After SpaceShipOne’s historic win yesterday, the X Prize becomes the X Cup. “Teams will compete in five different categories to win the overall cup: Fastest turnaround time between the first launch and second landing, maximum number of passengers per launch, total number of passengers during the competition, maximum altitude and fastest flight time.“
Tag: Space Race
OneShip to Rule Them All.
Score one for the “model builders”! SpaceShipOne won the X Prize this morning, with nary a barrel roll in sight. This is big news, indeed. Might be time to start saving up my pennies.
The Mojave Run (in less than 12 Parsecs).
Despite an unplanned and disconcerting series of barrel rolls on the way up, FlightTwo and TripOne for SpaceShipOne was a rousing success. Now, if they can repeat the feat within the next ten days, the elusive X Prize is theirs, and the business of space tourism will have reached a watershed moment. (Indeed, Richard Branson has already announced he’ll be leasing SS1 tech to kick off Virgin Galactic.) But first, they might want to figure out what’s causing that roll.
Give me Genesis!
Alas, on its way back from exploring the solar winds, the Genesis capsule plowed into the Earth today at 100 miles an hour after its chutes failed to open.
Scaling Back a Dream.
In according with the Dubya Mars timetable, NASA gives up on the ISS. Hmmm. “Publicly, NASA’s international partners have expressed support…Privately, they have voiced the opinion that the United States is not living up to its commitments.“
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
Mars, Inc.
A White House Commission on NASA will recommend increased privatization as part of the space agency’s upcoming redesign. At first glance, this sounds like Dubya kicking more money back to his favorite companies. That being said, my lefty-leaning friends who work in the aerospace industry have told me that NASA’s current culture is far too risk-averse and bureaucratic to ever be very efficient, and that privatization may be the only way to make continued space exploration feasible. If so, I guess I’m for it.
Ares or Bust.
Via a frequent reader, Explore Mars Now, a website which attempts to visualize red-planet-viable spacecraft using existing technology. Well, it’s already more realistic than Mission to Mars.
Opportunity Knocks.
NASA scores another success on Mars with the flawless landing of the Opportunity. And, in other good news, scientists have determined the Spirit has memory issues, and have upgraded their prognosis from critical to serious.
Moon, Mars, and Beyond.
“I always knew that I would see the first man on the Moon,” once quipped Jerry Pournelle. “I never dreamed
that I would see the last.” Hopefully, we can now prove him wrong. Dubya officially announced his space plan in front of NASA’s DC headquarters today, and the upshot is this: More scientists, less entertainers, a Research Lab in every city, and he’s going to disband all the Spearmen and Pikemen still lying around so he can build the SS Planetary Party Lounge.
Ok, just joking…some of y’all out there might think that was funny. At any rate, the plan is the ISS by 2007, the CEV by 2014, the moon by 2015, and Mars thereafter. Say what you will about election year boondoggles, but I still think creating and funding long-term goals for NASA is a wise investment. (Besides, if you want to cry election-year boondoogle, you don’t need to go any farther than Dubya’s ridiculous $1.5 billion marriage-promotion plan.) NASA still has serious organizational and cultural flaws, sure, but I think it’ll be better able to address them if there’s at least some semblance of a “vision thing” to build on.