Who's still building? (aka: Say it ain't so!)

Since SpaceShipOne has won the X Prize, have all the other teams just stopped developing and building their projects? It would be a dissappointment if they did. Some great work has been put into all of this that it would be a shame for all of it to go to waste.

Please tell me there are teams out there who are still devoted to getting their project off the ground (literally).

You should read the frontpage news:
http://www.xprizenews.org (or http://www.xprizenews.org/index2.php )
You'll see a lot of news, related to the developing space industry.

Many teams are still developing with recent updates:
Starchaser
Armadillo Aerospace
Blue Origin (was not competing for xprize)
Space Transport Corporation
Pioneer Rocketplane
.. and many others

Hello, robiwan,

Sigurd is right. I am myself thinking about the frequency of news from the teams time by time because the frequency seems to have been higher befor the 4th of October than now. This will be due to the fact that the prize is won and the teams are working at less speed now to achieve significant better diligence, less errors and mistakes, less losses of engines and vehicles and so on. This in turn will be due to their often small budgets and the increased need to show convincing results only. They are prelonging the development periods because over longer periods more money is to get better - i.e. strategic reasons.



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

Bad timing on my part. I must've posted the message moments before the news item came out.

I'm a little late into the cheering game (I'm rooting for the Canadian Arrow and the DaVinci Project). As an observation, I don't understand why the DaVinci Project is being constantly hounded on. But whatever! Go Brian! The Canadian Arrow's concept of using old tech is fascinating and I like what I see coming from Geoffrey's team!

Ekkehard - By the way, who's robiwan?

Sorry for that, 76john,

it was an error to call you robiwan. It happend to me because I'm already used to robiwan's userid but not yet to your username I think.

Like you I want to see success of Canadian Arrow and The Davinci Project.



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

"Observation" is not the word you want to use here. Go read the 1001 threads here about Feeney, WildFire [insert favorite roman numeral here] and the Magic Helmet. It's pretty interesting stuff, and it will at least tell you why the guy used to get a lot of ragging.

He doesn't get much attention now though. Which is quite enough in the opinion of a few folks around here.

DKH

I have, actually. I still think it's fascinating. I don't think it's any more stranger than SpaceShipOne. There's a lot to be learned from an unusual design.

Sorry about the use of the word "observation", I couldn't think of a better one.

I...for one...miss the progress reports of NFSB's team and the cries of "vaporware" and such shouted in his general direction. Oh, for the mention once again of the Magic Helmet and its strange and wonderful power to confound the masses into believing that machinations of great import are occurring....when they are not; the startling ability to extract capital funds from schoolchildren of the Canadian citizenry. Oh, for the days once again of interviews with members of the saintly team that describe things that exist only in diagrams.....but I digress.......

We haven't heard from the fair folks of Kindersley lately on the great doings in NSFB's camp. Any chance of an update? Or has even that stopped......

One more time...

Magic Helmet....MAGIC HELMET!!!!!!!

I lived in Saskatchewan for about 25 years. I'm familiar with the area, but I don't know anyone from Kindersley. But if your concerned about the opinions about the citizens (or town counsel) of Kindersley you could always ask the mayor.

http://www.kindersley.ca/

...or Kindersley Transport.

They weren't in the X-Prize but they certainly were in the CATS Prize, and are in the new race as well. JP Aerpospace is the one I'm watching, and they are building.

I think Bad Astra is right about JP Aerospace, they're definitely ones to watch. Although I think Armadillo will get a manned suborbital flight up before JP Aerospace. I also think that once JP gets things going they'll be the most likely to build a low cost space access infrastructure.

The next few years should be very interesting.

Hello, TJ,

totally agreed.

The point is that JP Aerospace is building an infrastructure: three components instead of one vehicle, two vehicles and one station.

And it's low cost because they use a very simple method to get up to 42 km altitude - and the ion drive for the ATO seems to be no problem: AMSAT's private Mars probe has ion drives too.



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

Well, NSFB says that he and his team have built the "World's Largest Ever Re-usable Helium Baloon" and for proof there is a picture of Mr. Feeny posed in front of what looks like a REALLY BIG roll of plastic

Doesn't look so good compared to this
http://www.scaled.com/projects/tierone/ ... ements_800
does it.