Space Tourism Industry Gains New Competitor 104
mattnyc99 writes "There's a new entry in the race for the first space tourism jet: XCOR Aerospace, a California-based rocket builder. The company says its clean-burning, two-seat Lynx spacecraft will lift off by 2010. After we only saw a mockup of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo a couple months back, you'd think this was serious competition in the 'New Space' race, but these photos show that Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites is well on its way with construction."
Two Notes (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, it should be noted that there was a an accident involving two deaths last year [slashdot.org] at Scaled Composites and prior to that their buyout by Northrup Grumman [slashdot.org].
Honestly, I kind of expected that endeavor to fail as a result of those two news stories, I'm pleased to find out they are continuing on their contract although I question further contracts with Virgin.
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The book reveals some truly bizarre goings on with the founders of the rocketry movement and includes appearances by Alistair Crowley, cultists, famous sci-fi authors, communists, and a swindling L. Ron Hubbard prior to the founding of Scientology.
I though
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Pretty Impressive (Score:1)
Re:Pretty Impressive (Score:5, Funny)
Bad analogy.
Linus has certainly made some coin via free stock options from Linux companies, various donations, trademark royalties etc. but he's not THAT rich.
Re:Pretty Impressive (Score:5, Funny)
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Omnipotence implies that He would be able, but then would not that inability to pay equal the absence of omnipotence?
And since so many people seem to think there absolutely has to be an omnipotent being:
Wouldn't He - simply by creating said vacation, create another omnipotent being thus replacing himself?
Would that vacation then in fact BE God?
Or would that vacation on the contrary be the Antichrist?
// sits back and watches thousands of religious geeks go mad ;E
-Gin
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For most people, no. But for some people it certainly is. It's abundantly clear that there is at least a moderate size market for these flights -- enough to make the operation profitable.
If you want a better ride, wait a bit -- but the right way to get there, especially for a small company, is to start with a smaller, lower performance vehicle. Orbital tourism will come, but trying to do it now would be akin to trying to fly across the Atlantic in about 1905 -- the industry has barely come into existen
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Yes, there are some millionaires who've paid several million to go to orbit. But they get to *stay there for days*. It's a whole different ballpark. You're asking people to pay an order of magnitude or two less but get five orders of magnitude less time at 1/4th the altitude and 1/10th the delta-V. How many people ride MiGs to see the curvature of the Ear
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If I recall correctly the market for suborbital sounding rocket research flights is something like $400 million a year, and even besides space tourism I imagine the emerging suborbital vehicles could take a decent bite of that market.
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It's abundantly clear if you have access to the market research. I don't right now, but I've (some of) it. No, I won't back it up more than that. If you were in a position where that research mattered to you directly (ie an investor / employee / business partner of a relevant company), you'd have access to it to.
Accidents are no more a given in this industry than any other transportation industry. At least in XCOR's case, the vehicle has more in common with a small private plane than historical rocket
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Once again, the claim is asserted, but no data is provided.
Accidents are no more a given in this industry than any other transportation industry.
Oh, please -- don't give me that [youtube.com]
The rocket engines will be individually protected by bl
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Actually, according to their FAQ [hobbyspace.com], they'll be using LOX/Kerosene. If I understand correctly this is the same sort of fuel SpaceX uses, although of
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Lots of good stuff, but I thought this was the most interesting:
Transterrestrial: Mark II will have hard points on outside. Will carry upper stage dorsally, that can put 10-20 kg payload into LEO.
RLV News: Put a 10-20kg payload into LEO. A target price of $500k.
Having that kind of lower-bound for putti
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You're right, I'm still not providing data on the market, because I don't know of good public data. But then, I'm not asking you to believe it, either. If you want some evidence (ont sufficient, I'm aware), note that EADS Astrium is entering the market or at least planning to -- and they're not exactly a small company. If they think there's a market, that's based on data.
When you look at the historical record for rocket engines, remember that very very few of those were designed with safety as the prim
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You're kidding, right? The primary design principle of a human-capable rocket is safety while still managing to get to orbit. Unfortunately, when your design envelope is "orbit", as opposed to "joyride", you don't have a lot of margin to work with.
Hence my earlier comment about repurposed missiles. You'd do better to look at the safety records of things like JATO
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I'll discuss the safety concerns, since I think they're important, but I'll leave the rest of the discussion be.
The fact that the propellants tend to mix and burn or explode only after a failure may have little impact on the overall effect, but it has a huge impact on how you mitigate the risk. It means that if you can keep high speed bits of metal out of the propellant tanks, you can keep the fireball from happening (for that scenario; there are other risk factors).
Soyuz may be *regarded* as safe, but
Bragging Rights (Score:1)
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You'd need quite a few cycles on the vomit comet before you get the bonking-in-zero-G thing down well enough to perform under pressure in your 2 min window.
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Why? Could there be anything that is greater form of conspicuous consumption that space tourism? [wikipedia.org] Do you really want to have to hear about bourgeois soccer moms in space? You do realize that that will eventually lead to Orbital Disneyland. No No No. It's too horrible to contemplate. I would much rather see the roads into space colonization carved out by industry. [wikipedia.org] I must have missed Sir Richard Branson's phone call when he rang to a
What's more... (Score:5, Funny)
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Only text-based, though.
This Will Be Newsworthy... (Score:2)
I want very badly to be excited about the private space race, but with only three serious "New Space" firms with hardware in the sky (Bigelow, SpaceX, and Scaled Composites), I'm still not sure I'll ride a spaceship before I'm dead, at least not at a price I can afford.
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The first is the base design for the rocket racing league, and the second is the Lynx. The rocket racing league plane is what you would probably call "almost done", ie it lo
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I want very badly to be excited about the private space race, but with only three serious "New Space" firms with hardware in the sky (Bigelow, SpaceX, and Scaled Composites), I'm still not sure I'll ride a spaceship before I'm dead, at least not at a price I can afford.
Technically speaking, XCOR has had "hardware in the sky" since 2001, when they first flew the XCOR EZ-Rocket [wikipedia.org] rocketplane. A couple years ago the EZ-Rocket set
Not really that great. (Score:3, Informative)
What I am waiting to see is Virgin to decide to talk to Bigelow. In fact, I would be surprised if he has not talked to both Spacex AND bigelow. The reason is that he will want to put up a hotel and get the traffic going. Once he has traffic to a hotel, then it will make pursuing the SSIII quite a bit easier.
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A lot of people were hoping that yesterday's announcement would have been a deal between Virgin/Scaled and XCOR. Scaled has fantastic airframe experience but minimal rocket engine experience, and it would've been ideal for XCOR (which has minimal airframe experience but great reusable rocket engine experience) to partner with them. This would've been particularly ideal in light of Scaled's recent problems with hybrid rocket engines. Oh well...
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Actually, I am glad that scaled and xcor did not get together. They are competitors. By remaining that way, t
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it may hit mach 2, but at the top of its peak it's travelling at mach 0. =P
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now someone reply with "but you forgot the earth's rotation!" =P
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Unlikely to happen - as the investment in an orbital craft will be an order of magnitude or larger than that required for the suborbital one. Not to mention the fact that Virgin tends to follow loudly (making you think they are leading) rather than actually leading.
Why? SpaceX has nei
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Give him credit
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So let me see if I understand you right (Score:2)
In addition, Bigelow has 2 test systems floating up there. The real L
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Of course, you omit the fact the one of the two Bigelow orbiters has had problems - problems Bigelow hasn't discussed much in public. You are also ignorant of the fact that scaling up is not exactly simple. Etc... etc...
Or
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SpaceX has a booster (Falcon 1) that, but for *either* a baffle or bump suppression, would have orbitted a payload (it now has both), and nonetheless reached 2/3 of the needed delta-V (the payload even separated normally at the end of the burn). SpaceX has also be
Come on rei (Score:2)
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Privative the ISS? Then it won't be such a boondoggle, eh?
Re:Space tourism will be banned (Score:4, Insightful)
Why? Climbing Mt. Everest isn't banned -- and I believe there has been 1 climbing season since it was first climbed that there *hasn't* been a death. Adventure tourism regularly claims lives, and hasn't been banned. Now, I doubt the company that had a fatal accident would survive, but there are a lot of dedicated engineers working very hard to make accidents both unlikely and survivable.
Disclaimer: I've interned at XCOR. Assuming I go back, I'll be getting a ride on this vehicle -- not as an option, but as a job requirement. It's part of the way they do safety. Anyone who works on the vehicle rides on it. That way everyone is directly motivated to work on making it safer.
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Disclaimer: I've interned at XCOR. Assuming I go back, I'll be getting a ride on this vehicle -- not as an option, but as a job requirement. It's part of the way they do safety. Anyone who works on the vehicle rides on it. That way everyone is directly motivated to work on making it safer.
Didn't the FAA set some minimum physical requirements for "space tourists", for lack of a better name? If so, it seems the "ride the vehicle" requirement could potentially cause them to lose out on some very good talent, not because the potential employee wouldn't want to fly the vehicle, but because they couldn't pass the FAA physical.
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XCOR is sensible. If there were physical reasons you couldn't ride the vehicle that didn't interfere with doing your job, I'm sure they'd figure something out.
The proper term is "spaceflight participant." I don't think the FAA has any specific requirements, but it would be unwise if you're in particularly bad health. The rough guideline Jeff has used is that if you're in good enough shape that you can walk a mile without excessive difficulty, and you can fit in the seat, you can fly.
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cover some ground (Score:5, Interesting)
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Three reasons: cost, flight rate, and physics. First, physics. If your spacecraft's design has enough energy to go straight up to the edge of space and then come back down, bleeding off that energy to go cross-country is going
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I'd bet this is in XCOR's eventual plans, perhaps with a future craft. In fact, in 2005 their EZ-Rocket made the first delivery of US mail [wikipedia.org] by a manned rocketplane, albeit over a relatively small distance.
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Granted, I realize you can use a 1-way normal airline ticket for this, but after arriving at your destination (sans luggage) incredibly quickly, would you really want to take a 22 hour flight back home? As a ride, this might be worth the price for many people; but I doubt many of them would be willing to pay it twice just to get home.
Regardless, just give it some time, and I'm sure both services will be offered. The first airplanes d
Licensing may be one issue. (Score:2)
This is a big deal, as the testing required to certify an airliner costs tens of millions of dollars, and takes years.
If you try to fly these rocket planes as commercial passenger planes, that exempti
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[J]
Bigtime future investment (Score:2)
There is no space tourism industry (Score:1)
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Lonely mile high club (Score:2, Funny)
Ugly, very ugly (Score:2, Insightful)
Not to say it won't fly - I am sure it will - but there is some relationship between beauty and function that seems to prevent flying machines from being ugly. This is a level of ugliness I think no flying machine ever reached. And yes, that includes the LEM.
There is something wrong with this design. I can feel it.
Pity Virgin space interests don't extend.. (Score:2)
Better article; more points worth noting (Score:5, Informative)
Also, some additional points worth noting:
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But aside from that you're right on the money. XCOR isn't some new upstart company; they've been in this business for a long time and take a long-term view towards development. Suborbital vehicle development is just the next step, not the beginning nor the end.
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image of Earth's curvature from Lynx's cockpit (Score:4, Funny)
And here's the shot of Mars:
.
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Similarity to X-20 (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-20_Dyna-Soar [wikipedia.org]
Sub-orbital planes have very, very different needs from orbital ones, it's interesting that the design of this happens to (at least superficially) mirror the aerodynamics of the orbital X-20. Perhaps XCOR plans to collect data from the Lynx that could be applied to a followup craft with som
Missed the big one. (Score:2)
XCOR in the past has publicly and repeatedly maintained that they had no desire whatsoever to be in the vehicle business. They wanted to be in the systems and components business. This announcement is a major change in strategic direction - and hints that possibly all is not well inside the alt.space industry.
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Where do you arrive at that conclusion? Having interned at XCOR, that's not at all my understanding. They are building the Rocket Racer, they built and flew the EZ-Rocket, and they've been publicly discussing Xerus in vague terms for years. (Xerus is the former public name for Lynx.) I interpret this announcement as a good thing, both for XCOR and the industry as a whole.
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200,000 feet (Score:3, Insightful)
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"...its clean-burning, two-seat Lynx spacecraft... (Score:2)
But does it run linux? (Score:1)
Nomination for the next X-Prize... (Score:1)