most useful/realistic idea for a space related competition

I'm sure this idea has been brought up countless times.
How about 500lbs??? in LEO with a launcher at least 75% reusable?
many xprize teams could transfer their experience and even some hardware to this new endeavour.

Scaled is talking about the orbit, Interorbital has declared the orbit as its final destination, Starchase and Armadillo are considered as more fit to the orbit than Interorbital - and today I read at the website of SpaceX that they have contracts to get satelites and Bigelow's invention to the orbit - first launch dated in the fourth quater of the running year.

That's the current situation most XPRIZE teams a fced to. You are right concerning the experiences but do they have the ressources and successes to reach that goal? To me their only current chance is to sell their experience or to act suborbital until the orbital market begins to grow faster than the above listed firms can satisfy their customers. Taht will take several years.

Only chance else I suppose: the fail of all the potential orbital pioneers.



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

i'm not talking about manned flight.just delivery of a payload to orbit

also, spacex is not competing in the xprize or in any other competition, at least to my knowledge

You are right - SpaceX isn't competing in the XPRIZE or in another competition like this.

But it is competing in the markets and it has paying customers and the annouced launch to take place in the last three months of 2004 are unmanned.

It will be interesting wether they are successful. The customer of this first launch is the US Navy if I remember right.



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)