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lprovenSo, Scaled did it.
Does anyone remember if they've set a date for an X Prize bid? I'm sure it will be coming soon. As a reminder, they have to take 2 passengers (or equivalent ballast) into space, land them safely, then repeat the mission in the same craft within a fortnight.
Some thoughts on what comes next...
My bet is Paul Allen will go, but possibly not Burt Rutan himself. I'm sure he'd love to but he's so valuable that I suspect the others won't let him. Maybe his brother Dick, who's piloted other craft for Burt before.
After Scaled have won - and they will, I'm sure - what next?
White Knight + SpaceShip 1 (which Scaled call "Tier 1", remember) is essentially a technology demonstrator, a loss-leader and a combination of a publicity stunt and a test run. Tho' Scaled isn't saying this, basically, Tier 1 is specifically built to be the smallest, lightest, cheapest thing that could win the X Prize.
Bear in mind the up-front cost, much if not all personally footed by Paul Allen. It's cost them US$20M just to *build* this. The prize is "only" US$10M. Nowhere near enough to pay, tho' enough to defray costs a bit.
However, the publicity, the cachet, the fame, of winning, will be worth a hell of a lot to them.
I suspect they'll fly it a good few many more times, after a few trips with paying passengers, just to make a few bucks off it.
Then comes Tier 2. They're not saying what that is yet.
It *might* be an unmanned LEO satellite launcher carried by White Knight. I'm not sure the plane's strong enough to lift very much, though, but it might be a very *very* cheap launcher for small payloads. I have no figures, but from what I've seen [f/x: finger in the air] they could probably undercut everyone on the planet by an order of magnitude and still make a margin to dream of, like 80% or something.
Alternatively, now they've proved the point, Tier 2 might be a larger carrier aircraft and a much larger SpaceShip 2 which is orbit-capable. A hidden "cost" of this, as I understand it, is that not only must you carry enough fuel to accelerate yourself to escape velocity - roughly Mach 25, as opposed to SS1's Mach 3.2, so you can see that's a *BIG* difference - but also that re-entry from orbital speeds requires a *lot* more heat shielding than it does from the just-barely-into-space ballistic toss that SS1 makes.
(I think this is why Burt made such a deal of the self-correcting reinsertion attitude of SS1, which is a winged glider - a rather more efficient one than a Shuttle. This could be a key part of the technology.)
Option 2 would cost a lot more than it has so far. I wouldn't be surprised by a factor of 10, but Scaled have many surprises up their sleeves, I'll warrant. But they are cautious, so maybe something more like my option 1 for now.
But still. There is now, as of today, an operational successful civilian space program. Space travel is now in private hands, not government ones, which have proved not to know what to do with it.
The USA has a working, operational, private spaceport!
There have been 2 big pieces of space news this century so far.
First, the tragedy of Columbia - and I don't mean the loss of life, horrid as that was. I mean that it effectively killed the Shuttle, sad, lumbering, heavy, underperforming, overbudget, hugely expensive, white elephant that it was, it worked.
I remember Challenger. I was walking back from a lecture at Uni, on Bakeham Lane, in Egham. I'd just got to the last corner before it went past the back entrance to the College and the road met Egham Hill. It was odd in two ways: I normally cycled and I didn't normally listen to the radio. A bleak day.
Columbia was the nail that sealed the coffin.
The Shuttle may fly again, but it's moribund. NASA has no replacement, neither do the Russians, and all ESA has is ideas. The Chinese and Indians have plans but they're at 1970s technology levels. They're not worried about reusable vehicles or paying passengers yet.
(Mind you, it's fair to point out that SS1 is basically a civilian version of the USAF X-15 of 1963. 60s-level tech, updated - and *vastly* cheaper.)
But just as Government space travel becomes doable for the developing world, in the developed world, the governments of which have forgotten the power and the glory of the race for space, space travel has become the domain of private businessmen.
If there's a future in space for the rest of the 1st half of C21, I think it lies in private hands.
But as of today, the USA has an operating private spaceport! I mean, how cool is that?
Does anyone remember if they've set a date for an X Prize bid? I'm sure it will be coming soon. As a reminder, they have to take 2 passengers (or equivalent ballast) into space, land them safely, then repeat the mission in the same craft within a fortnight.
Some thoughts on what comes next...
My bet is Paul Allen will go, but possibly not Burt Rutan himself. I'm sure he'd love to but he's so valuable that I suspect the others won't let him. Maybe his brother Dick, who's piloted other craft for Burt before.
After Scaled have won - and they will, I'm sure - what next?
White Knight + SpaceShip 1 (which Scaled call "Tier 1", remember) is essentially a technology demonstrator, a loss-leader and a combination of a publicity stunt and a test run. Tho' Scaled isn't saying this, basically, Tier 1 is specifically built to be the smallest, lightest, cheapest thing that could win the X Prize.
Bear in mind the up-front cost, much if not all personally footed by Paul Allen. It's cost them US$20M just to *build* this. The prize is "only" US$10M. Nowhere near enough to pay, tho' enough to defray costs a bit.
However, the publicity, the cachet, the fame, of winning, will be worth a hell of a lot to them.
I suspect they'll fly it a good few many more times, after a few trips with paying passengers, just to make a few bucks off it.
Then comes Tier 2. They're not saying what that is yet.
It *might* be an unmanned LEO satellite launcher carried by White Knight. I'm not sure the plane's strong enough to lift very much, though, but it might be a very *very* cheap launcher for small payloads. I have no figures, but from what I've seen [f/x: finger in the air] they could probably undercut everyone on the planet by an order of magnitude and still make a margin to dream of, like 80% or something.
Alternatively, now they've proved the point, Tier 2 might be a larger carrier aircraft and a much larger SpaceShip 2 which is orbit-capable. A hidden "cost" of this, as I understand it, is that not only must you carry enough fuel to accelerate yourself to escape velocity - roughly Mach 25, as opposed to SS1's Mach 3.2, so you can see that's a *BIG* difference - but also that re-entry from orbital speeds requires a *lot* more heat shielding than it does from the just-barely-into-space ballistic toss that SS1 makes.
(I think this is why Burt made such a deal of the self-correcting reinsertion attitude of SS1, which is a winged glider - a rather more efficient one than a Shuttle. This could be a key part of the technology.)
Option 2 would cost a lot more than it has so far. I wouldn't be surprised by a factor of 10, but Scaled have many surprises up their sleeves, I'll warrant. But they are cautious, so maybe something more like my option 1 for now.
But still. There is now, as of today, an operational successful civilian space program. Space travel is now in private hands, not government ones, which have proved not to know what to do with it.
The USA has a working, operational, private spaceport!
There have been 2 big pieces of space news this century so far.
First, the tragedy of Columbia - and I don't mean the loss of life, horrid as that was. I mean that it effectively killed the Shuttle, sad, lumbering, heavy, underperforming, overbudget, hugely expensive, white elephant that it was, it worked.
I remember Challenger. I was walking back from a lecture at Uni, on Bakeham Lane, in Egham. I'd just got to the last corner before it went past the back entrance to the College and the road met Egham Hill. It was odd in two ways: I normally cycled and I didn't normally listen to the radio. A bleak day.
Columbia was the nail that sealed the coffin.
The Shuttle may fly again, but it's moribund. NASA has no replacement, neither do the Russians, and all ESA has is ideas. The Chinese and Indians have plans but they're at 1970s technology levels. They're not worried about reusable vehicles or paying passengers yet.
(Mind you, it's fair to point out that SS1 is basically a civilian version of the USAF X-15 of 1963. 60s-level tech, updated - and *vastly* cheaper.)
But just as Government space travel becomes doable for the developing world, in the developed world, the governments of which have forgotten the power and the glory of the race for space, space travel has become the domain of private businessmen.
If there's a future in space for the rest of the 1st half of C21, I think it lies in private hands.
But as of today, the USA has an operating private spaceport! I mean, how cool is that?
