Private Company First to Take on Lunar X Challenge 65
explosivejared writes "A private company by the name of Odyssey Moon has become the first team to complete registration for Google's Lunar X Challenge. They will likely be competing with several heavyweights in the field, as Carnegie Mellon University, along with many others, has already expressed an interest in the competition."
Hey! (Score:2)
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Besides, someone is apparently willing to do this, and that means the reward is good enough.
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That aside, getting to the moon (250k miles away) does seem to be a different order of magnitude than getting 100km above Earth....
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It is like climbing a rather steep hill to reach a plateau. After the climb the long walk on the top is much easier. Now if you want to get from Earth to Moon quickly you may need to bring along more energy, thus even harder to get out of the gravity well, but that is choice.
I think
A drawing is worth a thousand words (Score:3, Insightful)
The energy budget to go from Low-Earth Orbit to the moon is half of the one to go from earth to LEO. So I would say that the reward is surprisingly on-spot. Of course this is not taking into consideration the fact that the weight of a spacecraft increase exponentially the closer it comes to escape velocity, and the fact that lunar landing, lunar-earth telecommunications, space travel are a different kind of challenge than in the Ans
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It gets even better when you consider the issue of thrust. To lift from the Earth you need a lot of thrust simply to raise from the ground. This translates directly into consuming a lot of energy and reaction mass, which rules out things like solar panels and forcing the spacecraft to carry all its energy within. This makes the spacecraft heavier, in
Missing the point. (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't need to recoup all the winner's costs. You just need to give the company a bit of a reward to help them get back out of the red more quickly.
Take the $10M prize, as an example. It is estimated that the winning team spent around $25M to win that $10M. But they now have a contract with Virgin Galactic to build many more vehicles, because they have the know-how and a workable basic design.
The goal is to stimulate, not to reimburse all costs.
Moon 2.0 (Score:2)
Dilbert (Score:4, Funny)
For example:
http://www.comics.com/comics/dilbert/archive/images/dilbert2007152781206.gif [comics.com]
Coincidence ?
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I have long since stopped marveling at how apropos Dilbert can be at times.
Scott Adams has been able to consistently put out stuff for a long time that at any given time, a whole lot of geeks read and say "how the heck did he know that?".
It's eerie sometimes. Really, who among us hasn't come into work in the morning, fired up our daily Dilbert fix, and see our lives right in front of us?? At least three times in as many months, the latest daily describes
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Productivity... (Score:5, Insightful)
It is following the exact path of civil aviation. I have high hopes of it developing in the same way.
Sorry, a bit of daydreaming is good for me... let the SciFi lover in me have a bit of fun.
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So, how did it happen the way it did the first time? (moon 1.0)
With computing power on par with an 86 Chevy Citation and slide rules, how did we send living breathing men to the moon, and bring them back, without a hitch?
I'm not saying we didn't, just that either it wasn't that hard, or there is more to the story as to how hard it really was, or some reason why it's "so hard" now. It's been almost 40 years, I'm just asking why it hasn't been done since. Is
"Without a hitch"? (Score:2)
Apollo 1 [wikipedia.org] was a pretty damn big hitch.
Even if we just look at the Apollo 11 mission itself, there were hitches. For one thing, the landing went "long" and that "computing power" was taking them toward a rock-strewn crater. If Armstrong hadn't taken manual control for the landing, things might've gotten really hitched.
Re:Productivity... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, as long as there are no reasons to go into space, the Free Market is getting nowhere here. All these projects you see are funded on charity. People with too much money pay to do something mostly to keep the industry alive.
Space exploration is actually following the path of polar exploration. Many people got both private and government funding to go to the poles, and some of the succeeded. But very few things except for science came of it, and that was the government funded kind of science.
Sure, some fishermen had semi permanent settlements on the the south pole, but they have mostly been replaced by scientists now. It's possible we'll see mining or oil drilling on the poles, but this hasn't happened yet, partly for legal reasons but also actually for practical reasons. There is some tourism too, but its pretty insignificant, and it will be the same for space. Once the hype fades, interest will drop. After all, a private island in the pacific is nicer than orbit around space.
Don't get me wrong, I think this is exciting too, but don't get too optimistic. Comparing it to aviation doesn't make sense at all. There is no brave new world here, just barren wastelands. Obviously, one day it will become profitable to bring platinum and other really expensive metals back to earth, and at that point the free market will take over, but I'd say that's atleast 100 years away. Deep sea mining will happen long before that, for example.
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Re:Productivity... (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, the fastest way from London to New York (or any other point on Earth) is a ballistic arc. And the ballistic arcs for any significant distances - meaning you'd consider using an airplane - go through space.
A ballistic arc from London to New York isn't far from LEO as far as speed and altitude goes. From New York to Tokyo would be even closer. And the hard, dangerous and expensive parts of space travel are precisely entering orbit and entering atmosphere.
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Now for next day or same day ship cargo this could be useful.
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If it meant that I could travel from Chicago to Beijing in under 3 hours? Or London to Syndey in less than 5 hours?
You had better believe that there would be demand for genuine ballistic arcs around the world. Indeed there is demand for sub-orbital flights right now.... if the equipment technology (read safety concerns) and the costs dropped to something a little cheaper than
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When was the last time you flew in a commercial airliner during bad weather?
I remember one particularly nasty flight that went through what I swear was a hurricane that was essentially a 3 hour ride in a roller coaster. And that was a regularly scheduled commercial flight with over 300 passengers on board. I'm sure the pilots of that plane weren't exactly having an easy time on the flight either, but the point is that even existing transportation systems experience some interesting ac
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Roller coaster ? Being in a ballistic arc means you're in freefall most of the trip. Being in freefall means it is impossible to tell the whole thing is moving without looking outside. You aren't subject to any forces - not even Earth's gravity - during the ballistic part of the trip, so you'll simply float, weightless like a feather.
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The only reason Concorde could afford to fly was the two goverments involved wrote off the development costs and presented them to the respective airlines for free. (And, not incidentally, save face for the respective goverments and enlarge the size of the virtual national penises.)
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The only reason Concorde could afford to fly was the two goverments involved wrote off the development costs and presented them to the respective airlines for free. (And, not incidentally, save face for the respective goverments and enlarge the size of the virtual national penises.)
Well, it can't have been too large an expense, if the planes flew until there was an accident. As I see it, if it were a real burden, they would have found some way to kill it much earlier while saving face.
Sure, the market is there for supersonic flight. We can also build a machine that can make it happen. (So long as you constrain it to essentially transatlantic ranges.) What can't do is build said machine at a price the (fairly small) market will support.
Maybe all such modes of transportation will be too expensive for the market size, but we need more than one data point.
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Oh the UK and French Goverment lost there shirts on the Concorde. They where for prestige only. Why do you think so few where made? Take a look at the 777. It was much cheaper to develop than the Concorde but it took over 100 planes for Boeing to make a profit. I think Britsh Airways eventually made a
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You confuse two dif
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You confuse two different costs. The airlines could afford to operate the aircraft - but the could not afford to buy the aircraft, because the enormously expensive development program, when amortized across the few aircraft built, meant they would have been unaffordable. Ticket prices that included both the purchase cost and the operations costs (as ticket prices usually do) would have been in the high six figures. But the British and French goverments paid off those development costs, and presented the aircraft to the airlines for free.
Development costs are sunk costs. But I will grant that they are relevant to developing further supersonic transport vehicles.
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You miss the point I was trying to make here. I'm suggesting that the price that people were willing to pay for commercial point to point services at hi
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Most people probably don't enjoy air flight as it is. Speed (or just getting there in a timely fashion) is often the primary concern.
Freight is a strong point too. You probably could do eight hour delivery end to end almost anywhere in the sufficiently developed world. Maybe even six hours.
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No, its not following the path of aviation. See, aviation competed with trains and boats, and eventually won. The space industry isn't competing with any other industry. While there are many reasons to go from London to New York, there are few reasons to go from some pacific island to the moon, other than research or publicity.
Most of the business that airlines serve didn't exist when there were only boats and trains. I'd say most of the passenger traffic is short term business or tourism trips. Go somewhere else in the world by plane, stay a few days or weeks, and return. Airlines don't compete with anything else for that business. Same goes for cargo. Most of the cargo is probably urgent to some degree. In the absence of airlines, there is no "next day delivery" for example unless the destination happens to be near by. Also,
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You are confusing then and now. At the time aviations infancy - most travel was commercial or high end tourist. The aviation industry took on those markets head on, competing with ships and trains, and beat them hands down. The short term business and tourist trips common today came about much later as the industry matured.
Exactly the model that space flight would use if it gets anywhere. Start with small markets that can be served best by space flight and expand from there. A good part of the reason space flight is a lot like airflight.
You need to come up with valid reasons why aerospace isn't comparable to outer space.
He came of with plenty of valid reasons. You need to come up with better criticisms than incorrect historical references, airy handwaving, and unsupported "I believe"'s,
So you say. I point out two relevant details. First, it's not terribly important that airplanes had competition from other transportation sectors. In fact, that would inhibit air travel because the presence of alternate forms of travel would take some of the demand that would otherwise
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I second that (Score:2)
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But the, civil aviation, (not GA), took off (sorry) after sucessive wars provided the civil market with massive amounts of cheap matériel, ('planes, pilots, runways, navigation, engines....)
Even today, Boeing and Airbus are propped-up by massive Govt. subsidies, as are many airlines.
With some Canadian Content (Score:2)
ttyl
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http://www.cafepress.com/buy/science/-/pv_design_prod/p_1697668.56556143/pNo_56556143/id_6016809/fpt_/opt_/c_666/pg_14 [cafepress.com]