Making Space Affordable - The Next Human Era?

It is happening...

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In april:
Private Spaceship Completes Second Rocket-Powered Test Flight

Yesterday:
Private spacecraft blast offs June 21
Take a look at the third headline...

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"Making spaceflight affordable"

"In my role as chairman of the X Prize, I had approached well over one hundred corporate chief executive officers regarding sponsorship. Few were able to grasp the importance of this new market...and those who were had great difficulty accepting the risks involved," Diamandis said.

Vulcan's financial support has clearly allowed the Scaled Composites team to take a methodical, step by step approach, Diamandis said. "The flight test program has been expanding the envelope in an incremental process. I hope that Allen's leadership will allow other wealthy industrialists to follow in his footsteps to sponsor spaceship development like they currently do with sail boats and race cars," he said

Date set for private space launch
New approach

The X-prize will mark a new era in manned spaceflight when private companies are able to make short sub-orbital hops for paying customers.

It is hoped that a market for space tourism can be developed.

"Since Yuri Gagarin and Al Shepard¿s epic flights in 1961, all space missions have been flown only under large, expensive government efforts," said Burt Rutan.

"By contrast, our programme involves a few, dedicated individuals who are focused entirely on making spaceflight affordable.

"Without the entrepreneur approach, space access would continue to be out of reach for ordinary citizens. The SpaceShipOne flights will change all that and encourage others to usher in a new, low-cost era in space travel."




Btw, I heard on the news that the new prices for a ticket to go to space will soon range beyween 20,000 to 100,000, which is 1,000 cheaper then right now....

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More sites:
http://www.rednova.com/news/stories/1/2004/06/20/story110.html
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20040531/xprize.html
http://www.transorbital.net/
http://www.usatoday.com/news/science/2004-02-10-space-travel_x.htm
"WASHINGTON — By the end of the year, humans are likely to ride a privately funded spaceship into suborbital space for the first time, an organizer of a competition encouraging such flights said Monday."



And just to add....
Along time ago, a guy was paid "big bucks" to cross the Atlantic and "discover" our continent...
And not so long ago, there was a similar contest where people had to flight from here to Europe (or the opposite... I don't remember right now)...

Have we seen this movie before...?

 

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It looks good, but I am still not sure how successful they are going to be. This latest flight happenned because they were trying to win the $20 million dollar prize. Investment may still be short with "over one hundred corporate chief executive officers" dismissing the plan. It seems as though they think it won't make enough money or that some kind of disaster may occur.

If enough space fans keep pouring their money into it like this they might be able to develop cheap enough and reliable enough technology. I don't think any big firms will get involved early. It just is not cost effective. It is better to let someone else spend a lot on the R&D and learn from them.

This is still small stuff compared to what the government is doing. I think government involvement will be necessary for serious further development in space such as long term tourism(days) or mining. The first communication satellites were joint public and private efforts. Remember, Columbus was commissioned by the government.

 

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Yes, sure. But that is just the beginning. I would post a graph, if I could.... but I can't, so I won't... :/

The graph was something like this. There are two LRAC curves. The first one is very high up the graph. It is an industry like computers and space in the very beginning. Only the government can invest in that industry.

Then, after lots of investments, that curve is now the second one, much lower. Then we have two supply curves. The first one is up high that cost curve. It is the supply curve for a competitive market in that industry. The supply is short, and the prices is high. Then, there is the second supply curve, which is the curve for the monopoly, lower in the LRAC curve. There is more supply, so the prices are lower.

Then, given enough time, there is another supply curve for competition, below monopoly....

But the point is that in the very beginning, some industries (or all) have very high costs. As the investments increase and the technology gets better, the LRAC curve falls. But before that, it is too expensive, so only the gevernment can pay the costs. As the industry progresses, we have a monopoly, and then when the costs get low enough we have many people coming in the industry.

My point is that itis all a long process. It has been taking 40 years, and now, the costs are low enough for a monopoly to begin and soon some competition. I mean... spending 20 million bucks to build a spacecraft is not so bad. In fact is not bad at all! The government has been spending billions in every spacecraft. Now, it is only around 20 million....

And so, I ask you...
How much does a Boeing cost?

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