"Neil Halelamien" wrote in message
oups.com...
[I'm kind of surprised this hasn't been posted about already, so
something I wrote yesterday to here.]

This is a very exciting week for private spaceflight! In addition to
the Virgin Galactic announcement, hotel entrepreneur Robert Bigelow (of
Bigelow Aerospace) has mentioned plans to announce a $50 million
orbital space prize, to a team which produces a commercial space
transport capable of sending 5-7 passengers to a Bigelow inflatable
space module by 2010. This will be dubbed "America's Space Prize."
There's an article with photographs available he

http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0409/27bigelow/


LOL

$50 million for a spaceship carrying 5-7 passengers into orbit and bring
them back safely? What a joke. There's no way someone will be able to claim
that prize for a long time. Orbital flight requires at least 20 times the
energy compared to a suborbital flight, so the prize should be 20 times that
of the X-Prize (i.e. $200 millon). For that kind of money, someone *might*
be willing to invest in such a venture, but that's a big 'if' IMHO, because
you're losing serious amounts of money if it doesn't work. And if it doesn't
work someone's likely to get killed.

For this kind of craft to be anywhere near safe it would have to be a
capsule, and a big one at that. The Russians are having a hard time
realizing it (both technically and financially) and the U.S. isn't even
thinking about one at the moment (but I suspect that will change in the near
future). I believe this is far beyond private commercial enterprise's
capabillities at this time but I hope I'm proven wrong.