Star Trekking
One of the coolest parts of my new job is that I get to attend or witness seminal events that most ordinary citizens would not get to see. In the past few months, I have been able to cover several space-related stories that make me wonder about the future of space travel.
First, I got to see the launch of SpaceShipOne in the Mojave Desert and it became the first-ever commercial spaceflight when Mike Melvill took it into sub-orbit. I was also at the first X Prize flight a month later during which the vehicle went into a wild spin as it clmbed into space. It was scary for those of us on the ground at first, but it was cool to be there when he landed safely.
On the flip side, I was also in Utah when the Genesis spacecraft came crashing down to Earth. That was carried live on all of the 24-hour news networks so millions of people were watching when it slammed into the ground. I had talked to all of the NASA people involved in the project and the 2 stunt pilots who were supposed to grab it in mid-air. It was the worst scenario that they could have imagined, except for the fact that alot of the samples actually survived the crash. Unfortunately, that part of the story hasn't gotten near as much coverage as the initial crash.
My question is - in the light of these two developments - Are we seeing a permanent shift in space travel from public to private interests? Will research and possible resource recovery shift completely into the private sector as well? Or is space tourism going to be the only niche that will be taken over by commercial interests?
First, I got to see the launch of SpaceShipOne in the Mojave Desert and it became the first-ever commercial spaceflight when Mike Melvill took it into sub-orbit. I was also at the first X Prize flight a month later during which the vehicle went into a wild spin as it clmbed into space. It was scary for those of us on the ground at first, but it was cool to be there when he landed safely.
On the flip side, I was also in Utah when the Genesis spacecraft came crashing down to Earth. That was carried live on all of the 24-hour news networks so millions of people were watching when it slammed into the ground. I had talked to all of the NASA people involved in the project and the 2 stunt pilots who were supposed to grab it in mid-air. It was the worst scenario that they could have imagined, except for the fact that alot of the samples actually survived the crash. Unfortunately, that part of the story hasn't gotten near as much coverage as the initial crash.
My question is - in the light of these two developments - Are we seeing a permanent shift in space travel from public to private interests? Will research and possible resource recovery shift completely into the private sector as well? Or is space tourism going to be the only niche that will be taken over by commercial interests?
posted by cvo @ 11:00 AM
1 Comments:
At 4:16 PM,
R said…
I was at a big aerospace conference in August, and that fella that runs the X-prize was a keynote speaker at the awards lunch. I could write a lot about the goofy things he did, but the most interesting part was when he asked for a show of hands on the question of how many people in the audience would pay $10k for a sub-orbital ride. I would guess that there were easily 1000 people in the room, out of which I would be surprised if more than 25 hands went up. Interestingly, he didn't seize the opportunity to find everyone's reservation price by "auctioning" it down. We've talked a lot about this since, and I'm pretty sure that he would not have got a lot of hands unless the price was a couple thousand or so. So, I stand by my long-held belief that "space tourism" will only become a viable economic reality when we have a space elevator, which I firmly believe most of us will almost live to see (see http://www.spaceelevator.com/ or just do a Google search for more info).
As to Genesis, I'd like to hear Tom's thoughts, as I seem to recall him once mentioning that he knew someone who knew the guy a Lockheed-Martin who made the units error that killed the '98 Mars Lander. This screw-up was in the same category. There have been others that have received less media attention, such as the loss of Clementine, Eros, X-43, and several others. What the mishap boards have found that these all have in common, is the lack of adequate quality control procedures. Some of this was part of the so-called "faster, better, cheaper" approach that NASA was trying to follow in the 80s. Some of it was due to a reduced amount of government oversight.
I do think that Rutan brouht a tremendous amount of credibility to the X-Prize competition, and especially now that he has won it, they will continue to attract a lot of attention. I'm glad to see that, even in a small way, space is becoming more like aviation, or at least like aviation was in the early 20th century, and general aviation still is. One needs to recognize however that there is a HUGE step between what they have done and getting into orbit, and then getting back safely. A really important reason why they were successful is that they kept their velocity quite low.
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