How many people have actually purchased SpaceShipTwo tickets?
Doug Messier has done some research and has found the numbers might be less than advertised.
Tag: competition
X-Prize contestants team-up to create head-to-head lunar race
The competition heats up: Two Google Lunar X-Prize contestants have teamed up to use the same rocket to get to the Moon together, where they will literally race head to head to see who travels the 500 meter distance first to win the prize.
At a press conference in Tokyo on Monday, the leaders of two Lunar X PRIZE teams—Astrobotic and HAKUTO—announced a plan in which the two teams’ robotic rovers will travel to the moon together and touch down on the lunar surface at the same time. They will then race each other to cover the 500 meters required to win the first place prize of $20 million.
John Thornton, head of Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic (a Carnegie Mellon University spin-off), said in a call with reporters that the partnership with HAKUTO (a spin-off from Tokyo University) represented the first step in realizing his team’s goal of turning robotic moon missions into a viable business. That mission won’t stop with this single partnership. He said the team was in talks with more than half of the other 16 GLXP competitors to carry their rovers to the moon, too, in exchange for sharing the cost of getting there and splitting prize money.
If this happens as they propose, we could be watching as many as ten rovers line up for the race.
World View sets parafoil altitude record
The competition heats up: World View, which hopes to send space tourists to the edge of space in a balloon, set a world record last week for the highest flight of a parafoil.
The flight ascended to more than 100,000 feet, about 19 miles altitude.
Highlights from Dream Lines IV
An evening pause: I haven’t posted a wingsuit video since 2012, so this clip is overdue, especially since the scenery is quite beautiful. My only complaint is that they cut just as one flyer releases his chute for landing. I would have preferred to see the whole flight, including its gentle end.
Hat tip tdub.
Why Isn’t Batman in the public domain?
Link here. As a writer who makes my living partly on the royalties I earn, I have still opposed every change to the copyright laws since 1978, as each change has extended the length of copyright far longer than was necessary to protect my rights. The result has been a concentration of power, in this case among a few corporations, something that should always be avoided.
Instead, the Congresses we have had in the past forty years have willingly corrupted the law in the worst possible way.
Spacewalk to begin the reconfiguration of ISS successful
Saturday’s first spacewalk in a yearlong project to reconfigure ISS so that it can accomodate two commercial cargo capsules and two commercial ferries, all at the same time, completed all tasks with no problems.
The article also provides a very clear explanation of the entire planned reconfiguration of ISS, including the reasons why these changes are necessary.
New Mexico legislature advances spaceport sale bill
A state bill to sell Spaceport America, New Mexico’s spaceport built to service Virgin Galactic’s oft-delayed space tourism business, has advanced out of its first committee.
The bill still needs to clear two more committees before it gets a floor vote, but considering the lack of progress at Virgin Galactic, I would not be surprised if it passes. The high hopes that created this spaceport a decade ago have now faded into a boondoggle that New Mexico probably can no longer afford.
An ISS built from matchsticks!
The competition heats up? As part of an exhibition in Houston a man has built a scale model version of the International Space Station, made entirely of matchsticks.
Orbital ATK announces date of next Antares launch
Orbital ATK announced on Thursday that it plans to make the first launch of its redesigned Antares rocket in March 2016.
It will carry a Cygnus capsule to ISS.
Spacewalk on Saturday will begin ISS reconfiguration for private manned capsules
The first of a series of spacewalks to reconfigure ISS for the future arrival of commercial manned ferries was delayed by one day on Thursday to give engineers extra time to prepare.
The spacewalk is now set for Saturday.
Work accelerates towards the first test flight of Falcon Heavy
The competition heats up: Design and construction of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy is picking up in advance of the rocket’s first test flight, now tentatively scheduled sometime this summer.
It will not surprise me if that summer launch does not happen on time. Nonetheless, I expect that before 2015 is over we will see a Falcon Heavy on the launchpad being prepped for launch.
A dozen launches for Arianespace in 2015?
The competition heats up: Arianespace’s launch manifest for 2015 predicts a busy year, with a hoped for pace of one launch per month.
What I like most in the article however is what this paragraph says:
The launch provider won nine contracts for geostationary satellites in 2014, and eight of them are the right size to ride in the Ariane 5’s lower berth, [said Stephane Israel, Arianespace’s chairman and CEO] in an interview with Spaceflight Now.
SpaceX has emerged as the chief rival to the veteran French-based launch company, which started the commercial launch business when it was founded in 1980. SpaceX and Arianespace cinched the same number of commercial launch contracts last year. Partly in response to SpaceX’s bargain prices and partly as an initiative to ensure the Ariane 5 has a steady balance of heavier and lighter payloads, Arianespace cut prices for customers with smaller satellites. [emphasis mine]
I love how competition has lowered costs while simultaneously increasing the launch rate for multiple companies. Before SpaceX arrived to challenge established companies like Arianespace the accepted wisdom in the launch industry was that it was foolish to have more rockets capable of launching at lower costs, because there simply wasn’t enough business to justify it. You’d supposedly end up with idle facilities costing money with no payloads to launch. I always thought that theory was hogwash. Elon Musk and SpaceX have definitely proven it so.