The "REAL" X-Prize - Or how commercial manned space in possible within our lifetimes.

I have bashed the X-Prize as a silly waste of money and resources
mostly because it doesn't actually advance our greater knowledge of
either manned space exploration or improvements in aeronautical
engineering (just a LEO stunt). Almost everything that is being
planned by the contestants is just a rehash of 50s and 60s rocket
technology slightly modernized and at a cheaper price structure.
However, they do not answer how we can move beyond the shuttle and the
space station to actual manned missions to the Moon and Mars,
especially as commercial ventures.

Even if the Outer Space Treaty was clarified to allow for private
interests in space, there is currently no economic incentive for
manned missions or developing technology to make it happen (aside from
playboy joyrides). Legislation needs to be drafted that that for
venture involvement a return could be guaranteed for investors. That
way money can pour into technology development that moves us beyond
LEO.

My proposal:

In rewriting the Outer Space Treaty, the government could put into
effect this policy: Through the primature of national soveignty
(though not its domain or entitlement), the US government (or an
international consortium) shall recognize the land and resource claims
made on behalf of a third-party (the private venture) till the point
of but not exceeding on a cost-plus basis the expenditures to explore,
establish, and settle a manned colony or outpost on a heavenly body
(the Moon and Planets). Moreover, the policy would be in effect on a
first come, first serve basis.

In this manner, there would be greater clarity on who and how the
process of recognizing land claims could be made and justified for
bodies over which current governments have no domain or right to
enjoin others from exploiting in the future. The government(s) would
set up a procedure by which the rights to this framework would be
subject to a license auction transfering authority from the
government(s) to third-parties to implement. Therefore, ventures
could being in earnest as investors would have a decided incentive to
proceed into the development of the technologies needed to get us
where we want to be.

Comments?

Ciao.

Brian

garfangle wrote:
I have bashed the X-Prize as a silly waste of money and resources
mostly because it doesn't actually advance our greater knowledge of
either manned space exploration or improvements in aeronautical
engineering (just a LEO stunt). Almost everything that is being
planned by the contestants is just a rehash of 50s and 60s rocket
technology slightly modernized and at a cheaper price structure.
However, they do not answer how we can move beyond the shuttle and the
space station to actual manned missions to the Moon and Mars,
especially as commercial ventures.



Have you ever considered that it is not necessarily the advance of
either manned exploration nor the improvements in aeronautical
engineering that is the problem?

It is that the knowledge and the engineering is not commonly
available to people who would use it for a given goal. Or to expand
it as needed.

Consider the history of manned flight. Everyone points out the
speed which heavier-than-air flight grew. What is usually missed
in any such analysis is that the core technology was that available
to a couple guys in a garage. The history of heavier-then-air flight
is the history of the internal combustion engine, for the most part.
It took decades to develop a sufficient power plant capable of
sustaining flight as well as concurrent research into aerodynamics.

We simply do not have the capability yet to sustain that type of
growth. Nor will any system aimed at continually expanding
capability accomplish that goal without a concurrent means of
backfill. By backfill, I mean the spread of the core technologies
and knowledge into a large enough base to sustain secondary development.
Primary development paths are dead-ends without followup. Going onto
the next big thing only kills what has already been developed.

You have stated in your complaint about X-Prize every condition that
is needed for future growth. Rehash of technology at a cheaper price.
Without that critical step, there is no dispersion of skills, tech,
and knowledge. Space development will remain restricted to the large
contracts from NASA.

Even if the Outer Space Treaty was clarified to allow for private
interests in space, there is currently no economic incentive for
manned missions or developing technology to make it happen (aside from
playboy joyrides). Legislation needs to be drafted that that for
venture involvement a return could be guaranteed for investors. That
way money can pour into technology development that moves us beyond
LEO.

My proposal:

In rewriting the Outer Space Treaty, the government could put into
effect this policy: Through the primature of national soveignty
(though not its domain or entitlement), the US government (or an
international consortium) shall recognize the land and resource claims
made on behalf of a third-party (the private venture) till the point
of but not exceeding on a cost-plus basis the expenditures to explore,
establish, and settle a manned colony or outpost on a heavenly body
(the Moon and Planets). Moreover, the policy would be in effect on a
first come, first serve basis.

In this manner, there would be greater clarity on who and how the
process of recognizing land claims could be made and justified for
bodies over which current governments have no domain or right to
enjoin others from exploiting in the future. The government(s) would
set up a procedure by which the rights to this framework would be
subject to a license auction transfering authority from the
government(s) to third-parties to implement. Therefore, ventures
could being in earnest as investors would have a decided incentive to
proceed into the development of the technologies needed to get us
where we want to be.

Comments?

Ciao.

Brian

garfangle wrote:
I have bashed the X-Prize as a silly waste of money and resources
mostly because it doesn't actually advance our greater knowledge of
either manned space exploration or improvements in aeronautical
engineering (just a LEO stunt). Almost everything that is being
planned by the contestants is just a rehash of 50s and 60s rocket
technology slightly modernized and at a cheaper price structure.

Slightly cheaper is the whole point. We can do all the things you want
right now, with existing technology. We just can't afford them. Technology
is not the issue - money is.

However, they do not answer how we can move beyond the shuttle and the
space station to actual manned missions to the Moon and Mars,
especially as commercial ventures.

"Slightly Cheaper" *is* the answer to how to bring new commercial ventures
into being. When it's cheap enough to go to the Moon and Mars, commercial
ventures will do it. Until then - nada. Technology isn't the issue, or at
least pushing the performance envelope isn't the issue. What's needed is
reliability and low cost. Without those two things, prices will never come
down and extraterrestrial commerce will never advance.

.......Andrew
--
--
Andrew Case |
|

"garfangle" wrote in message
om...
X-Prize
....
(just a LEO stunt)

The X-Prize has nothing to do with LEO

Doug

"Doug Ellison" wrote

The X-Prize has nothing to do with LEO

I was wondering if someone would point that out. The X-Prize is
about 8 km/s short of LEO, which is a lot. At best, it's a first
step that will lead down a road of more steps that, Bog willing,
will get to sustainable/profitable private LEO operations and
beyond.

IMO, it will take a lot of luck and not a little time to get from
X to LEO.

Charles Buckley wrote in message ...
garfangle wrote:
I have bashed the X-Prize as a silly waste of money and resources
mostly because it doesn't actually advance our greater knowledge of
either manned space exploration or improvements in aeronautical
engineering (just a LEO stunt). Almost everything that is being
planned by the contestants is just a rehash of 50s and 60s rocket
technology slightly modernized and at a cheaper price structure.
However, they do not answer how we can move beyond the shuttle and the
space station to actual manned missions to the Moon and Mars,
especially as commercial ventures.



Have you ever considered that it is not necessarily the advance of
either manned exploration nor the improvements in aeronautical
engineering that is the problem?

It is that the knowledge and the engineering is not commonly
available to people who would use it for a given goal. Or to expand
it as needed.

Consider the history of manned flight. Everyone points out the
speed which heavier-than-air flight grew. What is usually missed
in any such analysis is that the core technology was that available
to a couple guys in a garage. The history of heavier-then-air flight
is the history of the internal combustion engine, for the most part.
It took decades to develop a sufficient power plant capable of
sustaining flight as well as concurrent research into aerodynamics.

We simply do not have the capability yet to sustain that type of
growth. Nor will any system aimed at continually expanding
capability accomplish that goal without a concurrent means of
backfill. By backfill, I mean the spread of the core technologies
and knowledge into a large enough base to sustain secondary development.
Primary development paths are dead-ends without followup. Going onto
the next big thing only kills what has already been developed.

And to whom you suppose can take advantage and do that kind of
tinkering? I doubt it would be a couple of brothers working out of
their bicycle shop. Any understanding of aerospace rocketry and
engine design, by its very nature is limited to only a select few
bright minds whose background likely to be from the JPL, rather than a
bicycle shop. Anyone who understands developments in the industry
probably already knows most of his fellow scientists/engineers. So,
the spreading of knowledge process is closed and narrow, not open and
wide.


You have stated in your complaint about X-Prize every condition that
is needed for future growth. Rehash of technology at a cheaper price.
Without that critical step, there is no dispersion of skills, tech,
and knowledge. Space development will remain restricted to the large
contracts from NASA.

How can you say it is going to be cheaper when each launcher is custom
built and any test pilot probably has to sign a waiver stating than
his life is forfeit for the mission? All it tells you is that some
fools will do anything to get notoriety.

Ciao.

(Andrew Case) wrote in message ...
garfangle wrote:
I have bashed the X-Prize as a silly waste of money and resources
mostly because it doesn't actually advance our greater knowledge of
either manned space exploration or improvements in aeronautical
engineering (just a LEO stunt). Almost everything that is being
planned by the contestants is just a rehash of 50s and 60s rocket
technology slightly modernized and at a cheaper price structure.

Slightly cheaper is the whole point. We can do all the things you want
right now, with existing technology. We just can't afford them. Technology
is not the issue - money is.

However, they do not answer how we can move beyond the shuttle and the
space station to actual manned missions to the Moon and Mars,
especially as commercial ventures.

"Slightly Cheaper" *is* the answer to how to bring new commercial ventures
into being. When it's cheap enough to go to the Moon and Mars, commercial
ventures will do it. Until then - nada. Technology isn't the issue, or at
least pushing the performance envelope isn't the issue. What's needed is
reliability and low cost. Without those two things, prices will never come
down and extraterrestrial commerce will never advance.


Technology IS the issue. After all most improvements in technology
consist of doing the same thing at a lower cost structure (garments
produced from hand-sewn to machine looms). Rocketry can become
eminently affordable if only we could develop a fusion reactor without
having to first explode a nuclear bomb.

Ciao.

"garfangle" wrote in message
m...
Charles Buckley wrote in message
...
garfangle wrote:
We simply do not have the capability yet to sustain that type of
growth. Nor will any system aimed at continually expanding
capability accomplish that goal without a concurrent means of
backfill. By backfill, I mean the spread of the core technologies
and knowledge into a large enough base to sustain secondary development.
Primary development paths are dead-ends without followup. Going onto
the next big thing only kills what has already been developed.

And to whom you suppose can take advantage and do that kind of
tinkering? I doubt it would be a couple of brothers working out of
their bicycle shop. Any understanding of aerospace rocketry and
engine design, by its very nature is limited to only a select few
bright minds whose background likely to be from the JPL, rather than a
bicycle shop. Anyone who understands developments in the industry
probably already knows most of his fellow scientists/engineers. So,
the spreading of knowledge process is closed and narrow, not open and
wide.

It doesn't take a bright mind to understand whatever aspect of technology
you happen to be interested in, just a focused* one. The X-Prize has helped
to focus several minds that I am aware of. None of them from JPL. The
layman available knowledge base is widening, and the X-Prize is partially
responsible for that.

You have stated in your complaint about X-Prize every condition that
is needed for future growth. Rehash of technology at a cheaper price.
Without that critical step, there is no dispersion of skills, tech,
and knowledge. Space development will remain restricted to the large
contracts from NASA.

How can you say it is going to be cheaper when each launcher is custom
built and any test pilot probably has to sign a waiver stating than
his life is forfeit for the mission? All it tells you is that some
fools will do anything to get notoriety.

It will become cheaper because the problems you mention will decrease
with effective experience.

*Focus implies years of attention, not weeks.

garfangle wrote:
Charles Buckley wrote in message ...

garfangle wrote:

I have bashed the X-Prize as a silly waste of money and resources
mostly because it doesn't actually advance our greater knowledge of
either manned space exploration or improvements in aeronautical
engineering (just a LEO stunt). Almost everything that is being
planned by the contestants is just a rehash of 50s and 60s rocket
technology slightly modernized and at a cheaper price structure.
However, they do not answer how we can move beyond the shuttle and the
space station to actual manned missions to the Moon and Mars,
especially as commercial ventures.



Have you ever considered that it is not necessarily the advance of
either manned exploration nor the improvements in aeronautical
engineering that is the problem?

It is that the knowledge and the engineering is not commonly
available to people who would use it for a given goal. Or to expand
it as needed.

Consider the history of manned flight. Everyone points out the
speed which heavier-than-air flight grew. What is usually missed
in any such analysis is that the core technology was that available
to a couple guys in a garage. The history of heavier-then-air flight
is the history of the internal combustion engine, for the most part.
It took decades to develop a sufficient power plant capable of
sustaining flight as well as concurrent research into aerodynamics.

We simply do not have the capability yet to sustain that type of
growth. Nor will any system aimed at continually expanding
capability accomplish that goal without a concurrent means of
backfill. By backfill, I mean the spread of the core technologies
and knowledge into a large enough base to sustain secondary development.
Primary development paths are dead-ends without followup. Going onto
the next big thing only kills what has already been developed.


And to whom you suppose can take advantage and do that kind of
tinkering? I doubt it would be a couple of brothers working out of
their bicycle shop. Any understanding of aerospace rocketry and
engine design, by its very nature is limited to only a select few
bright minds whose background likely to be from the JPL, rather than a
bicycle shop. Anyone who understands developments in the industry
probably already knows most of his fellow scientists/engineers. So,
the spreading of knowledge process is closed and narrow, not open and
wide.



Between Boeing, LockMart, NASA, and dozens of now defunct or absorbed
companies, there are literally tens of thousands of people with the
necessary skills in the US alone. That is considerably larger a base
of skills and ability than was available in the year 1910 in aviation.
With lowered barriers to entry, these skills can be directed at
developing lower cost to orbit.

You are positing only 1 or 3 companies working under governmental
contracts aimed at cutting edge tech. The aggregate total of what
is occurring now is about the same as what the government was
managing in the 1950's. Which is a relative indication of costs and
tech availability. Establish this level of industry now and you have
the breadth of skills and approaches that can capitalize on later
developments, but summarily dismissing even starting means you never
start.




You have stated in your complaint about X-Prize every condition that
is needed for future growth. Rehash of technology at a cheaper price.
Without that critical step, there is no dispersion of skills, tech,
and knowledge. Space development will remain restricted to the large
contracts from NASA.


How can you say it is going to be cheaper when each launcher is custom
built and any test pilot probably has to sign a waiver stating than
his life is forfeit for the mission? All it tells you is that some
fools will do anything to get notoriety.



Every single X aircraft built was custom designed. That point is not
custom design, it is multiple development paths. These are test
articles, conceptually exactly the same as anything ever built under
contract by NASA (which, in it's 45 year history, has built only 36
manned flight vehicles, of which only 30 have been in orbit). You have
to get through the development phase before the operational phase and
NASA has never, even once, in 45 years developed a single vehicle
or cencept that was operational in the aviation sense. They have
been flying custom test vehicles for it's entire existance and there
is nothing to indicate that a continuation of the current system
would cause any sort of change in that paradigm.

We are still very much in the initial development phase. There are a
lot of paths that were not explored. There were a lot of options that
were considered viable with 1960's tech that would have been feasible
for SSTO or RLV, or even cheaper ELV. NASA did not have the mandate
or funding to explore everything. Nor was it within it's design criteria
to actually make things cheaply. Just look at some of their decisions
and you willsee quite clearly that cheaper is not their primary or
even secondary concern.

(Allen Thomson) wrote in message om...
"Doug Ellison" wrote

The X-Prize has nothing to do with LEO

I was wondering if someone would point that out. The X-Prize is
about 8 km/s short of LEO, which is a lot. At best, it's a first
step that will lead down a road of more steps that, Bog willing,
will get to sustainable/profitable private LEO operations and
beyond.

IMO, it will take a lot of luck and not a little time to get from
X to LEO.

Who cares? At least it's progress. Pharoah had pretty big reed boats,
but no matter what Thor Heyerdahl says, ancient Egyptians never
explored the Americas.

That's the current state of space exploration. At lots of expense and
pushing the technology to its limits, and with some luck, we can just
get people to the moon and to LEO, etc, just like it has been proved
*technically* possible to get from Alexandria to Cuba on an Egyptian
reed boat. But until there is enough technical know-how to make space
exploration easily and cheaply repeatable (the way European sailing
ships made world exploration easily and cheaply repeatable), we're not
going to find a return on space exploration.

The Europeans didn't set out to build ships that could cross the
Atlantic--they just built ships that could reliably, quickly, and
cheaply, survive voyages from Venice to London--no small task in the
stormy North Atlantic. As a bonus, they ended up with hardy ships
capable of sailing them around the world.

That's what the X-prize is about. It's about building rockets that are
reliable, cheap and reusable. So it doesn't get us all the way to
orbit--so what? At least we're building the know-how and technology
base to make orbital flights cheaper and more reliable, even if at
first it's only applied to suborbital stages.

Expect government-sponsored manned exploration(when it starts up
again) to be much cheaper and easier post X-prize.

While I'd personally jump at the chance to ride a shuttle to orbit,
I'd feel a lot less nervous taking a suborbital hop on an X-prize
winner.

Tom Merkle