SpaceShipOne Sucessfuly Launches!

[brianlojeck]

Dryden spake:

>What is a "low-cost" ticket to outer space? $500? $5,000? $50,000?

the last NASA estimate I heard was $50k/lb, so I think $50k/person might just qualify. ;-)

>he question is whether or not a company like Scaled Composites can take the White
>night/SpaceShipOne concept craft and make a 100 passenger version of it.

100 people, I'd guess it would work rather well, provided the flight duration was short. Once you start adding sleeping bunks and observation decks to the spacecraft I think it becomes less and less feasable, since the Knight craft would have to be prohibitibly large to piggyback a truly big craft up into the air.


>prticularly at the cost of the current program and in light of the Columbia disaster.

have to disagree with you here. The cost can be lessened, I'm sure, and the Shuttle needs to be replaced, I'll agree with you 100%, but the current cost is not a reason to ground the entire program, and the disaster, while terrible, isn't either.

Consider the basic equation of space flight:

1: sit on top of a big barrel of fuel
2: light a match
3: hold on

Whether the craft launches from cape canavral, shot by a giant railgun, or is piggy-backed up by a 747, that's how it basically works. There will always be disasters of this type because spaceflight is dangerous.


>How many years will it take for Scaled Composites to meet NASA's current standard of
>range, duration, and payload capacity, especially considering how quickly they got from
>concept to successful test, apparently with ZERO failures?

small businesses can start off fast, that's easy. the hard part is staying fast and small once you start doing big projects...

>How many failures will occur before the FAA shuts down the whole concept?[/QUOTE]

sadly, one, I'm sure.

[1stdeadeye]

This is a small step in a long journey. An important one, but still a small one.

Super fast + super expensive=the Concord (Failure!)

[vf-xx]

I would like to point out that while Scaled Composites employs few people (aka a small company), they are by no means truly a small company. Consider what work they do. Rutan has this company on the forefront of aviation and I expect grand things from them.

I forget the exact price, but they built a rocket plane that uses really easy to get and cheap parts (I THINK that they use a lawnmower spark plug.....)

Any way you look at it, this is progress.

Hopefully there will be more coverage when they actually make the runs for the X-Prize.

[brianlojeck]

I would like to point out that while Scaled Composites employs few people (aka a small company), they are by no means truly a small company. Consider what work they do.

That was kind of my point, amazing work is easier when you are a small company.

consider this, if you have two engineers, and they need to make a decision, they get into a room and they make it.

if you have 20 engineers, then that kind of meeting gets to be unworkable, so you have maybe 2 groups, with managers keeping track of everybody. If they need to make a decision, they have group meetings, and then the managers talk it over, then another round of group meetings

If you have 200 engineers then you have multiple layers of management, and it gets even worse. Information is lost, apathy and lack of understanding take their toll.

As long as Rutan is working with a limited number of brillant people we will see amzing things out of his company, but once he expands to the point that he can do something along the lines of a shuttle program a lot of that brilliance will be diluted by the required staff.

[alkafluence]

If you read, Rutan funded the whole project with $20 million. Considering that one of NASA's launches cost like some $100 million, just for a launch, that doesn't include the building, research, etc in developing what Rutan did. NASA sucks, Rutan rocks!

Due in no small part to the venture capital of Microsoft founder, Paul Allen.

[vf-xx]

As long as Rutan is working with a limited number of brillant people we will see amzing things out of his company, but once he expands to the point that he can do something along the lines of a shuttle program a lot of that brilliance will be diluted by the required staff.

Somehow I think he'll just design something and let someone else produce it. IIRC Beachcraft jets are his design.

[Halliday]

I liked the headline I saw on some internet news source,
"Free Enterprise One."

[Dryden]

have to disagree with you here. The cost can be lessened, I'm sure, and the Shuttle needs to be replaced, I'll agree with you 100%, but the current cost is not a reason to ground the entire program, and the disaster, while terrible, isn't either.

You're kidding, right? The first two shuttles, the Enterprise test vehicle and Columbia were built by Rockwell and Lockheed at a cost of $2.6 Billion. The following three vehicles, Challenger, Discovery, and Atlantis, were each $1.4B. Total cost in 1971 dollars was $6.744 Billion.

When Congress approved the construction of Endeavour in 1987 following the Challenger explosion, the bill for that one vehicle alone was $1.8 Billion - and that was built at a bargain price by cannabilizing replacement parts and pieces from the original Enterprise test vehicle.

Recently, Boeing put in a bargain basement offer to build a replacement to Columbia for $2 Billion. The proposal was almost immediately shot down because it is senseless to build a new vehicle using 30 year old technology.

NASA also inherited two things from the Apollo program that are a huge financial burden: The Spaceflight Center in Houston and Kennedy Space Center. It costs $2.8 Billion per year to staff and maintain those two facilities, even if nothing flies - as has been the case since February 2003, and projected until March 2005.

The shuttles, at present, cost $500 Million per flight.

The shuttle program was designed with the initial expectations that a shuttle would be launched once a week and each shuttle would carry a payload of 50,000lbs each flight. In reality, the shuttles carry half that weight and fly at most seven or eight times a year. They're unnecessarily large, over-complex by today's standards, and built on 30 year old technology.

The Soviet's had a shuttle program too. Buran flew once, and the entire program was scraped. Our STS program should have been grounded after Challenger in 1986. At the current pace, a launch mission on an STS shuttle has a 1:50 chance of failure, with the loss of seven crew members and a $1.4B vehicle the inevitable result.

There's obviously a smarter, cheaper way to pursue space exploration, and the X Prize groups are proving it, even if it's only with baby steps for now.