X PRIZE to Orbit & Beyond!

Is this correct? It hasn't been on space.com or hobbyspace RLV News or Space Race 2 or Cosmic Log. Is it really true?

http://www.xprizenews.org/index.php?p=922

Monday, 23rd May, 2005

Related: X PRIZE News Section
BREAKING NEWS: X PRIZE Foundation will soon be announcing their first orbital prize. Peter Diamandis also predicted that in the next 5-8 years, the first orbital flights for paying customers will begin, and then within 3 years, the first privately funded landing on the Moon will happen

Watch for official announcement … A timeline that will beat NASA!… this was a luncheon speech at ISDC.

Posted By Sigurd De Keyser @ 3:19 pm GMT

It's overoptimistic. The suborbital tourism hasn't even started yet, so why does he thinks orbital tourism would start practicly as fast?

And there allready is the ASP. I'm not being negative but Peter should stay away from the mushrooms for a while. It's simply not even close to realistic imo.

I would be more interested in this X-prize--because small microgravity experiments of long duration--shunted off ISS due to VSE--would have a ride.

So instead of getting relative pennies from rich playboys who could buy they own MiGs (and see pretty much the same vista as seen from SS1)--firms could get pharmaceutical contracts for a bit more money. This kind of craft would have far greater utility.

Dr. Diamandis seems to be one of those BIG thinkers. He sees the world through BIG glasses, and he can't help but come up with BIG ideas, that he has to communicate to the world. I bet it's a real thrill for him to get out of bed in the morning, because the world is just brimming with possibilities! But, as with everybody else, he's gonna have great ideas, dumb ideas, not so good ideas, and pretty good ideas. Zero-g flights are a pretty good idea, based on his track record. For other people, that would be a great idea, but the X-prize was SUCH a great idea that anything else he can do is dwarfed. I mean, look at what he set in motion- everybody wants a piece of the prize action now: ASP, Centennial Challenges, to name just a few. It's a great idea which hadn't been used for a long time, and he put it back into action. But he'll never top it.

That's the reason why I wonder why he would want to follow in his own footsteps.
Other people are already doing that for him.

It would be the next logical prize but I think that the next year to 18 months will show whether it would be realistic to expect it to happen in 5-8 years. We need other teams flying sub-orbital first, possibly at the X-Prize cup?

T-Space's TXV could qualify as a suitable craft and might attract enough private backing if NASA isn't interested in funding it. They give the first flights as being in 2008 if it was fully funded, have a look at their website it has had a face lift and contains some info on the TXV

http://64.78.33.215/index.cfm

Stefan makes a good point that the ASP already exists and that a similar X-prize is not likely to stimulate more teams to work on orbital. Even though the ASP is open to US based only foreign team might be eligible if they have a US office (like Starchaser) that they can operate from. Perhaps the X-Prize foundation is going to run the ASP for Bigelow, any news Sigurd?

Of course, as Publius says, this is a lot more interesting goal than suborbital, and now that I think about it, the goals of the ASP are rather specific. It seems that there could definitely be room for more than one orbital prize. There were no details, but maybe they could make the goals more manageable for a wider variety of teams. That would stimulate more innovation than the ASP, which has ONE guy, Elon, saying he's going to win it.

I dunno, publi... they look pretty different to me:

68K feet:
http://www.scaled.com/projects/tierone/ ... l/0apogee2

350K feet:
http://www.scaled.com/projects/tierone/ ... e_0175_web

You have a good idea, though, in that perhaps an orbital PAYLOAD prize might be a better idea than a re-hashed ASP. It is more achievable, but I wonder if Dimandis can get an underwriter for such a venture considering that X-prize already cost one insurer so much bread. If I was running an aerospace insurance outfit, I would reject anything from him as a proven bad risk!

Well that is the problem in a nutshell--as to why folks won't invest in private space in general (and why we still need NASA BTW)

But to be fair to Peter, it is Gary Hudson who has the real kiss of Death.

I like SpaceDevs concept. X-34/Dream-Chaser is about as center of envelope as you get--and can be a sub-orbital rocket on its own--or a mini-Buran when hitched to a hybrid stack.

That's hard to beat.

Desertbadger,

Of course it's true...

lol, I even have it in spoken text by Peter Diamandis himself in wmv sound format (30+ mins long)

Too bad some people are laughing on the background (who recorded it) and they don't want to have their laugh public lol... (yes, Desertbadger (Robin), recorded that at the ISDC, with Elliot (TerraMrs) sitting next to her)

That an orbital XPRIZE may be competitional to the ASP is a thought of mine too and I already have said that at the board last year a few times.

But I could imagine an orbital XPRIZE that won't be competitional to the ASP or might be assisting or completing it perhaps. Here are some alternatives:

1. Extravehicle Activities
2. In-orbit repair capabilities of vehicles
3. orbital propellant store
4. capability to change orbit
5. capability to do traffice between two (or more) orbital objects.

An orbital XPRIZE for each of these alternatives wouldn't be a competitor for the ASP but an add-on to it - a vehicle that qualifies for the ASP competition could include qualification for the orbital XPRIZE or even not. On the other hand a vehicle that qualifies for the ASP but looses in that competition could win the orbital XPRIZE though.

Such an orbital XPRIZE could be adjusted to the ASP by talks to and agreeents with Robert Bigelow.

What about it?



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

any chance o can get that recording guys? i'm sure the laughing can't be that bad!...please...

Hey, I don't care if Sigurd shares it. The not-releasing-it was all Robin's idea.

Feel free to share the recording -- we only laugh when it's funny. You'll hear Elliot coughing (he was a little choked up, I guess) and the iPod disc spinning, but it's still worth a listen.

hehe im looking forward to this now! sounds comical

You can download the file at:
http://www.xprizenews.org/wp-content/5_ ... mandis.wma