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The Rocket Racing League (RRL) won’t have anything flying at the X Prize Cup, but they are getting grounded in a good way in Las Cruces. The company reported that the Las Cruces City Council unanimously approved the sale of 69.34 hectares (171.35 acres) of land near the airport for the company’s headquarters and industrial park. RRL plans to break ground for a 4,640-square-meter (50,000-square-foot) headquarters by November 2007, and will provide land for “industries that support the League”. RRL will also have 10 hangars at the airport and a smaller R&D facility on the New Mexico State University campus.
Also, on Friday during the X Prize Cup the RRL will announce the name for the first X-Racer, the result of a competition run by the league.
While Anousheh Ansari is scheduled to be in Las Cruces for the Wirefly X Prize Cup, she first paid a visit to Russia, attending a ceremony in Russia to commemorate her recent flight to the ISS. She said that Russia now held a special place in her heart, alongside Iran and the United States. She also said that she’d like to return to space at some point in the future, and wished her flight last month had lasted longer. “The only thing that keeps bringing me back to Earth is my family,” she said. “If I could have taken them up there with me, I probably would have just stayed forever.” She also hinted that she is interested in funding a future X Prize competition for a lunar lander (a real one, not the analogs that compete for NASA’s Lunar Lander Challenge).
If you will be in the Dallas area on November 2nd, you have a chance to meet her at an event hosted by the Frontiers of Flight Museum. Admission costs $15, and includes a presentation by Ansari and a reception afterwards, “including an opportunity for guests to personally meet Ansari”.
It was looking a little bleak there for a while about whether anyone would be able to compete for the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge: Flight International posted a story with the discouraging title “FAA could call halt to NASA lunar lander challenge”, and, more ominously, Leonard David reported that Armadillo Aerospace “ran into snags” at the Texas-New Mexico border last night. However, Robin at Lunar Lander Challenge reports that not only did the Armadillo team make it to Las Cruces, they hope to be able to compete in both levels of the challenge. They plan to make an attempt at the Level 1 challenge on Friday morning and, if that and a “pre-qualifying” flight later in the day are successful, go for Level 2 on Saturday. Of course, they still need to get their permit first, and that apparently won’t happen until after a test flight Thursday.
Now I’m off to transport myself to Las Cruces (with a little help from an airline and rental car company)…
According to a Russian news agency former Microsoft executive Charles Simonyi will fly to the ISS next spring. RIA Novosti reports that the next Soyuz mission to the ISS has been delayed from March to April 2007 so that the landing avoids the spring floods on the steppes of Kazakhstan. That mission will include Simonyi, the report mentions in passing. Space Adventures has not previously announced a date for Simonyi’s flight; an August press release announcing that he had passed a medical review reported only that “More details regarding Dr. Simonyi’s scheduled launch date, commencement of training and specific mission objectives will be announced in the coming months.” This launch date make sense, since it may be the last flight opportunity for a commercial passenger on a Soyuz for some time: the fall 2007 flight will likely carry a Malaysian guest cosmonaut under an agreement between the Russian and Malaysian governments, while a South Korean is expected to fly on a spring 2008 Soyuz mission under a similar intergovernmental agreement.
MSNBC’s Alan Boyle checks on the potential profitability of space tourism in his wrapup of the first day of the International Symposium for Personal Spaceflight in Las Cruces, NM. Peter Diamandis says that he doesn’t expect “real profits” for such companies until about 2012, four years after he expects commercial flights to begin. “You didn’t see Amazon or the Internet companies turn a real profit for three to five years.” He also reviews the da Vinci announcement and other developments from the meeting. (Also read his helpful tips, courtesy of former astronaut Tom Jones, for how future space tourists can avoid being slobs.)
The Las Cruces Sun-News also reviews the meeting, and looks at the concern among some in the industry about the effect of an accident. “If you end up hurting or killing someone, I think the market will be set back a long, long time,” said Mike Holguin, an Atlas program manager for Lockheed Martin. Not clear in the statement is how early into commercial passenger spaceflight such an accident would have an effect like this, and just how long a “long, long time” would be.
We’re still not sure how many teams, if any, will be competing in the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge at the Wirefly X Prize Cup at the end of this week, but at least we know who will be judging the competition (if, in fact, it occurs.) The X Prize Foundation announced the six judges for the competition late Tuesday:
- Ed Bock, a retired Lockheed Martin employee who spent most of his 39-year career working on the Atlas program;
- Richard Dunne, a Northrop Grumman consultant;
- Bill Gaubatz, DC-X manager;
- John Herrington, former NASA astronaut and Rocketplane Kistler vice president;
- Pete Worden, NASA Ames director; and
- Jeff Zweber, an engineer at the Air Force Research Lab’s Space Vehicles Directorate
New Scientist is on the scene at the ISPS in Las Cruces and reports that The da Vinci Project (or, more accurately, “The GoldenPalace.com Space Program – Powered by the da Vinci Project”) has unveiled designs for a new series of suborbital passenger vehicles. The XF1 is a single-person design that would initially be launched from a balloon (like the project’s original designs), but could later take off from a runway under jet engine power. The XF2 “Excalibur” is a two-passenger version that takes off from a runway and fly to 160 km altitude, while the XF3 “Valkyrie” would carry seven passengers and two pilots and be air-launched from a plane (similar to SpaceShipTwo). All these vehicles would be operated by a new venture called DreamSpace. The XF1 would be ready to fly as soon as the end of 2007, with the XF2 to follow in 2008 and the XF3 in 2010. However, the article makes no mention of how much funding (if any) da Vinci/Dream Space has lined up to actually develop and fly these vehicles. (The da Vinci Project web site doesn’t have any information about these new vehicles.)
SPACE.com’s Leonard David has an overview article about day 1 of the ISPS. Other than the da Vinci announcement it doesn’t sound like there was much in the way of news from the conference.
Update: the DreamSpace Group has a web site will illustrations of the XF1.
It’s been a commonly-held belief that people who pay to fly as tourists on Russian Soyuz missions to the ISS are helping the cash-strapped Russian space program. While Roskosmos may no longer be as desperate for money as it once was, it’s not clear exactly where those monies have gone. Reuters reports that Russian officials are questioning exactly how the funding provided by space tourists have been spent. The article reports that senior Finance Ministry official Sergei Pavlenko was “astonished” to find that Roskosmos “did not properly account for the money it made on space tourism”. Will this lead to any kind of backlash against allowing paying passengers on future Soyuz flights?
The Las Cruces Sun-News provides a final preview of the International Symposium for Personal Spaceflight, the two-day conference that starts this morning in Las Cruces. (Unfortunately I won’t be there; I don’t get into town until Wednesday night.) An interesting contrast: conference co-chair Bill Gaubatz focuses on the historical significance of the event (“[Imagine] it’s 1900, 1902 or 1903 and you had the opportunity to sit down with the Wright brothers.”) while Tim Pickens of Orion Propulsion is focused on the here and now (“For me it’s how am I going to make this stuff affordable and reachable to the common guy. You’re too busy to stop and reflect too much about the significance.”)
There haven’t been any other public announcements about Wirefly X Prize Cup events, including which teams (if any) will be approved to compete at in the Lunar Lander Challenge. One bit of good news: the current weather forecast for Las Cruces calls for mostly sunny skies and temperatures in the mid-70s Fahrenheit both Friday and Saturday. No mention of winds, but with any luck they won’t be anywhere near the gales that plagued last year’s event.
SpaceShot, the company offering skill contests that give people the opportunity to win a trip to space, made a few announcements yesterday. (The press release isn’t on its web site, but can be viewed on HobbySpace.) In brief, the company is setting up a Latin American unit and announced a new round of angel funding that will be used to develop a new site to be launched in the first quarter of 2007, including “new prizes, prices and a simpler version of the company’s unique on- line skill game.”
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