FAA Grants Sub-Orbital License to SpaceShipOne 200
abucior writes "The FAA announced today that Scaled Composites has been granted a launch licence for a series of sub-orbital flights over a one-year period for Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne. Is X Prize finally entering the end-game? Space.com has more information on the move."
eek (Score:4, Informative)
license is public safety, applicants
must undergo an extensive pre-
application process, demonstrate
adequate financial responsibility to
cover any potential losses, and meet
strict environmental requirements.</I>
this might put a lot of people outta the runnings
Re:eek (Score:2, Insightful)
uh...Secretarat v. *Tyson*... (Score:2)
Homer: "Yeah, heh heh...they were so drunk..."
Re:FAA authority (Score:5, Informative)
Re:FAA authority (Score:3, Interesting)
what is us airspace? How far up? radial or linear spokes?
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:FAA authority (Score:2)
Specificly, it says that space vessels (government or otherwise) are under the juristiction of the country they are launched from (or in some cases the country that they were built in/that the owners are from/whatever)
Re:eek (Score:5, Funny)
Can you imagine the call to the insurance company to get a policy? I don't think "saving a bundle" is one of the options.
Lloyd's of London (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Lloyd's of London (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing is that Lloyds is actually a marketplace of "syndicates", not exactly a monolithic institution (at least, this is how he explained it to me). So you have to have a broker who really knows Lloyd's to figure out who the right people to approach are. And as far as I can tell, they may like taking fairly crazy sounding but actually low risk bets on actresses thighs or singer's voices, but they don't like taking higher stake bets on businesses that are hard to assess or known to be risky.
Re:eek (Score:5, Insightful)
Keep in mind that stuff like this will not be launched form populated areas (deserts, etc. probably) so any liability only comes in if it can make it far enough to hit something, which in itself is a sign that it has potential, and so is more likely to be sufficiently safe. Think of it this way: conditional on it being able to make it as far as a populated area the probability that it will crash it low.
Re:eek (Score:5, Insightful)
In addition, if the thing isn't safe enough to test without endangering the public, it's nowhere safe enough to fly in actual service. The thousands of homebuilt and homebrewed aircraft flying legally every day shows that safety and experiments are not mutually exclusive requirements.
hmmm... (Score:3, Insightful)
Awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
The Moon, the planets, and the great unknown beyond should not be 'owned" by a government. Like the unexplored world that existed in the 1400's, they should belong to those willing to make the sacrifices, and devote the resources to explore and colonize the unknown!
My bet is that the "governments" of the world will get out of the way and allow the exploration and colonization of the known and unknown universe. To do otherwise implies a vision and long range planning capability that does currently exist in ANY govenment that I know of.
Space, like the "old West" of the US [my appologies to the Native Americans], belongs to those who are willing to go there!
John [looking for Ringworld] Miller
Re:Awesome (Score:4, Interesting)
You actually believe that governments will simly 'get out of the way' of anything just because it's the right thing to do? When was the last time any government failed to attempt to grasp somthing just because it was beyond their competency to to anything with it? Governments exist to perpetuate themselves and are terrified by the idea of people being able to slip comletely beond their reach.
I do believe that ulitimatley space will belong to those who go there, but no government will let them go without a fight.
Actually, yes. (Score:3, Interesting)
Look at the history of the westward expansion of the US, especially the way in which the Texas became a state (the land was first "colonized" by US-friendly ranchers against Mexican sovereignty), and also the annexing of Hawaii (preceded by American sugar and pineapple interests in the kingdom).
The fact is that governments will happily allow their ci
Re:Actually, yes. (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, no. You're right only about one sense of the word. In the more general english sense [see definition 1 of homestead [m-w.com] and the transitive definition of homesteading [m-w.com]], it also refers to any sort of permanent settling of a home.
Did you think that they invented the word homeste
Agree.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Awesome (Score:3, Insightful)
Just because someone's doing something for money they will necessarily do it well. Microsoft does stuff for money. It's not like the X-prize will turn space into a real industry -- real industries aren't dependant on private philanthropy.
I'm all for throwing more resources into spaceflight, but having many small teams keeping secrets from eachother doesn't sound like a big improvement on having a few large teams that work together. Having many
Re:Awesome (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't know much about engineering do you? The more people that work together, the less likely it is that anything gets accomplished. Read up on competitive learning, competition in general and its role in society. Then think about where we would be today if nobody had a competitive spirit and just shared se
Re:Awesome (Score:2)
That's how the internet was built, wasn't it? All the protocols and theory and even source code getting passed freely from person to person. I'd say the internet is one of the greatest engineering achievements of the twentieth century.
Every field of science has journals in which researchers publish results. Do you think those should be abolished?
It's not that there was no competition is these examples, it's just that it took a different form. It recognized
Re:Awesome (Score:2)
Just because someone's doing something for money they will necessarily do it well.
The X-prize itself won't revolutionize space and none of the realistic contenders are doing it just for the X-prize money. The X-prize money is a drop in the bucket compared to the costs of actually winning the prize. The X-prize is useful because it provides a goal for companies and people already interested in doing this.
These people and companies generally are
what happens? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:what happens? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:what happens? (Score:2)
Re:what happens? (Score:2)
Re:what happens? (Score:5, Interesting)
Remember that story [snopes.com] about the guy who rode a lawn chair with weather balloons into the sky? He was fined something like $4000 for his unauthorized flight. I think they'd hardly take military action, and they could hardly intercept in the time the flight would take place. (from what I've read all these X-Prize style trips would be less than thirty minutes, I could be wrong)
Anyways, I'm glad the FAA did this. Go SpaceShipOne!
Re:what happens? (Score:2, Interesting)
No. after you came down, you'd be fined by the FAA.
No disrespect to the FAA, but shouldn't something like this that potentially affects other countries involve the ICAO [icao.org] or another internationally recognized body?
Please, no flames. I am American and am in no way saying that we should subordinate to others. But something that could impact others really should involve those others. Really, anything (especially not military) approaching orbital altitudes should not be done unilaterally.
Re:what happens? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:what happens? (Score:2, Interesting)
Assuming you (grandparent poster) *had* a pilot's licence that would make it legal for you to operate a manned rocket, you *wouldn't* have it after you got done with that little stunt.
p
Re:what happens? (Score:2)
Re:what happens? (Score:2)
A guy with balloons tied to his lawn chair wouldn't have a ballistic flightpath and wouldn't reach altitudes that would get NORAD's attention.
On the other hand, you should be able to land relatively alright so long as NMD hasn't been finished yet.
Re:what happens? (Score:2)
Danny Deckchair [imdb.com]
Cheers
VikingBrad
Re:what happens? (Score:2)
You must have never seen military jets scramble.
When I was a kid, we lived on base only a few hundred yards off (and well below) the end of the runways in Iceland. Every few days the Russians would send Bears towards or into Icelandic airspace to test our response time. My father worked in Air Ops so I heard about this all the time. Once the USAF post at Hofn had a positive ID, it was only about three minutes before a pair of F4's wer
Re:what happens? (Score:2)
Uh, I think you mean SAM.
SAM == Surface to Air Missile
ICBM == InterContinential Ballistic Missile
SAMs are used to shoot down aircraft. ICBMs are used to melt down cities.
A good thing. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A good thing. (Score:2)
Check the approval date! (Score:5, Interesting)
Press Release
Contact: Henry J. Price
Date Posted: April 7, 2004
But further down:
The license was issued April 1 by the
Federal Aviation Administration's
Office of Commercial Space
Transportation to Scaled Composites of
Mojave, Calif., headed by aviation
record-holder Burt Rutan, for a
sequence of sub-orbital flights
spanning a one-year period.
As fun as it is to slam "the government", somebody was very much on the ball to realize that it would be a bad idea to release this news on April Fool's Day!
License Requirements (Score:3, Informative)
Re:License Requirements (Score:5, Funny)
Re:License Requirements (Score:3, Funny)
You have to be able to sing "Rocket Man" from memory.
So does William Shatner have such a license, then?
Re:License Requirements (Score:3, Funny)
The man says you gotta be able to sing... what part of that do you not understand?
Re:License Requirements (Score:2)
The man says you gotta be able to sing... what part of that do you not understand?
William Shatner did sing Rocket Man! The best he could, mind you. I didn't say it was any good.... I wonder if whoever gave me a +1, Funny saw the same tape I saw. ;)
wrong on soooo many levels.... (Score:2)
Re:wrong on soooo many levels.... (Score:2)
You didn't see that space documentary he made with...what was that guy's name? You know...the one who sung about the little fella in the Peter jackson movie...
Nope, didn't see it. But I did see a tape of William Shatner singing (or saying, rather) Rocket Man sometime in the '70s. Well, I saw it in the '90s, but the tape was made in the '70s.
Come on (Score:2, Insightful)
(Especially if they're all out of work because their jobs went overseas!
Re:Come on (Score:5, Informative)
You might be surprised. One of the main points of the X-Prize is not that it is done by private companies instead of the government, but rather that the craft be highly reusable. You can only change 10% of the non fuel mass of the craft between the 2 launches required to claim the X-Prize, and those 2 launches have to have a quick turnaround time (matter of weeks).
Basically that means once you've built a winning X-Prize craft, the only real relaunch costs are fuel. Compare that to the massive cost of each shuttle launch (between 3 and 5 hundred million dollars per launch), and you're talking about reduing launch costs by a factor of 100 or more.
If they can pull that off, I suspect they can quickly get plenty of funding to push the technology further and make it more efficient. I really do believe basic space travel could be affordable by ordinary Americans (expensive, yes, but affordable) inside of a decade - 2 at the most.
Don't underestimate what a leap an efficiency the X-Prize represents.
Jedidiah.
Re:Come on (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't underestimate what a leap an efficiency the X-Prize represents.
Not that I disagree with you, just keep one foot in the part of reality that remembers that X-prize isn't going to LEO, and isn't even getting close to LEO. Unless you hit LEO, your reusable spacecraft is just a great ride. :)
Don't get me wrong, though. After they've hit the low target they've set with the reusable requirements they've got I expect the design to be pushed to LEO pretty quickly, pretty much as soon as it gets covered up with funding from both the X-prize itself and all the VCs and other investors that learn by virtue of the X-prize that you have a viable technology.
Re:Come on (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to mention the fact that the Shuttle launch costs you note covers more than fuel, it also covers all the maintenance, prepation, testing, etc. that a craft in service must have, while a vehicle that only has to fly twice can get away with far, far less infrastructure. (The key to reducing costs isn't reducing vehicle costs as many believe, but in flying the hell out of the vehicle and spreading the costs across many vehicles and flights. Ask the airlines.)
Don't overestimate it either. The X-Prize vehicles are highly specialized test and experimental vehicles, it's a long leap from there to vehicles capable of routine operations. (Not just in general concept, but in raw performance.) Consider the long step between the Wright Flyer and the Ford Tri-Motor or the DC-3. That's how far the X-prize vehicles are from useful and cheap space transports.Re:Come on (Score:5, Interesting)
That's what excites me. Look at how cheap and safe air travel is now. Wright brother's flight was in 1903, right? In less than 20 years you had airplanes EVERYWHERE. In less than 40 years there were jets. (July '42 for the first real jet fighter, yes yes I know there were actually jet engines in the 30's but come on).
Today, 100 years later, I can buy an airplane ticket for a couple day's worth of barely-better-than minimum wage barely-part-time college work.
If this is like the Wright brother's flight, then we're in for one hell of a century, and it's gonna be a good one.
Re:Come on (Score:3, Insightful)
Certainly you had airplanes 'everywhere', but great deal of them were barnstormers or air mail. Travel by air was limited to major cities and wealthy individuals. Air travel for the masses didn't become common until the mid-late 1960's and didn't really become affordable until deregulation in the 1980's.
Re:Come on (Score:2)
So..what...on our space-travel timeline, the Wright brothers is 50s/60s progressing to 20-30 years later when it's limited to governments and wealthy individuals..
It's short-sighted to rule out the possibility that space-travel can't progress in the same way as flight.
Re:Come on (Score:2)
That's how far the X-prize vehicles are from useful and cheap space transports.
I think the X-prize vehicles are about 1/3 of the way to orbit. Not in terms of delta-v; but in terms of sheer mind share. It opens people's eyes to the fact that this rocketry stuff really isn't that hard; that the underlying costs are potentially pretty low, and that businesses really can sensibly tackle it, not just governm
Re:Come on (Score:3, Informative)
Not by professionals in the field. For re-useables the only other option is metallic TPS, which is not without significant problems.
Re:Come on (Score:5, Insightful)
The shuttle's 60,000 lb cargo capacity is wasteful and useless. It costs more per pound (even accounting for inflation) to launch on the shuttle than it did to launch on the Saturn V. It'd be fine if the shuttle provided an economical way to launch bulk cargo, but it doesn't. Better to stick with unmanned expendables for that kind of stuff - at least for the time being. As for the 9 passengers/crew, they cost so much per person to launch that only a small elite are permitted to fly. The 4 passengers on an X-Prize vehicle may only be going suborbital (for now), but at least they're going.
The key to reducing costs isn't reducing vehicle costs as many believe, but in flying the hell out of the vehicle and spreading the costs across many vehicles and flights.
True. But that's part of the point of the X-Prize. The shuttle design simply cannot support a flight rate sufficient to make its costs reasonable. Plus it requires a standing army of several thousand just to operate it. The shuttle is not capable of operating in an airline mode. The X-Prize is encouraging designs that are capable of rapid turn-around (and thus high flight rate), and require minimal infrastructure. The X-Prize designs will (hopefully) be capable of airline-like operations.
Consider the long step between the Wright Flyer and the Ford Tri-Motor or the DC-3. That's how far the X-prize vehicles are from useful and cheap space transports.
The first flight of the Wright Flyer involved a mere 12 seconds of flying time (the third and longest flight of the day attained a whopping 59 seconds). Only 10 years later the airplane was a major player in the Great War. Ok, the world had to wait another ~20 years for the DC-3. But commercial aviation was already well-established before the DC-3 came along. Useful and cheap are relative terms. The X-Prize vehicles may be closer to both of them than you think.
Re:Come on (Score:2)
Frankly, that depends on what set of numbers you use. If you use the same numbers, the Shuttle comes out considerably cheaper. (Most S-V costings don't account for the overhead and infrastructure cost, while every Shuttle one does.) The reality is that the marginal cost for a Shuttle flight is around 150 million a flight,
Re:Come on (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd be willing to debate both of those assertions. However, I do agree that it depends a lot on what you include in your launch cost roll-up (and what you define as "overhead" and "infrastructure cost")
The reality is that the marginal cost for a Shuttle flight is around 150 million a flight, but the overhead kills it when spread across so few flights.
The reality is that the shuttle cannot support a higher flight rate, so the marginal cost is somewhat meaningless (and is dominated by the fixed costs anyway).
The passengers on an X-Prize vehicle are no more going somewhere than are the riders of a roller coaster.
Cute analogy. But you are conveniently missing the point. The X-Prize passengers will be going into space, a realm that has, until now, been restricted to hand-picked astronauts, self-made multi-millionaires, and congressmen on junkets. So what if it's only sub-orbital for now. That at least puts them on a par with the early Mercury flights. The Wright Flyer flew only a few hundred feet to begin with. That doesn't detract from the fact that it flew.
Like every aviation prize before it, the X-prize is encouraging vehicles designed specifically to win the prize.
And the prize is specifically designed to encourage vehicles that support fast-turnaround with minimal infrastructure. Those two features are essentially what the launch vehicle community is referring to when they talk about "airline-like" operations (and relative to the way launch vehicles are currently operated they do represent something much more like the way an airline operates). Ok, so you won't be using an X-Prize competitor like an actual modern airliner. But as you say "It took the airlines and manufacturers decades to achieve those levels." They did it by trying lots of different stuff, discarding what failed, and keeping what worked. The beauty of the X-Prize is that we're finally getting away from NASA's stale "one true way" of doing manned launch, and experimenting with a variety of approaches. All of these approaches must, as a result of the competition rules, give at least some consideration to reusability and operability. Some will work. Some will fail. We'll learn from them all, and probably learn a lot more than we would from the endless paper studies that characterize NASA's attempts at manned launch. The current crop of X-Prize contenders may not be the equivalent of a space-going DC-3, but they sow the seeds from which such a craft can eventually emerge.
Re:Come on (Score:3, Insightful)
In my book we'd be looking at two distinct types of craft. Lets build something specifically for shifting stuff into orbit as cheaply as possible, and then lets build something else for shifting people.
I'd wondered about a massive rail gun that could fire small-ish canisters into orbit, where they could be caught by a space station somehow. This setup could potentially fire a canister every few minutes containing unbreakable commodities - ox
Carmack quote (Score:2)
"This is not intuitively obvious, but the cost of propellant is basically NOTHING compared to the system support issues with a launch vehicle."
Throwing stuff into space ... legally. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes. Having worked with a (unmanned) launch services firm, getting permission can be the most difficult part of the process. Building the rocket and payload is just rocket science. Getting permission is *legal-stuff*
Six years ago, we had estimated that launching a satellite required permits, lawyers and insurance in excess of twice the cost of the launch vehicle. The gov't is truly being kind to Mr. Rutan.
Re:Throwing stuff into space ... legally. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Throwing stuff into space ... legally. (Score:5, Informative)
Some links:
- Office of the Associate Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation [faa.gov] (FAA/DOT)
- Office of Space Commercialization [technology.gov] (Department of Commerce)
There's also been a variety of Congressional acts supporting space commercialization and competiveness.Re:Throwing stuff into space ... legally. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Throwing stuff into space ... legally. (Score:3, Informative)
The underlying reason is, is that under international law the country that you are a citizen of is responsible for any damage you do; irrespective of your launch site.
Re:Throwing stuff into space ... legally. (Score:2)
That, and ocean and Siberian launches let you get really far away from people for safety.
Re:Throwing stuff into space ... legally. (Score:2)
[official explanation]unforseen clear air turbulence[/official explanation]
Vanity plates? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Vanity plates? (Score:5, Informative)
Fiction: "Net Assets" (Score:5, Interesting)
Available for free at http://netassetsbook.com/ [netassetsbook.com]. I'd suggest the PDF version (1 MB), since some of the formatting in the HTML version is screwed up, and makes reading some parts difficult (mainly forgetting
Re:Fiction: "Net Assets" (Score:2)
I should also have added that the "Net" in the title is not only a business term, but (I believe) a reference to the Internet. The "Assets" are space enthusiasts. Much of the design work for the spaceship in the novel is "open source" in order to keep costs down. The Launcher Company solicited help on its web site, where the merits were openly debated on the forums. The comany's engineers would read the forums, looking for good ideas. Anyone whose idea was used was paid som
Not Bad (Score:2)
Another book, with a more technical bent is "The Rocket Company" which is presently being serialized at Hobby Space [hobbyspace.com]
This is how space will become cheap (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.scaled.com/projects/tierone/New
Burt Rutan (Score:4, Insightful)
The guy is a genius and an innovator in a field that does its best to discourage innovation.
If I have understood correctly, lawsuits have basically killed innovation in general aviation. Check it out the next time you are airside: most of the designs of small aircraft are fifty years old. I wonder if we will be saying the same thing about software in fifty years.
www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/GENERAL_AVIATI
Re:Burt Rutan (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.dailyobjectivist.com/
Heroes/BurtRu t an.asp
"In 1972, he founded Rutan Aircraft Factory, which sold plans and kits for Rutan-designed aircraft. His science-fiction-like aircraft designs were considered "risky" by established aircraft manufacturers, who made sure that the regulators of the Federal Aviation Administration were aware of their "concerns."
He successfully sold a number of different unique designs. Then, frustrated by the litigious regul
Lawsuits, was: Re:Burt Rutan (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Burt Rutan (Score:4, Interesting)
And it is truely a god-damned shame. The fact that all these aircraft are around today and flying after 50 years ought to say something. I mean, you don't see a lot of Ford Pintos on the road anymore, do you? It amazes me how long something can last when it is designed correctly and cared for by professionals. Look at the fleet of B-52s... Anyway, now you can't pick up a new single engine Cessna for less than 158K [cessna.com]
Single Engine planes (Score:5, Interesting)
And you can still pick up a decent used, older single-engine plane that has decades more life left in it for under $30K. A brand new GMC pickup truck costs more than I paid for my Piper Cherokee. Why people shell out over an eighth of a million dollars for a new C172, I don't understand. If I had ~$160K to spend on an airplane, I'd much rather buy an older, bigger, plane like a T210 or perhaps even a Skymaster 337 inline twin in that price range.
Re:Burt Rutan (Score:2)
The maintenance that goes in to airplanes is pretty crazy, and expensive. The engine overhauls for a small single engine Piper can cost upwards of $20,000 CDN.
What about Canada? (Score:2, Interesting)
Cool, private citizens might get into space before their government does!
Deja vu all over again... (Score:5, Funny)
Of course, the American chimp-speakers will undoubtedly demand too high of a salary, so they'll probably just teach someone from an Indian call center how to speak chimp as well as they speak English and save a bundle.
license for 312,000 ft? (Score:3, Informative)
I wonder how much money they dished out for a license that they never needed in the first place...
Re:license for 312,000 ft? (Score:3, Insightful)
Ah yes... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Ah yes... (Score:2)
Range Safety (Score:3, Informative)
X-Prize and space (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Crock of Shit (Score:3, Funny)
In a practical sense, you don't need there stupid aircraft hitting another aircraft, so it really is best to check. Without governement regulation on the sky it might be a little more difficult to get from point A to point B, because idiot C has a hot air balloon, near an airport and causes plane D to be flameball E.
Re:Crock of Shit (Score:2)
C? E B DEAD!
Bush doesn't want us on the moon (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Crock of Shit (Score:2)
Re:Crock of Shit (Score:2)
IIRC, that's a George Carlin bit. The next line should be "Yes, but not quite"
--
Re:More paper mass to lift than payload! (Score:2)
Re:More paper mass to lift than payload! (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, I think that the FAA regulatory process for suborbitals is very lightweight compared to aircraft. It's not like the general public can just step on board; and they are currently cutting them some slack.
The problem is that if they don't do this, then spaceflight can never, ever get going. Reliability of entirely new classes of vehicles is simply not going to be like
Re:More paper mass to lift than payload! (Score:4, Interesting)
Apparently the FAA is looking favorably on this proposal, as a way to stimulate private space travel. It's amazing to see government working for innovation, for a change.
Burt Rutan, in some ways, has the same kind of reality distortion field that Steve Jobs is legendary for. The thing is, it's not a joke -- reality is different after these guys get done.
Thad
Re:The Man Who Sold the Moon (Score:3, Insightful)
Um, sorry to burst your bubble, but this has absolutely no comparison to DD Harriman and company. See, DD Harriman was the guy at the top of the power conglomerate, and as such had much more power than the government itself. Be thankful we don't have that kind of world--yet. He was also an idealist, so I have a real hard time believing he got to be where he was in the story in any fashion that resembles real life corporate politics. ;)
Re:The Man Who Sold the Moon (Score:2)
Ok, I think you missed a few details. DD gave up his position when he needed more cash than he expected and had to take a loan from Dixon, using his insurance policies as collateral. He was a director of the power syndicate, and the power syndicate itself consisted of the "top" men in certain industries, and none of the directorates interlocked, at least not on paper. Harriman and Strong owned a big chunk of it, a controlling chunk, together. Strong followed Harriman on all his hairbrained schemes and c
Re:Kinda Disappointed... (Score:3, Interesting)
er.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:er.. (Score:2)