What technical developments may be caused by the CUP?

The competition for the CUP(s) requires measures to increase altitude, number of passengers per flight, turn-around-time, flight-time and total number of passengers per spacecraft.

What measures are to be expected? Stronger engines, more stages or something else? Will the CUP cause technological advances? And will the results be of meaning for the orbit etc.?



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

In short, hell yes! The Cup is designed to allow the participants to spread out into their different vehicle preferences: fast, cheap, big, powerful, long-ranged. Or any combination of the above. The first privately-built orbital vehicles will likely be either showcased in or designed for the Cup.

I'm sure that the CUPs will allow for great technological advances. And as shown with InterOrbital Systems, I'm sure many teams will be able to but those advances towards the technology needed for orbit. All knowledge in this industry is cumulative, so any advance in any branch can be used throughout the field in my opinion.

Yeah but a lot of neat tricks will be patented unless Armadillo or someone comes up with them.

One of the upsides of the big pause since most breakthroughs have had their patents expire. Anything over 20 years old is free game, and a lot of the really useful tech is more than 20 years old.

Depends on what you think of advances. Technology itself doesnt stand still but even then, the big thing they do, meaning HAVE TO do, is make everything as cheap as possible since they have the backing of a whole country and thats where the biggest progress will take place. Inventing solutions because you have to, not because you can.

Yeah but the solution you invent has to be a different solution to the one the other team just patented.

Which may mean a richer eco-system of cheap rocket technology.

Thats a good thing right?

Imo yes, if you have 5 rocket engines, varying in performance, price and liftcapacity, then you can have companies buying these rockets and build there own orbitalship upon it. And that's when the real fun begins.

If you can get cargo into space much cheaper then nowadays, you can also put more cargo in to space for the same price (d0h ).

Economic diversity doesn't always mean lower costs, sometimes it can be indicative of quite the opposite. There were lot's of different kinds of cars being built before the Model T. There were lot's of different airplanes that would take a paying customer up before the DC-3.

........Lots of differnet OS'es before Windows.