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Unless there has been a change in plans while I slept Burt Rutan’s SpaceShipOne will fly again in a few hours. This is the first of the required flights in their attempt at the Anseri X-Prize of $10 million. This time they will be flying with the required equivalent weight of passengers in the cabin. The prize clinching flight is scheduled for October 10th.
Some weeks ago the Da Vinci project in Canada announced a first flight date of October 2nd but I have not been following them closely. Armadillo Aerospace is still moving ahead at a steady pace: build a little, test a little, break a little, in the old fashioned hands-on engineering way. Peter Diamandes’ Zero G tourist flights – in an airplane! – are now flying and generating revenue.
The next prize, for the first orbital flight, has been announced by Robert Bigelow:
Company founder and millionaire Robert T. Bigelow told Aviation Week & Space Technology that he will announce as early as this week a new $50-million space launch contest called America’s Space Prize.
The objective is to spur development of a low-cost commercial manned orbital vehicle capable of launching 5-7 astronauts at a time to Bigelow inflatable modules by the end of the decade.
Bigelow has committed $25 million of his own to the purse.
All in all, 2004 is an exciting year for those of us who have dedicated our lives to opening the space frontier.
Note: I will unfortuneately not be present to photo blog this launch. At the moment I am damned fortuneate I can afford a pie for supper and I have been scrambling to keep my broadband connection bill paid. That is the ups and the downs of freelancing… with much assistance from customers who pay whenever or never. Freedom ain’t easy.
I have for some time been suspicious other big things were going on behind some scenes into which my vast network of spies and informers does not reach. I have had nods of confirmation when I voiced my opinions… but nothing specific as to precisely what was going on. The possibility of a Richard Branson and Burt Rutan alliance and something else secret going on in a Mojave hanger has been very much in the back of my mind.
Today, the Branson part of that became public fact. Whether there is more to it – and I believe there is – at least this much is now admitted openly. According to an article from the Dow Jones Newswire of 5:25 a.m this morning, emailed to me just a short while ago:
U.K. entrepreneur Richard Branson said Monday that Virgin Group (VGN.YY) plans to launch commercial space flights over the next few years.
Virgin has signed an agreement with pioneering aviation designer Burt Rutan to build an aircraft based on Rutan’s SpaceShipOne vessel, Branson said.
This I expected. I also have been wondering if they are secretly working on a next generation vehicle already. What I did not expect was major commercialization to happen quite this soon:
“Virgin has been in talks with Paul Allen and Bert throughout this year and in the early hours of Saturday morning signed a historical deal to license SpaceShipOne’s technology to build the world’s first private spaceship to go into commercial operating service,” Branson told a news conference.
The new service will be called Virgin Galactic and expects to fly 3,000 new astronauts within five years.
“Virgin Galactic will be run as a business, but a business with the sole purpose of making space travel more and more affordable,” Branson said. “Those privileged space pioneers who can afford to take our first flights will not only have the most awesome experience of their lives, but by stepping up to the plate first they will bring the dream of space travel for many millions closer to reality.”
Start saving me lads and lasses! We are bound for the stars and the government may go sit and rotate upon an aging ICBM.
UPDATE: Richard Branson was in the studio for the evening news on Channel 5 here; Channel 1 (which is really Channel 4!) gave far less coverage and used some subtle tricks to give it a negative spin.
First: Channel 5, my current favorite for UK news and not just beause the presenter is good looking. Which she is. Branson will be charging UKP 115K per person initially. He is buying into the venture with Allen and Rutan to the tune of UKP 15M. The first vehicles are to be ready for customers in three years. They will carry six. Five fare paying passengers and a pilot. It will retain the ‘shuttlecock’ re-entry mode. The fee will cover 3 days of pre-flight training with people like Buzz Aldrin; the flight will not be very long itself, with only a few minutes of freefall time. They will all fly past the 100km altitude which makes them civilian astronauts by current practice. Branson will fly on the first flight and says he might even take his very elderly father along if he is still healthy at age 90 because he does want to go. The first ship will be named… (drum roll)… the SS Enterprise.
The Ch5 presenter then went off into questions about UK rail schedules on Branson lines; the possibilities of polluting space – which Branson put into perspective by noting there are as many stars out there as there are grains of sand on the Earth; and the risk. Branson was up front that this is pioneering technology… but safe enough that he will fly, his elderly father might fly and even his kids would be allowed to go.
Ch1 on the other hand… the background music was rock with lyrics “Military Mission to Mars…” They played on the fear factor a great deal more and overall gave only a minute or two to the story. They were much more interested in what Gordon Brown had to say today.
It seems the Tuhoe tribe of New Zealand’s Maoris have decided to think big:
“In answer to my questions, they also confirmed their claims of absolute sovereignty over all air space to the heavens above. It was specifically stated that, once the Foreshore and Seabed legislation is resolved, they would be approaching Air New Zealand and other airlines to negotiate compensation for all incursions into their air space.
“They drew the parallel of other sovereign states where missiles are deployed to shoot down unauthorised aircraft. The group also confirmed that it would be approaching NASA and other authorities in respect of their satellites that orbit the Earth.
You simply could not make it up.
Anyone who follows defense issues closely is aware of the global air tanker problem. A) There ain’t enough of ’em, and B) What one’s there is are a gettin’ a mite long in the tooth.
Modern air warfare is highly dependant on tankers. Whether for long distance ferry operations, maximum range missions or extending battlefield loiter time, the tanker aircraft is a crucial element of modern warfare.
Many countries face the same problem. The UK finds itself with insufficient capacity to handle any sort of operational surge. For America it is an aging fleet of Boeing 707’s. Yes, you heard me. That classic 1957 jetliner that started it all. There were plans to upgrade via a leaseback arrangement for new Boeing aircraft, but congressional support collapsed amidst a scandal.
So, what does one call a situation like this? Why, a market opportunity of course!
Dublin-based Omega Air has teamed up with US company Evergreen International in a joint venture to launch the Global Airtanker Service (GAS) KDC-10.
GAS is pitching the KDC-10 airliner conversion as an interim solution for the faltering UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) Future Strategic Tanker Aircraft (FSTA) programme as well as targeting other potential customers such as the USAF and US Navy.
They will not be supplying green Jet fuel for Saint Paddy’s day.
If you have enjoyed the discussion about commercial space and the future here on Samizdata, you might find The Space Meetup of interest.
The Meetup website is a good example of ways in which internet entrepreneurs are building businesses on the community aspect of the internet, and in this case assisting the creation of a global community in the non-cyberworld.
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the Moon.
After creating this wonderful capability, the Government did what Governments do. They squandered it. They threw it away.
The State is not your friend.
Greg Nemitz has been a ‘love him or hate him figure’ within the space community for quite some time. Many have wondered what he could possibly accomplish by claiming the Asteroid Eros and charging NASA parking fees to leave their probe on its surface. Some were outraged when he took NASA to court for the failure to pay… not outraged because they felt it was silly; outraged because they thought he might generate bad case law.
Now Greg is on to the next step up the legal ladder. I am beginning to see the outlines of what may be a fascinating and outrageous (in a good sense) plan to settle the issue of extraterrestrial property rights in the US Supreme Court.
I will let Greg speak for himself:
→ Continue reading: Forcing the issue
Rand Simberg is at the Return To The Moon Conference this weekend and is providing live blogging of the talks by key speakers. Frank Seitzen’s talk is of particular interest to those with a commercial space bent:
Taking questions now. Jeff Krukin: “Is there any sense that all of this could be made irrelevant by things happening in the private sector”?
Answer: “Yes, O’Keefe has met with Musk, and O’Keefe is very skeptical about the ability of the conventional space industry to do things affordably. Was particularly disturbed by cost estimates for OSP. Has been reaching out to the smaller players.”
“Estimate cost of getting to the Moon by 2020 is 64 billion dollars. They found nine billion for a down payment by 2009, but they won’t be able to afford it all without much lower costs from the private sector (and that doesn’t mean traditional contractors).”
I have known the disarticulated skeleton of this story for some time but this is the first I have seen it put together and with flesh on the bones.
You may remember this sad incident in the opening days of the Iraq Campaign: a US Patriot battery engaged and shot down a returning British Tornado. The official report on the incident is finally out:
IFF failure led to destruction of RAF Tornado
A Royal Air Force (RAF) Board of Inquiry investigating the destruction of an RAF Tornado GR.4A by a US Army Patriot missile during the March 2003 invasion of Iraq has concluded that the aircraft’s identification friend-or-foe (IFF) system had failed. However, it also criticised the missile-classification criteria used by the Patriot system, and the US Army’s Patriot rules of engagement, firing doctrine and crew training.
[Jane’s Missiles and Rockets – 28 June 2004]
If any of our readers has a link to a pdf of the original report – if such exists – I would be happy to include it here.
Editor: Kudos to Julian Taylor for the link to the MoD pdf file.
I came across this recent lyrical effort by reader (and recovering ex-NASA employee) Chuck Divine in another forum. With his permission I am sharing the fun with you.
Rutan Spaceship
A Song of great social and political significance
(To be sung to the tune of Janis Joplin’s Mercedes Benz)
(With both apologies and thanks to Janis)
by Chuck Divine
Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Rutan Spaceship?
My friends all fly shuttles
We’ve got to get hip
Worked hard all my lifetime
No hope for space trip
So Lord, won’t you buy me a Rutan Spaceship?
Oh Lord, won’t you get me a space apogee?
The X Prize people are trying to fund me
I’ll launch every day
Until I put up three
So Lord, won’t you get me a space apogee?
Oh Lord, won’t you give me a night on the Moon?
I’m counting on you Lord
That’s why I wrote this tune
Prove that you love me
And get me there soon
So Lord, won’t you give me a night on the Moon?
Everybody!
Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Rutan Spaceship?
My friends all fly shuttles
We’ve got to get hip
Worked hard all my lifetime
No hope for space trip
So Lord, won’t you buy me a Rutan Spaceship?
All those readers of this who particularly liked Dale Amon’s reporting of and ruminating upon this, and whose reaction to this was: I want more! … should look at these.
These being, in English rather than pure linkese, a stunning set of photos taken by Richard Seaman of the first flight of SpaceShipOne into space, on June 21st 2004. (My thanks to Joseph Brennan for an email with the link.)
Great as the photos of the various air and space craft are, I especially like the very first photo, of all the people watching it, and of course photographing it. Although I doubt if many of them got photos as good as Richard Seaman’s.
Seaman used a Canon 1Ds digital SLR camera, a snip at $8,000.
Seaman is a fine photographer, but much of the genius of these photos lies in the automatic focus system that this camera has in it. More fuss should be made of the people who devise things like this, I think. Boy would I love one of these – but smaller and for nearer $80, in a couple of years time.
The 1Ds sports the same 45 point auto-focus system as its predecessor, the 1D. Users on the Canon chat group I follow insisted that the auto-focus system is not only effective in achieving sharp focus, it also does so blindingly fast. One story I remember hearing is that if you point a 1Ds and a D60 at the same object at the same time, and someone walks between the cameras and the object and keeps walking, then the 1Ds would refocus on the person and then back on the object, while the D60 wouldn’t react to the person at all!
Ideal for space ships, in other words. Although I recommend a general rootle around Seaman’s photographs. If that appeals, I suggest that this list of recent additions would be a fine place to start.
I finally have all my photographs in hand, or on disk rather. As promised, here is the behind the scenes photo story (via a small fixed lens film camera) of the people and the historic event they came to celebrate.
The first leg of my journey from Belfast ended at Dublin Connolly Rail Station. Copyright D.Amon, all rights reserved
→ Continue reading: Mojave Pictorial: Two Parties and a Launch
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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