Space Quest – Moon of Alabama

October 4, 2004

Space Quest

One of most beautiful technical creation of the last years, privatly financed and build Space Ship One, just made its second official flight to an altitude of over 100 km above earth. As an engineer I am amazed by the look of the ship and its launch carrier, The White Knight. This is not design where “Form Follows Function” here “Form Is Function” – just beautiful.

Some people will now be able to fulfil there dream of a space flight – for $180,000 more or less. To our children, this may become a common way to travel.

DoD, NASA or ESA would never be able to build something like this – wrong price, wrong design. Bureaucracies demand to many compromises to be really effective in frontier technology. Bureaucracies have also other thoughts than fulfil peoples dream of a few minutes in space.

Russia had proposed a global ban on space arms in 2003, but the US was not interested. Instead, the new Air Force Doctrine Document 2-2.1: Counterspace Operations (PDF) guides on

the ways and means by which the Air Force achieves and maintains space superiority … Space superiority provides freedom to attack …

Is this what Bush means when he says ‘Freedom Will Prevail’?

Context links:
Scaled Composite: Space Ship One
The Register: world’s space hardware gets nervous
Wired: All’s Fair in Space War
Discussion at: Slashdot

Posted by b on October 4, 2004 at 17:36 UTC | Permalink

Comments

Thanks for posting this, Bernhard.
Space Ship One — I suggest that this is one positive result of the Microsoft computer software monopoly — the funding comes from Microsoft founding partner Steve Ballmer.

Posted by: jonku | Oct 4 2004 20:12 utc | 1

It also explains all the windows.

Posted by: biklett | Oct 4 2004 20:16 utc | 2

@biklett LOL
I expect Airbus do get in on the act also.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Oct 4 2004 21:49 utc | 3

Oops. Not Ballmer, Paul Allen.
“Interesting to note that a majority of its funding ($20-$30 million) was put up by Microsoft’s own, Paul Allen.” CNN
“… Allen was born in Seattle, Washington. At Lakeside School, Paul Allen (14 years old) and friend Bill Gates (12 years old) became early computer enthusiasts. Allen went on to attend Washington State University, though he dropped out after two years to pursue his and Gates’s dream of writing software commercially for the new “personal computers”.
“… Allen was forced to resign from Microsoft in 1983 after being diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease which was successfully treated by several months of radiation therapy and a bone marrow transplant.
In November 2000 Allen resigned from his position on the Microsoft board.” Wikipedia

Posted by: jonku | Oct 4 2004 22:59 utc | 4

Very nice to see manned space flight crawling out of the rut it’s been in for decades now. Still, that ticket price really stings – will the initial market be big enough to finance continual improvements in the technology, making the spaceships bigger, more capable yet cheaper? A new Concorde would be extremely cruel for a sky-watching human race.
If, on the other hand, SS1 takes the technological path of the first airplane, I expect to take a vacation on the moon by the time I’m an old man. If someone had suggested that to me five years ago, I would have bitterly laughed them out of the room. I imagine I’ll have to plunder much of my retirement savings to do it, but it’ll be worth it.

Posted by: Harrow | Oct 5 2004 1:39 utc | 5

Is this what Bush means when he says ‘Freedom Will Prevail’?
Since SpaceShip 1 and some of its more viable competitors actually are living up to Nasa’s slogan of “faster, better, cheaper”, I expect at least some of those companies to be working with the Air Force in the future to build military space systems. And considering the kind of budget the military gets to play around with, the space companies will be pretty enthusiastic about it. If they’re really lucky, they might get to shoot down one of their rivals’ spaceships!

Posted by: Harrow | Oct 5 2004 3:33 utc | 6

Only 28 days left to reclaim America for the people.
Firefighters are for John Kerry and the Democrats and that’s good enough for me.

Posted by: pb | Oct 5 2004 6:26 utc | 7

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