry experienced a 16 percent growth rate. Courtesy of Office of Space Commercialization, Technology Administration, Department of Commerce. In its "Trends in Space Commerce" report of 2001, the Commerce Department said that commercial use of space resources is steadily increasing in importance as a means to expand our economy. In a report issued in 2001, the 10 of 13 6/5/10 1:19 PM

11 department projected that space-related industries would be a $105 billion suite of enterprises. Most of that, $89 billion, would have to do with satellite communications. Space transportation was only projected at $6.6 billion. That s because this segment is in its infancy stages. One need only go back to the days of the Wright Brothers first flight in 1903 to get a sense for what can happen in the space transportation business. Following the Kitty Hawk flight, twenty-four years later, in 1927, Lindbergh made the first trans-atlantic non-stop flight. In 1942, only 15 years after Lindbergh and 39 years after the Wright Brothers, the Bell XP-59A flew as America s first turbojet, and became the direct ancestor of all American jet aircraft. Just five years later, the Bell X-1 rocket powered aircraft was the first in the world to break the sound barrier. Today, the aircraft industry in the US is as important as the housing industry and anyone hanging out at or near an airport to see the industries and jobs that have grown up around the airplane. Now comes commercial space transportation. Mind-boggling opportunities indeed. In addition to this, on April 1, 2004, the U.S. Department of Transportation issued Scaled Composites what it called the world's first license for a sub-orbital manned rocket flight. The license was approved by the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) Office of Commercial Space Transportation, which has backed licenses for more than 150 commercial launches of unmanned launch vehicles in its 20 years, but never a license for manned flight on a sub-orbital trajectory. This is all very good news. But there is a catch. Our children need to get themselves educated, well educated, in the right disciplines, for these opportunities to reach fruition. The competition is already hot. It s only going to get hotter. Let's not give these jobs to foreigners! They'll get them, though, if our kids refuse to get themselves educated. As the saying goes, if you 11 of 13 6/5/10 1:19 PM

12 can t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. One cannot complain about the lack of good jobs on the one hand and skip first-class education on the other. The second item we wish to highlight is what is happening in the state of New Mexico. This is really exciting stuff. Let s start by saying that New Mexico s government has an Office for Space Commercialization, a division of its Economic Development Department. It was set up in How prescient. Its job has been to promote, coordinate, develop and manage New Mexico s regional spaceport program and coordinate the promotion and marketing of the state s spacerelated resources. It has already won the X Prize Cup, having beaten out Florida, and California, one heck-uva feat in anyone s book. Florida s governor is the brother of the president, and it has the Kennedy Spaceflight Center. California, Namely Lompoc, has Vandenberg Air Force Base, home to numerous ballistic missile launches. 12 of 13 6/5/10 1:19 PM

13 New Mexico is in the process of establishing the Southwest Regional Spaceport at Upham, an undeveloped location in southern New Mexico approximately 45 miles north of Las Cruces and 30 miles east of Truth or Consequences. The proposed site is approximately 27-square-miles of open, generally level, rangeland with an average elevation of 4700 ft. There are no launch restrictions from Upham. Favorable climate, land usage, and controlled air space availability make high rate launch and recovery operations possible with minimal schedule conflicts. The site is well positioned for safe launches to all desirable orbital inclinations. The spaceport will include: a launch complex; a 12,000 ft. runway and aviation complex; a payload assembly complex; a support facilities complex; a system development complex; and site infrastructure. The most recent progress report we have seen is that the FAA is overseeing the licensing of commercial spaceports and has confirmed that the application for licensure of the Southwest Regional Spaceport is "substantially complete." A license will be issued after the Environmental Impact Study (EIS) is completed. So, this is no foolin around. Stay tuned. 13 of 13 6/5/10 1:19 PM