Who plans on going to the first x-cup?

i presume that most of us will end up going to at least one in our lifetimes, or to be more accurate, the cup's lifetime, but who is going to go to the first one in 2006?

I am very much hoping to be there. Unfortunately, looking to buy a house within the next two years here on Long Island with it's insane housing market may cause me to miss this.

I will definitely go if I can, but flight instructor's pay leaves a bit to be desired...

yeah and im sure the finishing uni with a 14 grand dept may let the sh*t hit the fan for a travel! ah well, make time!

About ready to expend most of my available resources trying to get to Scaled's launch... But 2006 just might be far enough away for me to save up to get out there to the Southwest again. On the other hand, I'll actually be in uni at that point, trying to figure out CFD.... Aw, what the heck, I'll try for it anyways.

that summer is the summer before i start college, and the cup is the kind of thing my dad likes, so in the likely case i can't really afford to go, i'll go with him.

I would definitely love to go, but i'll be going into my 2nd year of college and everyone knows how college kids are with their money, or lack there of. I know I will go to one eventually though.

I will be there hopefully as management. I'm currently working on the development plans this summer with the X PRIZE Foundation in Santa Monica. No excuses about college If anything it should be easier for you to jump in the car with some friends and go to New Mexico... Road Trip! It would be harder for people with full time jobs to get work off to go to the event.

Cheers,
Ryan

I'll be there. It's just the next state over for me

I would love to go. I really wanted to go to SS1's launch. For me, it's about time and money. I'm the quintesential family man, so travelling isn't usually easy.

I greatly envy you guys that have some official connection with this stuff. *heh* know any X Prize teams that need a good programmer?

I would go... - if I hadn't to be in Hamburg or if there were XPRIZES in Western Europe too...

Is there any chance that one day there are CUP launches in Great Britain or in Romania? Starchaser and ARCA are from these countries - they might be able to get all the Know How needed to create, construct and build spaceports.



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

Unlikely (or at least very difficult from the regulatory standpoint) since the UK is a small and densely-populated area with *very* crowded airspace.

Besides, Starchaser already has agreements with the New Mexico port authorities, don't they?

England is too small. Germany or France have tons more room and France has massive empty spaces. Although, its not very far to the vast open spaces of Russia...

The problem would be that Germany and France obviously don't have any interest - neither the governments nor (in general) the people.

England isn't much smaller than Germany compared to the number of inhabitants and the distance from north to south is nearly the same as in Germany.

What's the maximum of density of population still allowing the existence of a spaceport? What size of area is required for private spacecrafts of the size we see now?

But it may be that spaceports in Eastern Europe would be a good help for its countries when private space travels begin to grow sgnificantly - a spaceport in Romania, Croatia or Macedonia? Hungary?



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

Eastern Europe sounds like a better idea. Britain did once plan to launch from the mainland and carried out studies. We could not utilise earth's spin and launch East due to the first stage impacting somewhere near your house! Polar launch from the North Norfolk coast was then mooted and looked likely to go ahead. At this point somebody got scared of the first stage hitting one of our oil rigs in the North Sea (as unlikely as that sounds). I would be more worried of the Soviet response to rockets screaming over the pole....

England and Germany have a far too high population density to launch anything big. I went to the Army2002 live-fire demonstration on Salisbury Plain, which is probably Englands biggest unpopulated area. They still could not fire a short-range SAM as if it missed the low flying drone, the flechettes would go on to hit the nearest town in that direction (Devizes). They actually have a larger test site in Germany for those type of weapons! The main problem though is that you really want to launch East. Wherever you do that in Europe, it will overfly somewhere heavily populated and/or potentially easily annoyed. My choice, Kenya. Lob them over the Indian Ocean.