Gov Richardson announces X-Prize Cup for October. Really?

The buckskinned governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson,
needs a reality check, or he may end up putting his foot in his mouth.

He has announced that New Mexico will hold the X-Prize Cup in October.
Ahuh!
X-Prize Cup? And who is going to launch anything to compete for the cup?

(1) Scaled Composite's SS1 is on its way to the Smithsonian.
(2) Starchaser doesn't have anything ready to launch above 6,000 meters.
(3) Rubicon 2 seems to be liitle more than a dangerous big toy.
(4) Canadian Arrow doesn't have anything but escape-rockets on a mockup to
launch a kilometer or two into the air.
(5) Is JP Aerospace going to launch a balloon to compete for the cup?
(6) Armadillo's functioning craft was recently wrecked.
(7) DVP?...They won't be allowed south of the Canadian border.
{8} The Romanian team won't be allowed into America to compete for the
cup..You can thank Osama Bin Laden for that.
So whose left to compete?

If you read the press releases, you would see they only are organising a "Countdown to the X PRIZE CUP" and not on actual X-Prize Cup. The first actual X-Prize Cup is scheduled for 2006.
But it seems it will be worthwhile to go: there wil be some demonstration launches. I fear most demonstration launches will just be model rockets but if Armadillo Aerospace will launch a test model, it would be very interesting to see. There will also be a " Preview flights of the Tier-1 X PRIZE Rocket Racer at the Las Cruces International Airport". This sounds like a Scaled Composites vehicle (I certainly hope it is one) . To see an SpaceShipOne succesor alone would make the trip worthwhile.

Tentative Schedule:

2005 will be a 4-day event and will feature our Personal Spaceflight Exposition and provide an introduction of the overall XPC&PSE.

2006 Event will feature exhibition flights of our X PRIZE CUP races and will be held at the White Sands Missile Range.

2007 Event will formally open the full XPC&PSE with the start of competitive race to space flights and low altitude races. The races and the Personal Spaceflight Exposition will be held at their permanent home, the Southwest Regional Spaceport in Southern New Mexico.

I think it will be very exciting, not to just see what people have come up with but to hear the announcements for the future.

The fact that so many companies are starting to take this sort of thing seriously is truly remarkable and in and of itself is a major turning point for the future.

I would go just to see that Tier-1 X PRIZE Rocket Racer

hey
can someone stop me being nieve, what is the Tier-1 X PRIZE Rocket Racer

Richardson was hawking a concept called Hyper-Soar that was being pushed by--of all orgs--the DoE...his old stomping ground.

There are two major disasters that have hurt spaceflight--and I am not talking the two shuttle losses. We have lost as many or more with Blackhawk downings after all.

Disaster #1.. X-33 VentureStar. The biggest POS I have ever seen. It usurped a billion that could have been spent on Beal's rocket--the Rockwell X-33 entrant--an HLLV mock-up--anything.

But the composite tanks bit them--and the make-work SLI/OSP didn't help NASA's image either.

Disaster #2. Rutan's winning of the X-Prize.

All this will do is give the Proxmire-types a reason to nix future NASA funds.

The freaks over at Cato Institute got a Clinton era lady who called for NASA cuts. The CATO people (good name for them--seeing what C-A-T-O means in rocket parlance) don't like gov't--and wind up using someone from the Golden era (the biggest problem NASA had) to point out how bad NASA is supposed to be.

This is like shutting down gov't Doppler weather radars--seeing people be killed in the thousands during the next twister outbreak--then saying "we don't need NOAA--see how badly they botched it?"--when it was lack of support from such groups that caused the disaster to start with. This same false arguement is being used by Tumlinson to attack Heavy_lift when he should be making friends. Such duplicity!

As far as I am concerned--the space libertarians are frauds.

Are you saying that Burt Rutan is at fault for winning the X-prize or that the X-prize foundation shouldn't have created it? They, like me, were fed up with the whole space exploration business going nowhere and tried to get things moving.

Governments are never going invest the money needed to develop a huge space infrastructure and to entice private funding will need people like Burt Rutan and Elon Musk to demonstrate that there is room for private investors and it is a lot safer than NASA's 2 crashed space shuttles portray it.

Here's another disater to add to your list,

Disaster #3.. NASA sitting on its big fat behind and doing nothing to inspire people after the Apollo program.

if so i got first dabc on a five finsgure discount to mr publiusr

I think nobody knows, the only mention of this vehicle is the X-Prize Cup press release. But if you look at the name one would guess it is a vehicle from Scaled Composites that will compete in the X-Prize Cup.