Ansari X Prize

[sanityhaven]

The X prize is a $10 million dollar prize offered to the first team to launch a 3 person spacecraft into space twice in the two weeks.

I don't know how many of you are interested in space travel, but today was historic day. Today the X prize has been (unofficially) won. Today Spaceshipone reached orbit for the 2nd time. :applause:

 

[Sagitta]

I follow it too. Pretty cool. You know about Richard Branson announcing that he wants to commercialize sub-space travel?

 

[Chris Stratton]

I don't know how many of you are interested in space travel, but today was historic day. Today the X prize has been (unofficially) won. Today Spaceshipone reached orbit for the 2nd time. :applause:

Today was an historic day, but Space Ship One achieves only a small fraction of the velocity necessary to reach orbit. It goes up, but it's not going fast enough not to fall right back into the atmosphere a few minutes later. Around an order of magnitude more fuel would be required for orbit, because you have to carry more fuel to lift the weight of the more fuel you are carrying to lift the weight of the more fuel you are carrying to... well, rockets aren't efficient but theres little option for a small-scale operation.

Still, it's pretty cool. Some people say this is just a private repeate of the government funded X-15 of almost 50 years ago, but there's a big difference between "should be able to do something" and someone actually going and getting it done. The X-15 was single seat while this one has 3 seats, while the next will have 5. Plus the hybrid rocket (rubber and nitrous oxide) is a lot safer and simpler than the traditional rocket used on the X-15 (the X-15 engine did blow up at one point during a ground test, though the pilot was uninjured)