Rocketforge

E-Tickets Now Available for the Countdown to the X PRIZE CUP in New Mexico

Personal Spaceflight EXPO — Sunday October 9, 2005 – 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM

The X PRIZE Foundation is pleased to announce that E-Tickets for the Countdown to the X PRIZE CUP are now available for purchase from the official website www.xpcup.com. The event will take place Sunday October 9, 2005 from 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM at the Las Cruces International Airport in southern New Mexico.

While only one emerging commercial space company was able to win the $10M Ansari X PRIZE, the Foundation firmly believes there are several companies that will soon create reusable launch vehicles of their own for use in the private sector. It is vital for any nascent industry to have an incubator and venue that will support and showcase their vehicles to the world, especially visionary investors and sponsors. The EXPO will be the world’s first space show at which the entire family can come and watch the next generation of space vehicles fly. They will see the vehicles up close, learn about the technology, build their own model rockets, operate robots, and even talk to astronauts.

For animated invitation please visit this link: http://www.xpcup.com/images/images_flash/anim_invite/XP_animInvite.html

*About the X PRIZE CUP*
Based on the success of the Ansari X PRIZE, The Foundation has partnered with the state of New Mexico to produce the X PRIZE CUP and assist in the development of the state’s Southwestern Regional Spaceport. On April 13, 2005, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson declared October 4 – 9, 2005 as X PRIZE CUP Week in New Mexico and during this time, tens of thousands of people will come to the state to see racing take new heights. Beginning in 2006, the X PRIZE CUP will be a week-long series of space-related events, including educational, launch, and test-flight activities, as well as aircraft fly-ins and tributes to the history of the state’s aerospace industry. The events begin this October with the Countdown to the X PRIZE CUP in Las Cruces International Airport and Alamogordo Space History Museum in Southern New Mexico. Full details can be found at www.xprize.org.

*About New Mexico’s Aerospace Industry*
Clear skies, mild weather, world-renowned research labs, and a growing aerospace industry make New Mexico an ideal location for the next generation of aerospace entrepreneurs. According to Economy.com, New Mexico’s cost of doing business is among the 10 lowest of the 50 states—due largely to our competitive wages and low energy costs. At the same time, we offer the infrastructure that aerospace firms need with Albuquerque International Sunport, White Sands Missile Range, two Air Force bases, many community airports, and the construction of the new $10 million Southwest Regional Spaceport in Southern New Mexico. Full details can be found at www.goNM.biz.

*About the XPRIZE FOUNDATION*
The X PRIZE Foundation is an educational nonprofit prize institute whose mission is to enable radical breakthroughs in space and technology for the benefit of humanity. On October 4th, 2004, the X PRIZE Foundation captured world headlines when Mojave Aerospace Ventures, led by Burt Rutan and Paul Allen, built and flew the world’s first private spacecraft to the edge of space to win the $10 million Ansari X PRIZE. Because of the dramatic nature of the achievement, the X PRIZE Foundation is now widely recognized as the leading model for fostering innovation through the use of competitions.For more information about the X PRIZE Foundation please visit www.xprize.org or telephone 310.587.3355.

Postcards from the Future is a new “large format” epic mini from
director Alan Chan that will be out sometime in the first quarter of 2006. The
film will chronicle the life of an ordinary guy who’s job is to build out
the power grid for a lunar settlement. Here’s Alan’s synopsis of the film:

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Sometime in the near future, humankind will set foot again on the Moon. As part
of President Bush’s new Vision for Space Exploration, they will build a permanent base on the moon, to test, research and invent new technologies for manned missions to Mars and beyond. The task will not be easy – there will be danger and hardships and broken lives, but these modern-day pioneers would have it no other
way. Because for all the hardships that they must endure, they know that the Grand Vision extends beyond them – that they are but a small part of what makes man’s future in the stars possible.

‘Postcards From The Future’ attempts to share this epic undertaking with today’s audience. We see the Grand Vision unfold over the course of two decades by following the life of one man – civilian electrical engineer Sean Everman. Entrusted with the task of helping to build out the power grid on the Moonbase, Sean occasionally sends “Video Postcards” and personal messages to his wife back on Earth, sharing with her the details, trials and tribulations of his jobs. Over the epic course of the story, these postcards from our possible future reveal in exquisite detail the grand adventure that we are about to embark on…

Postcards will be written and directed by Alan Chan, an industry visual effects veteran, whose feature film credits include Academy Award winning films such as Jim Cameron’s “Titanic”, “Lord of The Rings: The Two Towers” and “Polar Express”.

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You may have seen Alan’s previous work if you ‘ve seen Brad Edwards’ space elevator talk recently since Alan’s team did the digital animation work. You can see examples of it in this months IEEE Spectrum article A Hoist to the Heavens.

In Building a foundation for space settlement Sam Dinkin discusses space as ‘charity’ as a way of building up funds needed to build some of the lunar infrastructure and eventually build a lunar colony. As the former Chairman of the Board for the The Artemis Society I’d like to provide some insight into how this might be done and some of the pitfalls.

Much of Sam’s article is spent describing the available amounts of charitable giving by US citizens. The problem with using that as a starting point is the same one that investors loath to hear: “The market for X is estimated at $12 billion, all we need is 1% of that and we will generate $120 million”. The problem is you have to deliver on those donations. People will put up with crap from products they purchase but charities are constantly having to prove that the majority of their donations are going directly to the intended outcome.

As I discovered with the Artemis Project, any endeavor like this has a huge “chicken and egg” problem: in order to receive those charitable donations you need to show significant and continuing progress, but in order to show that progress you need very large amounts of cash in hand to prime that pump. If you can start out with a large enough sum to create a perception that the effort actually does something then the donations will come in and you can continue that effort. But without it you are continually struggling with a credibility problem that you simply cannot overcome.

Other things I’ve learned:

• You can not rely on volunteer labor. You need professionals and paid contractors doing the labor. Volunteers are good for small projects and very distributed tasks but an all volunteer space program would never get a foot off the ground.
• You need to start small. The first ‘mission’ cannot be so hard that you will never get there. The Artemis Reference Mission set such a high expectation that it created both a giggle factor and almost guaranteed failure.
• Marketing must be directed outside the ‘typical’ community. Our community may be energized but we are generally not a wealthy crowd. At the earliest opportunity the marketing campaign must be as widely and as globally advertised as possible. There is more money available outside the US than inside it for something like this.
• It must be very visibly branded. People who will donate money to something like this will want that fact advertised very widely. That means swhag for them to boast that they were involved and media coverage of any missions so the donor gets a very public feedback loop.

Some reading this may think I’m calling the Artemis Project a failure. I actually don’t think that. I think it has had some problems but these could be overcome with not to much work. It would need to be reorganized. The existing model of member companies donating revenue into a cash ’stockpile’ that is run by a private ‘parent’ company (TLRC) with no visibility assumes a level of trust that simply doesn’t exist. It also had little to no participation by anyone that had business experience. But the basic idea behind ASI is almost exactly what Sam is suggesting. Whether or not it can be fixed and used is a separate discussion.

But does any of the above discussion solve that chicken and egg problem? No. But here’s something that might: NASA’s schedule puts the first returning NASA employee on the moon in 2018 and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter launches in 2008. Its more than possible to beat NASA back to the moon in both cases. My suggestion is to create a foundation who’s initial task is simply to put a small rover on the moon with a simple video camera. Yes its similar to several of Luna Corp’s suggested missions but the main difference is timing. My contention is that after Burt’s successes and NASA’s recent problems with Shuttle the climate has changed sufficiently that donations toward a cheap mission could do the trick.

At RTTM Rex Ridenoure, CEO of Ecliptic, issued a challenge to beat NASA back as a way of ensuring that the policy and perception gains made with Burt’s flight continue outward into cislunar space. I suggest we take up that challenge using a non-profit foundation along the lines of what Sam is suggesting. If you want to discuss the idea then throw some of your thoughts at the wiki page or join me on #space to discuss it.

“Someone once said that there was no doubt that we would colonize the Moon and Mars. The only question was what language would be spoken. My money is on Chinese.”

I hate this quote. It assumes several things that just tick me off:

1) It assumes that if NASA isn’t doing it then America has no presense in space. That’s like assuming that if Amtrack didn’t exist that the American rail system would collapse.

2) Yes, the Chinese represent a huge amount of economic muscle. That doesn’t mean that they’re all competitors. In the same way that every IT company these days has a significant Indian representation, my prediction is that the company that lands on the Moon will be American and the company that lands on Mars will be a Sino-Anglo-Indian conglomerate.

I much prefer my version:

“Someone once said that there was no doubt that we would colonize the Moon and Mars. The only question was what language would be spoken: the language of science or the language of business. My money is on business. The language of business is universal, ignores national borders, and is capable of speaking all human languages.”

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