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Space Science

Personal Spaceflight Leaders Form New Federation 197

Posted by Zonk from the what-is-their-prime-directive? dept.
Neil Halelamien writes "A number of entrepreneurs in the nascent commercial space industry are establishing the Personal Spaceflight Federation, an industry group which will work with federal regulators to come up with standards to promote crew and passenger safety. The founders include both suborbital and orbital spaceflight entrepreneurs, such as Armadillo Aerospace's John Carmack, Scaled Composites's Burt Rutan, SpaceX's Elon Musk, and t/Space's Gary Hudson. Commentary available on MSNBC, Space.com, and Space Race News. In related news, NASA is looking at commercial options for resupply of the International Space Station."
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Personal Spaceflight Leaders Form New Federation More

Personal Spaceflight Leaders Form New Federation

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  • Damn! (Score:5, Funny)

    by serutan ( 259622 ) <snoopdougNO@SPAMgeekazon.com> on Thursday February 10, 2005 @11:14AM (#11630948) Homepage
    I wonder if they considered United Federation of Planets. Even just for a fleeting moment?
  • Is Armadillo Aerospace's John Carmack the well-known game programmer?

    • Re:Question (Score:3, Informative)

      by Steffan ( 126616 )
      Is Armadillo Aerospace's John Carmack the well-known game programmer?
      Yes.
    • Ever hear of Doom?

  • Marketing options abound... (Score:3, Funny)

    by blcamp ( 211756 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @11:17AM (#11630996) Homepage

    Any day now, credit card companies will start offering Frequent Flier Light-Years, or something like that...
    • "Any day now, credit card companies will start offering Frequent Flier Light-Years, or something like that..."

      Admittedly, that was tongue-in-cheek, but it does get you wondering what entirely new industries will spawn from an undertaking such as this.

      I'm sure the automotive industry pioneers in their day could not have conceived of custom airbrushed paintjobs, fancy aluminum rims or even fuzzy dice manufacturers. I suppose if I'd put more thought into it I could've come up with better examples, but i
    • " Any day now, credit card companies will start offering Frequent Flier Light-Years, or something like that..."

      And then announce that in an effort to cut costs, they're removing pillows from your cryogenic sleep chamber. Man that's going to be a long uncomfortable flight...

    • Any day now, credit card companies will start offering Frequent Flier Light-Years, or something like that...

      Why is it that you can almost never fly a full mile on one Frequent Flyer Mile? They're usually good for distances closer to a hundred yards or so....

      In the interest of truth in advertising, Virgin Galactic invites you to collect Frequent Flyer Light Microseconds.

    • Already been done. From Here [americanexpress.com]:

      THE MEMBERSHIP REWARDS PROGRAM FROM AMERICAN EXPRESS LETS CARDMEMBERS ROCKET INTO ORBIT THROUGH SPACE ADVENTURES LTD.

      NEW YORK, March 03, 2004 -- American Express today announced that cardmembers enrolled in its Membership Rewards program can now redeem points with Space Adventures Ltd., the world's leading space flight experiences and space tourism company. For the first time, cardmembers can touch the edge of space and revel in the weightlessness of Earth's orbit by using p
  • What is the big deal with flying into space? Space tourism is about as interesting as sitting in your cubicle with added nausea to keep you on your toes.

    The goal ought to be a real destination, the Moon, Mars, some asteroid, but without government money, that isn't going to happen.

    So the next best thing is to make a space "plane" that can transport passengers from New York to Sydney in less than an hour. NASA had plans for something like that (someone can provide a link, I'm sure), but scrapped it in fa

    • Re:Space: A whole lotta nuthin (Score:5, Insightful)

      by William_Lee ( 834197 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @11:25AM (#11631137)
      An industry that doesn't even exist commercially yet has to start out somewhere.

      With this attitude, the Wright Brothers may not have bothered to get off the ground for the short time/distance/altitude that they did at Kitty Hawk.

      Suborbital flights have the possibility of leading into full blown orbital visits to an orbiting hotel, which could lead into commercialization of the Moon, Mars, and eventually the outer solar system. These goals are definitely viable and achievable without government funding if entrepreneurs can find a way to make them work.

      Suborbital flight has a novelty factor, cache, and is the first baby step towards breaking free of this mess we call Earth.

      • Re:Space: A whole lotta nuthin (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Rei ( 128717 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @12:37PM (#11632201) Homepage
        > With this attitude, the Wright Brothers may not have bothered to get off the ground

        How many bike shops do you see nowadays making commercial passenger jets?

        > Suborbital flights have the possibility of leading into full blown orbital visits

        Not from any direct descendant of SS1, I'll tell you that much. Heavy tank mass + low ISP engine design = Not Going Anywhere. They'll have to start from scratch with, as a bare minimum, a non-self-pressurized higher-ISP oxidizer. This in turn will not only require a radical redesign of the entire craft (everything except for the cockpit - but that will have to change for othre reasons, discussed later), but will involve the use of at least a single stage turbopump. Even the simplest of turbopumps are rather nasty beasts, with seals that can fail, whole additional engines and turbines just to spin the thing, stringent materials requirements, etc. However, even if he used LOX (which would require dealing with all of the risks and costs associated with working with cryogenics), I'd be surprised if a simple single stage turbopump plus polybut would get better than, say, 320 ISP and a rather weak thrust. You'd realistically only get to orbit with a payload on that kind craft with multiple stages, and even then your payload fraction will be really awful. You generally want at least a LOX/Kerosene level of performance to compete.

        Then there's the materials factor. A fiber vehicle just won't cut it (yet, that's where Rutan's experience lies). It doesn't come even close. You either need a good hot frame (titanium plus leading edge shielding plus internal component insulation, for example) or cold frame (aluminum-lithium or other good aluminum alloy plus an extensive TPS that a company like scaled couldn't dream of making on their own - I doubt they could shield a hot frame well enough on their own) design. The higher operating temperature of the engine plus using a better oxidizer will mean a lot more corrosion, requiring a lot more complex and expensive engine maintenance (a common killer for reusable craft). The cockpit is completely off for reentry; those windows are nice for suborbital, but they'd be serious weak points on *real* space travel.

        Then there's the general issues with real orbital flight. You have to handle *everything* needed to keep people alive for long periods; even developing a toilet that will work in space (and all of the associated infrastructure to run it) is no easy task. SS1's hydraulic controls suddenly become serious liabilities: in space, your craft cools and heats in dramatic cycles depending on whether you're exposed to the sun. Hydraulic lines, tanks, and actuators all require an extensive system of heaters, sensors, and sometimes cooling. Maintenance of this system on reusable craft, like the shuttle, is very expensive. Air quality maintainence becomes a lot more complex - and if you want to be truly safe, you're going to need to do spectral or other analysis on the air to determine atmospheric composition percentages. They'll need changable CO2 scrubbers, nitrogen and oxygen balance, etc. Temperature regulation in the cabin can get complex, since you can't just "run an air conditioner" or whatnot to cool down. If you want a direct heat pump, you need a very good radiatior outside the craft; this generally isn't realistic. Consequently, heat regulation is generally done by using water or cryogenic fuel in a closed loop; any cryogenic boiloff then needs to be vented. Naturally batteries are insufficient for how long you're in orbit; you need fuel cells or generators designed to operate in the hostile environment of space. Etc.

        Then there's problems with the "carrier" method of launch. Unless they get some serious ISP improvements, the size of the White Knight would scale beyond any realistic level. Unless they plan to launch from a Cossack (the Buran Shuttle's carrier, and largest airplane ever built) in order to simply take a few people to orbit, they *have* to get some serious ISP improvements or switch to ground launch.

        I could keep going with the issues, but I think you get the idea: Orbital and suborbital spaceflight aren't even remotely the same sort of beast.
        • You make sense until I consider a human infant. Were I to follow your line of reasoning, they should be discoraged from rolling over, sitting up, or crawling, because these aren't remotely the same as walking. Not that I want to identify with the late Mr. Agnew, but you strike me as the sort of nattering nabob of negativism that he once railed against.

          Permit me to pick a few nits:

          Not from any direct descendant of SS1
          Nor from any direct descendant of the steam locomotive, but without machine tool experti
          • > You make sense until I consider a human infant.

            Human infants don't require large teams of people and vast financial resources to walk. Sure, if Rutan had vast financial resources and huge teams of people, he could get to orbit. He doesn't. He has a small team and proportionally small resources. As a consequence, he achieved a proportionally small feat. I believe I've fairly demonstrated the scale of difference between suborbital and orbital, but I could go on if you'd like; if you think that one
      • A lot of people were nipping at the Wrights' heels during that time period but the thing that really let the Wrights win the title of first in flight was their high frequency of testing back in Ohio where they perfected the flight controls.

        Everyone else was pretty much able to duplicate the internal combustion engine-powered glider, but only the Wrights managed to run enough tests under a high enough rate of evolutionary change (enabled by their hands-on experience in their bicycle shop) that they could s

    • I partly agree, but there's people that pay money to go up a fraction of that distance under big bags of hot air, so if people want to sell this, I'm sure a bunch of people would be happy to buy it. And I'm reasonably sure it would get you laid if you took your date on that ride.
    • One must learn to walk before one learns to run. The lack of patience that your post reveals is part of the endemic problem of modern society. Everyone wants instant gratification. To wax cliche one more time, Rome wasn't built in a day.
    • What is the big deal with flying into space? Space tourism is about as interesting as sitting in your cubicle with added nausea to keep you on your toes.

      Millioniares are lining up around the block to sing up for just a venture. And that's totally a surprise right? Nobody had already paid to go (or tried) to, say, the ISS or Mir right? Right. People *are* willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to go into space. Some have already paid millions. Hell, I want to go. There is a market. You don
      • Millioniares are lining up around the block to sing up for just a venture.

        Millionaires are lining up for something with nobody to tell them that it's actually boring, and not real space travel.

        Let's see what happens when ships are actually flying, and people come back saying, "Yeah, it was kind of cool, but way too short. I think I'll wait for them to get to orbit when we can stay awhile."

        • Except they won't say that. The few that have been up there say they'd do it again for any amount of money. Such short sightedness...why are you even browsing a geek site?
          • Who, exactly, has done a suborbital flight recently, other than Burt Rutan's pilot? Oh, right, no one.

            I want REAL, controlled, space travel, not shoot a tin can in an arc for four minutes. That means having orbital space hotels.

            I recognize that we need suborbital as a first step, but I think people are WAY overestimating the market for fake space travel.

      • > People *are* willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to go into space.

        Unfortunately, to get to *orbit* would only cost you "hundreds of thousands" if you and all of your food/water/air/supplies combined weighed tens of kilograms. A couple hundred thousand dollars only buys you a couple minutes of zero-g joyride on the aerial equivalent of a rocket sled.
    • "What is the big deal with flying into space? Space tourism is about as interesting as sitting in your cubicle with added nausea to keep you on your toes."

      Has anybody ever noticed that the karma system has sucked the imagination out of some people?

    • Fucking Statists (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Acy James Stapp ( 1005 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @11:50AM (#11631470)
      "Without government money, that isn't going to happen."

      What a load of crap. Spaceflight isn't something the government needs to be involved in except perhaps to regulate externalities. It's affordable to private industry, it's being developed in a mature market economy, and the potential rewards are sufficient to drive investement without any government intervention.

      It is imperative that we get an extra-terran human colony but the government is the wrong institution to do it. I will grant that government funding in the early days of the space program was crucial but it's time to let private industry take over.

    • Space tourism is about as interesting as sitting in your cubicle with added nausea to keep you on your toes.
      Is that how it was for you?

    • Commercial space travel (Score:5, Insightful)

      by uberdave ( 526529 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @12:36PM (#11632181) Homepage
      Shortly after the WW1 and before commercial air travel became popular, "barnstorming" aviators [centennialofflight.gov] would "buzz" small towns or county fairs, using of one of the local farm fields as a temporary runway, and offer airplane rides to customers. These flights didn't have a "real destination". The purpose was not travel, but experience.

      The emerging space tourism industry is about to begin it's "barnstorming" days, selling rides for the experience, not the destination. Initially it will only suborbital flights. Soon, they will be competing for altitude and duration of weightlessness records. Then someone will start offering a "once around" package.

      Space flight as a means to an end is not going to happen until you have and end with meaning. Why "sit on a thousand pounds of explosives" to go to the moon? There's nothing there but grey rocks and dust. Mars, same thing, but the rocks are red. There's no real destination, no purpose in going except for the experience of being there, and that won't change until we get some sort of permanent outpost set up there.

  • Lets Control Space! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by visualight ( 468005 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @11:18AM (#11631028) Homepage
    They haven't even gotten there yet and they're already looking for reasons to control who goes there and how. Safety is the given reason but it will take a lot to convince me that setting themselves up as "recognized" experts/authority figures isn't the true motivation. That's a bankable position to be in.

    "We're in! Let's close the door behind us"
    • To boldly go where no one has gone before... er, as long as we can do it at a profit and can't be sued.

      I think potential lawsuits are an important motivating factor. If they have accepted safety standards and follow those standards, they limit their liability.
      • Right, because you're going to see a lot of interest by groups looking to do space transportation at a loss, knowing that they'll be liable for everything that happens, even though space is dangerous, they took every reasonable precaution, and the passengers were aware of the risks. That would go over real well. They appear to actually be trying to come up with some standards voluntarily, instead of waiting to be forced to, and in a sane world that would be considered a good thing. And if you don't trust th
    • They haven't even gotten there yet and they're already looking for reasons to control who goes there and how. Safety is the given reason but it will take a lot to convince me that setting themselves up as "recognized" experts/authority figures isn't the true motivation.

      Ding ding ding.

      If this were Delta, American Airlines, and JetBlue, wouldn't we be screaming blue-bloody-murder that airlines can't be trusted to develop safety regs? What about chemical companies and chemical handling procedures? Corpor

      • There are hundreds if not thousands of examples where businesses (and entire industries) of all sizes willfully (and gleefully) ignore the public interest, safety, and so on.

        They only do this when they believe it to be in their (financial) interest. For the nascent commercial space industry, financial intrests are aligned with safety. Sure, some people will go up regardless the risks. But most people will wait it out until they feel more secure.

        I do conceed that they really only require the percepti

      • "Much as I dislike NASA- they are the experts, they've been down the "safety" path before"

        NASA just stops launching people into space everytime a shuttle blows up... no or fewer launches means less risk. I don't think that is the type of safety we want.
    • When it comes to regulation, the more proactive you are in the private sector the better. Ask the United Federation of Broadcasters.

  • Rolling in riches... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Avyakata ( 825132 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @11:19AM (#11631036) Homepage Journal
    I can see a nice business here.
    The catch line would be something like, "For those with nothing left to buy on Earth..."
    • "For those with nothing left to buy on Earth..."
      What do you get someone who has anything? I suggest you get a rary, as you can at least be confident they won't throw it away.

      .

      .

      .

      It's a long way to tip a rary.

  • Wonderfully spooky (Score:2, Interesting)

    by MrAndrews ( 456547 )
    A friend of mine wrote up this massive history of the world starting in 2001 and going until 2100, covering society and technology as it evolves bit by bit. He did this in 2001, and so far he's had a stunningly good track record of hitting actual events within several months of reality. He got the actual month of Spaceship One winning the X-Prize, predicted the ESA would lose a probe to Mars... and he predicted something very similar to this announcement happening in early 2005 as well...

    I'm not saying h

    • Re:Wonderfully spooky (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      And what exactly was the date that he expects to die alone on?

      Dont worry folks, I will be here all week.
    • Non of this predictions are startling or unexpected, to the contrary, I'd be surprised if they DIDN'T happen, but that said it was a very interesting read, your friends got good writing talent, if this was made into a discovery/history "a look back at the 2000's" style fake history documentry then I'd probably watch it, which I assume is your intention.
    • The first thing that occurs to me, is that the more short term a prediction, the more liable it is to be accurate.

      Also, this has nothing to do with the story. Go make a LiveJournal account for this kind of thing please.

  • SpaceRaceNews posted a possible first concern.. (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 10, 2005 @11:30AM (#11631216)
    http://www.xprizenews.org/index.php?p=764 [xprizenews.org]

    Rep. James Oberstar [D-MN]) introduced a new bill:

    H.R. 656: To amend title 49, United States Code, to enhance the safety of the commercial human space flight..
    To amend title 49, United States Code, to enhance the safety of the commercial human space flight industry.

    You can track and check for latest updates related to this bill at:
    http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h109 -656 [govtrack.us]

    This could be one of the first concerns for the leaders from the newly emerging Personal Spaceflight Industry that announced their intent to organize an industry federation to design and uphold the standards and processes necessary to ensure public safety and promote growth of the personal spaceflight industry.

  • Russian's are way ahead (Score:5, Insightful)

    by demachina ( 71715 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @11:31AM (#11631230)
    " NASA is looking at commercial options for resupply of the International Space Station."

    I think the Russians are way ahead of NASA on both keeping the ISS going, and on the CEV.

    The Russians are going to be showing a full scale model of their Kliper [spacedaily.com] reusable capsule at the Paris air show this June.

    This is their planned replacement for the venerable Soyuz. It will carry 6 astronauts or 700 kilos of cargo. The article sounds like they are a little cagey on the schedule, it just says a few years. I'll bet you they have a manned launch about 5 years sooner than the CEV.

    If they hang one of these on the ISS as an emergency vehicle they will enable bringing the ISS up to nearly its planned manning level, and might actually allow people to do research on the thing, instead of spending all their time maintaining as the 2-3 man crews have been doing.

    Kind of looks to me like Russia is planning to go it alone when the U.S. gives up on the ISS and the shuttle. The other source of friction is that since Russia is trading with Iran and the U.S. has embargoed Iran NASA is officially forbidden from having any financial relationship with the Russian Space agency. I wonder if they will have to paint a white line down the middle of the ISS and have a U.S. half and a Russian half :) Or more realisticly the Russians can just undock the modules they built and control from the NASA tidbits and let them burn up. Their modules are a full, self contained space station, a Mir2 if you will and they don't actually require the American parts.

    For comparison to Kliper, the CEV is going to have Lockheed and Boeing launched an unmanned, half baked prototype in 2008, pick a winner between the two and wont have a manned launch, probably just to LEO, before 2014 at the earliest.

    By contrast NASA went from a nearly standing start to putting a man on the moon in way less than 10 years in the '60's when it had never been done before. In summary, NASA, Boeing and Lockheed are today, officially pathetic. As nearly as I can tell the CEV, and the Bush Moon/Mars initiative is mostly just an excuse to pump money in to the pockets of Boeing and Lockheed and put the milestones that count so far out there it will be a miracle if they program isn't killed before they actually have to do anything serious for the subsidies.
    • When NASA gets the kind of funding it did during the 60's we'll see development of full programs in under 10 years. Even so, a suborbital demo flight of CEV in 3 years is a pretty quick schedule, considering the vehicle has to be extensible to bother LEO and deep space applications.
      • Its not very aggressive considering its going to be a tin can that probably wont even be close to what a manned vehicle would require and its probably launching on existing boosters, variants of Titan, Delta or Atlas. Chances are they are going to be underpowered for doing much past LEO. They sure aren't a Saturn V or the kind of heavy lifter you could get out of the Shuttle stack if you throw away the Shuttle and replace it with a big cargo module.

        Me personally I'd like to see them just launch a shuttle

    • Kind of looks to me like Russia is planning to go it alone when the U.S. gives up on the ISS and the shuttle.

      "Go it alone," is kind of the wrong way to put it, since Russia is a minor partner in the ISS: they have a lot of space technology and experience, but they're too broke to do anything with it unless somebody else fits the bill.

      And who will that be? The U.S., of course. Our own manned space program is a total disaster, yet we're totally committed to a huge presence in space. Even if that's just t

      • "Russia is a minor partner in the ISS"

        That's silly American self centeredness. You apparently glossed over the part in my previous post where I said the Russians have built enough modules in the ISS that if they were to undock them from the U.S. parts they would still have a fully functional space station. Without the Russian built modules the U.S. has nothing.

        They would have to go back to rockets for attitude control, since the gyro based system is U.S. built but they could live with that. There could

        • About 2010 when the shuttle is retired the U.S. will have NO manned presence in space unless its at the good will of the Russians. The U.S. will have no manned launch vehicle until the CEV in 2014 at the earliest. Committed indeed.

          You are assuming that the CEV will even be built. The U.S. Constitution absolutely guarentees that there will be two more Presidential administrations between now and then, possibly more, and requirements that Congress will have to do annual budgetary approval on the project

    • And how much funding has Kliper received so far? My impression is that they haven't received even a fraction of the 10 billion roubles they say they need. Even if they got that much money, they wouldn't expect a first launch of the vehicle until 2010.

      There's some more info on the Kliper over at Astronautix [astronautix.com].

      Seriously, in the 90s NASA had several abortive projects which got about as far as (or farther than) the Kliper is now. Some examples are the Lockheed Martin X-33 [wikipedia.org], the Orbital Sciences X-34 [wikipedia.org], the McDonne [wikipedia.org]

      • Kliper has an uphill funding battle but its a tribute to the Russian Space Agencies that in spite of that they still find a way to keep doing stuff in space. They will also benefit that the Russian government has regained some control of its big oil reserves. Their oil and gas fields, thanks to high prices, are bringing in big cash reserves to Russia if they keep them from beeing looted by plutocrats and foreign companies.

        You may not have noticed but they are the only nation that has always been able to

  • How about a $400 million prize? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by G4from128k ( 686170 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @11:32AM (#11631240)
    For the price of one shuttle launch, NASA could offer a very hefty, very inviting prize to private companies that can deliver a suitable payload to orbit and the ISS. NASA might offer some more modest sub-prizes for lesser accomplishments (e.g., delivering a small crew with no payload to ISS).
  • If Carmack can join, without a successful flight, where do I sign up? I'll boldly go!

  • from the what-is-their-prime-directive? dept. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Scrameustache ( 459504 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @11:36AM (#11631300) Homepage Journal
    Damn you, I wanted to be the first to make that joke! : )

    Maybe they aren't allowed to influence the cultures of the countries in which they crash?
  • I've been waiting for four years to see how the Federation was formed. Now that the stupid Temporal Cold War or Lack of Original Plot Ideas War or whatever it was is finally over, the show is finally getting good.

  • Call for the Space Elevator (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Pedrito ( 94783 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @12:05PM (#11631721)
    Frankly, I'm convinced the space elevator is the way of the future. It's clearly showing significant potential and even NASA has begun to take it seriously.

    If they'd spend more money on getting a space elevator built and less money on rockets, we'd be in much better shape.

    Let's face it, sticking people or anything else on top of a big firecracker is always going to be really dangerous and really expensive. The space elevator will be cheap (over the long haul) and very safe in comparison.

    Why don't we just concentrate on getting that built? Then all you need is little orbital ships that can ferry people and crews around. And since these orbital ships can either be ferried by the elevator or built in orbit from ferried components, you're talking a significantly safer way of dealing with space in almost every way.

    Yes, we have some advances to make to actually build it, but if we spent nearly as much money on researching the needed advances as we do on maintaining the space shuttle fleet, we'd probably have the research done pretty quickly.
    • Oh for a mod point or 5, this is the most intelligent thing I've read in the whole story.

    • That would be a good idea except for one small problem: we don't have a cable strong enough for the job. Maybe someday someone will make it, maybe not.

      I'll agree that we should work for it, but until it is made we should not put all our eggs in one basket. Even then we need some rocket work because the cable needs to be replaced once in a while. (What if it break, and your replacement breaks too?)

      I think we have cable strong enough for a mars elevator. Would be interesting to send a space elevator

    • I'd also really like to spend a space elevator, but for now there's still a -lot- of research which has to be done until it's at all feasible. On the other hand, private spaceflight can be achieved using technologies which have been around for dozens of years.

      I predict that once someone is able to do something as simple as create a footbridge (or even a decent rope) using carbon nanotubes, interest will pick up greatly. For the moment though, it's too high-risk, and people really don't know just how much m

  • How long before?.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by 21mhz ( 443080 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @12:31PM (#11632115) Journal
    Carmack builds a large base on Mars to conduct some shady experiments, and, well, you know the rest?
  • industry group which will work with federal regulators to come up with standards to promote crew and passenger safety.

    Which, of course, is formed by those already in the industry who, incidently, may have financial reasons to want tighter regulations thus raising the bar for others who may want to get in the new space race.

    Of course, that isn't completely accurate, but it paints an interesting picture of the situation.

    -Adam
    • As has been pointed out in congressional testimony as well as by many of the people forming this "federation", if the regulations become too much tighter, there is a very high likelyhood that you will see other countries take over from the USA in terms of leadership in the development in space.

      Indeed, this is largely happening even now, with Russia as the only country (not even the USA at the moment) with a proven and currently available manned spaceflight capability. And China is very close to having tha
  • Ah, that's just what we need. A fledgling industry, operating in large part in a region over which the government can't even claim legitimate authority (space), and the industry leaders are cowing down and working with them, which will give an appearance of legitimacy to further unconstitutional regulation of private industry. Let common law do it's thing. If a spaceship blows up, the company is liable for damages, and will be sued out of existence faster than any federal regulator could shut them down.
  • So this is the Birth of a Federation?

  • Concept images of Virgin Galactic space station? (Score:3, Informative)

    by FleaPlus ( 6935 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @04:18PM (#11634970) Journal
    Virgin Galactic's web site has a new computer-generated
    video available, which shows the full flight profile of the Virgin
    Galactic craft. It's available for streaming at the bottom of this
    page:

    http://www.virgingalactic.com/news.asp [virgingalactic.com]

    I took the liberty of capturing just about all the key frames from the
    video, and posting them on the web:

    http://www.its.caltech.edu/~neilh/virgingalactic/ [caltech.edu]

    The most interesting images are seen right after the question "What
    Next?" flashes on the screen. These are images of what appear to be a
    Virgin Galactic space station, with a SpaceShipOne-style craft docked.
    Of course, they're probably complete vapourware for now, but they
    certainly look interesting:

    http://www.its.caltech.edu/~neilh/virgingalactic/0 0002175.png [caltech.edu]
    http://www.its.caltech.edu/~neilh/virgingalactic/0 0002215.png [caltech.edu]
    http://www.its.caltech.edu/~neilh/virgingalactic/0 0002260.png [caltech.edu]

    I've been told that these some of these images also appeared on the Discovery Channel's Black Sky: The Race for Space [discovery.com] DVD, with descriptions from Burt Rutan.
  • 1. Make the airlocks compatible with each other and the NASA stuff.

    2. Make the Oxygen and Nitrogen fittings standard, and not mechanically interchangable.

    3. Develop the equivalent to the Guard frequency (international rescue radio channel), but for spacecraft.

    Chip H.

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