Maybe.

What I found interesting was this, though:

The FAA also is considering two proposed spaceports in Texas, including a private spaceport on 165,000 acres of desolate ranch land about 120 miles east of El Paso bought by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos. Bezos had said his space tourism firm, Blue Origin, would first build basic structures, then begin flight tests in six to seven years.

Six to seven years? I thought that they wanted to do suborbital tourism, at least initially. Why would it take six to seven years, given that they’ve been working on it for a number of years already? It makes me wonder how serious Mr. Bezos is about this business, because that would put him way behind the competition (though perhaps he thinks that his design will be so superior that it won’t matter).

One of the dangers of having too much money is that you’re sometimes willing to spend it with no expectations of getting it back, so it’s treated more as a hobby. John Carmack has noted this explicitly in the past with respect to Armadillo (though he may be evolving it into a business), but is Blue Origin similar?

Over at today’s issue of The Space Review, Robin Snelson writes about NASA’s latest (and very interesting) Centennial Challenge, to demonstrate lunar landing technology. Also Jeff Foust writes about Elon Musk and SpaceX’s status, and there’s an interview with Newt Gingrich, on space prizes, private enterprise, and NASA.

[Update a few minutes later]

I just got around to reading the Gingrich interview myself, and clearly, under a (hypothetical, and unlikely) Gingrich administration, space policy would look much different:

I am for a dramatic increase in our efforts to reach out into space, but I am for doing virtually all of it outside of NASA through prizes and tax incentives. NASA is an aging, unimaginative, bureaucracy committed to over-engineering and risk-avoidance which is actually diverting resources from the achievements we need and stifling the entrepreneurial and risk-taking spirit necessary to lead in space exploration.

And he’s just warming up. I’m sure that Mark Whittington will now attack Newt as an “Internet rocketeer.”

[Update at 1 PM PDT]

I had been unaware of the schedule controversy described in the comments. It would be interesting to see a response from Ken Davidian or Brant Sponberg.

If XCOR achieves the turnaround time in the Economist article on suborbital adventure travel that Rand spotted of 4 flights per day, that puts them with higher capacity per plane per day than Rocketplane’s 3. (Full disclosure: I have business dealings with both firms.) Assuming that their two-seater does not take more people than Rocketplane’s to service, that should give them a revenue advantage in a Boom town scenario and a cost advantage in the Dullsville scenario. If Xerus indeed costs only about $10 million to develop vs. more than $40 million for Rocketplane (according to Chuck Lauer at ISDC), then they will have lower implicit interest costs too. Number of lifetime flights and flights per major overhaul are interesting questions that will also factor in. Since neither plane has flown, a 33% difference in servicing time per passenger is quite speculative at this point, but interesting.

This cost/revenue disadvantage per plane won’t be a problem for Rocketplane if it can fly 100 flights of 3 passengers in their first year and earn $60 million before any of the competitors can bring their planes on line (although Carmack is optimistic he will start flying next year according to what he told me at Space Access).

In a boom town scenario, RLI, Virgin, Armadillo, Blue, Masten, SpaceDev, XCOR and probably a few new players will all build more craft than they were originally anticipating. This will result in lots of business for the low cost/high value player, but probably several bankruptcies or mergers eventually.

The Economist has a good roundup of what’s going on in the private spaceflight business. They’re pretty optimistic (appropriately, in my opinion).

at the Texas Space Authority organizational meeting tomorrow in Austin. I am too. Email me at dinkin@space-shot.com or comment if you think we can do something for you from a business angle or want to see my slides.

— Update —

Buzz continues to promote Starcraft Boosters and his plan for many space adventurer orbiters on the same launcher. He asserts that orbital is “so hard that only 3 governments have done it”. That was also true of people to 100 km before Rutan won the Ansari X Prize. Number of governments that can go to 100 km without losing money=0. Number of governments that have a reusable craft that can fly again in less than a week to 100 km=0. He views suborbital as a dead end. He is still promoting lotteries to fund spaceflight. I asked him to join forces once skill games can finance orbital flights and he agreed.

I bet Buzz $20 that orbital craft would emerge without government funding.

Alan Boyle reports at MSNBC.com that “several” vendors are in negotiations for $500 million in commercial orbital transport service (with the same acronym as commercial off the shelf):

Oklahoma-based Rocketplane Kistler and California-based Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, acknowledged that they were finalists. Other sources, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the official NASA reticence, indicated that the Virginia-based t/Space consortium, California-based SpaceDev, Texas-based Spacehab and Andrews Space in Seattle were also on the list.

Before being bought by George French, owner of Rocketplane (whose flights I am offering as a prize at Space-Shot.com), Kistler had an agreement with NASA which was unawarded after an objection from SpaceX. In this competition, there are many strong companies and the winner may have a march on orbital adventure travel competition. I hope the winner chooses a fixed price agreement so it will maintain the discipline to compete in the private markets too.

This is a good example of how it’s easier to make your investments grow with small companies than big ones (albeit riskier). Just a few days ago at the ISDC, Jeff Greason was saying that XCOR’s sales had increased dramatically, to about three million per year in the coming year. I noticed that Jeff disappeared for a day after that announcement on Thursday, arriving back at LAX late Friday night. I suspect that this may have been the subject of that excursion. They just doubled their sales for this year again:

XCOR Aerospace announced today that it had won a $3.3 million contract with ATK as part of ATK

How can a man top the creation of X Prize, X Prize Cup, X Racer and Zero G Corporation, International Space University, Starport.com, Students for Exploration and Development of Space and Space Adventures?

As keynote speaker at the International Space Development Conference last night, he forecast that he would be making a major announcement this year about a private foundation to support spaceflight to Mars. His expectation is that he could privately raise $3 billion dollars from 10,000 people willing to commit $100,000; 1,000 people willing to commit $1 million and 100 people willing to commit $10 million. He thinks with the right fund managers, this could earn 15-17% returns and double every 5 years. Within 10 years, the money would be sufficient to finance two or more human Mars missions.

These people would then play a game to determine who would be in the 100 person astronaut corps. That corps would be rigorously trained and tested and down-selected into 12 colonists for the first crew. These crew would then undertake a one-way colonization mission to Mars.

Earlier would come private exploration missions. Later would come private pre-placement missions pre-placing supplies, power generation equipment and habs. Then a cycler would take colonists to Mars who would use a lander to get to their pre-placed equipment. The bulk of the mass would head back to Earth to be refurbished, resupplied and reused if economical.

He calls it the ‘Mars Citizenship Program’.

Peter, I said it last night. I am in for $100,000. I am also willing to run a game for you to select from 100,000,000 people putting in $10.

Continue reading Peter Diamandis Cooking →

I’m posting this a little after midnight, but May 5th was the forty-fifth anniversary of Alan Shepard’s historic flight. And I have to get to bed for about four hours sleep so I can catch a 6 AM flight to Detroit, where my niece is having her first communion this weekend. Blogging will be light. Thoughts about the conference upon return.

Dale wants me to comment on yesterday’s entertaining but unconstructive rant from the sage of Mojave. I know it will sound like heresy to some, but the post title is all I have to say at this time, for those commenters at his post who seem to think the opposite. He won the X-Prize because he got funded, not because he’s the only person who could do it, or even had the best way to do it. The fact that he doesn’t know how to get to orbit means nothing, except that he doesn’t know how to get to orbit. There are smart people who do, given sufficient funds, and there is more than one way to do it.

[Update a couple minutes later]

I just noticed that Sam had some other thoughts on one of Burt’s other unuseful and illogical comments.