Just out of curiosity
26 June 2004 11:21![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
denWhat was stopping private companies from developing re-usable orbital vehicles before the X-Prize came along? Why are we seeing this now after 50 years of humans in space?
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Date: 25 Jun 2004 19:39 (UTC)Simply put, it cost too much and there was not all the computing power and research and materials advances that have been made today. Basically computer aided design and computer aided manufacturing have made custom making things like Spaceship one WAY cheaper than ever. There are also new carbon composite materials and new fuels. SpaceshipOne runs on a mix of rubber additive and laughing gas and is about the cleanest rocket fuel you can currently get other than liquid oxygen and hydrogen which you have to brign in massive quantities. This new fuel is far more powerful by weight. You also have 50 years of hindsight from the big government space programs and far more powerful computers that can do the modeling, simulations, and mission control work, stuff almost no person could afford even 10-15 years ago.
It's the natural march of technological advances that have brought us to the point where this can be done for under $30 million now. As time goes by, the cost will come down even more.