The Race for Space

[Mad Mardigan]

source = http://www.nature.com/news/2004/040927/full/040927-4.html

 

If all goes according to plan, by early October SpaceShipOne will have become the first privately funded spacecraft to have carried a pilot and the weight of two people to 100 kilometres above Earth's surface, returned safely, and then repeated the journey within two weeks.

 

Those are the criteria that must be fulfilled for SpaceShipOne to claim the US$10-million Ansari X prize, donated by private benefactors "to jumpstart the space tourism industry".

 

There is a respectable tradition of scientific innovations being stimulated by cash prizes. French industry offered the rewards that prompted Jean-Baptiste Guimet to synthesize artificial ultramarine in 1828 and Louis Pasteur to find a way of making racemic acid in 1853. More recently, the $1-million prizes offered in 2000 by the Clay Mathematics Institute in the United States for solving seven key maths problems have been a tempting stimulus to new discoveries.

 

But the Ansari X prize is driven neither by the needs of industry nor by the enthusiasms of philanthropists. It has a political philosophy, which is supported by a little rewriting of history.

 

Now politically speaking, is this something to be concerned about? Allowing private companys travel to space, what is the law on that? Is it international airspace? Lotsa questions.

[Pangloss]

Actually, they plan to do that *today* (Monday), I believe.

[atinymonkey]

http://www.virgingalactic.com/