Just out of curiosity

[den]

What 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?

Comments

[hafoc.livejournal.com]

"If you ever ask 'why don't they make...' the answer is always 'Money.'" (I forget the source.)

So far the chief source of money in space is satellites in geosynchronous orbit. No manned, reusable vehicle we could come up with this quarter can do that. For that matter, the Shuttle can't. And since it can't make money this quarter, our Honest Businessmen aren't interested.

Even now, the spark isn't future fortunes to be made in space travel and using the resources of space. It's a frickin' little $10MM prize!

One shudders to think how air travel would have fared had it remained a government project. Back then the money was in airmail. We probably would have ended up with very safe, very high performance aircraft carrying mail across oceans, carrying mail under heavy government subsidy. They wouldn't allow passengers because it was too dangerous.

But instead, they hired contractors. Who wanted to make all the extra money they could, so they let a few passengers ride on the mailbags. Then they started putting in seats for them, and served them coffee, and after a while they invented the prepackaged, preheated chickenoid and Tato Turd lunch-on-a-disposable-tray. The rest is history.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[arcturax.livejournal.com]

This one is right up my alley!

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.

[hedgegoth.livejournal.com]

ever read "The Man Who Sold The Moon" by Heinlein?

[ceruleanst.livejournal.com]

It's all about competition. The space program never would have gotten anywhere in the first place if we didn't want to beat the Russians. Now, finally, someone had the idea to create a new space race by pitting corporations against one another.

[level-head.livejournal.com]

It still takes big boosters to get into orbit. SpaceShipOne cannot do this. So, in a sense, you cannot get anywhere "useful" with it. The area that it operates in at its peak is the commonly and thoroughly explored area of sounding rockets, which are quite cheap.

Nevertheless, it's a beginning! I await the next steps with keen interest.

===|==============/ Level Head

[lonita.livejournal.com]

Because everyone was afraid of NASA?

[oceansedge.livejournal.com]

Now they're back to letting ride on mailbags, and you want coffee, chickenoid and tato turds.... ya pay $12/plate for em. All hail the discount airline!

[skipai.livejournal.com]

Awww. Never flown by British Airways then I take it? :) Proper meals on there. Should be since every meal is made by a proper chef and not some microwave stuff you get :D

why space flight seems to be in decline

[sheramil.livejournal.com]

http://www.eff.org/Misc/Publications/Bruce_Sterling/FSF_columns/fsf.01

the gist of this is that the idea of getting into orbit by sitting on top of a giant kerosene bomb is kind of fifties and outdated.

with enough intelligent application, our current technology can sustain us for tens of thousands of years. it would just be a lot *easier* to go into orbit and get cheap solar power, mine the gas giants for hydrocarbons, etc.

i have to admit; when i consider E.E. "Doc" Smith's space opera with its WASP heroes zooshing about the galaxy and bringing enlightenment to the natives, i start to think about Conrad's "Heart of Darkness", or, even less charitably, his story "An Outpost of Progress".

even Trek seems unfashionably colonial. at least B5 didn't pretend that the aliens were all primitives who needed to learn from the human example in order to succeed. at least, not very often.

SF never really recovered from John Campbell's endless preaching of "Mankind's Unique Potential".

rant rant rant.

sheramil
--
LESS HUMANS!
MORE ROBOTS!

[zibblsnrt.livejournal.com]

Mix of money, fear, and legislation. Until sometime not long ago - five to ten years - it was illegal for civilians to attempt spaceflight. Not simply unlicensable, but criminal to even try.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

Legislation! I didn't know that. Ok, that sort of explains it. I didn't accept it was just money because large corporations often throw buckets of the stuff at problems because the possible payoff was worth it.

Re: why space flight seems to be in decline

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

So far all our exploration of extraterrestrial planetary systems has been by robots. That should bring your ICs above ambient temperature.

The Ships tell me they are still only machines, but you work with what you've got. *shrugs*

[hafoc.livejournal.com]

I still go with money, though. Come on.. if industry thought they could make fortunes in space, wouldn't they get their bought-and-paid-for Congress to authorize it?

There's also that space exploration has been done so far by government contract. And government contracts I've seen don't encourage innovation. They tend only to take bids on doing certain things in ways they, at NASA, have already chosen. When industry is paid whatever it costs to build bigger and bigger 'kerosene bombs,' that's what they'll do. Why should they do anything else?