OT: Enchiladas and rocket rides

Because the list is quiet today, I thought that some of you might find this
short movie interesting:

http://67.41.4.238/lectures/aslcnm/neubert-aslcnm/xpcpromov1.wmv

New Mexico is building the nation's first private spaceport just a little
north of Las Cruces, where I am, and one of the first tenants there will be a new
company, Virgin Galactic. The movie above is a promotional movie made the
spread the word about the spaceport and the coming X Prize Cup competitions that
will be held there annually.

Even better, if you can spare $200,000, you can buy a ride into space
yourself. I've enclosed a brief description of the process below, taken from the
Op-Ed pages of the NY Times from a couple of months ago.

What the article doesn't say is that for your $200K, a private jet will pick
you up from one of the neighboring major airports of your choice, fly you to
the spaceport, where you and your guests will stay in a yet-to-be-built
five-star resort for a week while you receive your astronaut training, and then fly
you back to the airport of your choice.

As many of you have taken me up in the past, and the offer cerrtainly still
holds, I am more than pleased to buy anyone on the list that visits Las Cruces
an enchilada. If you now wait a couple of years, you could go into space as
well (provided you sell your house first).

Wirt Atmar

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Go West, Young Astronaut

By JOHN TIERNEY (NYT)
Published: December 6, 2005

NASA still doesn't have the money to go back to the Moon, much less head to
Mars, but there is good news for space explorers. Someone else is on the job.
Richard Branson, who's selling rides into space for $200,000 (cash up front),
is close to sealing a deal to take off from a new spaceport in the New Mexico
desert. The first flights are scheduled in three years, and his company,
Virgin Galactic, has already collected more than $10 million from future
passengers.

The list of paid-up customers includes the architect Philippe Starck, the
actress Victoria Principal and the ''Superman Returns'' director, Bryan Singer.
There's a waiting list of thousands, ranging from the actor William Shatner to
the cosmologist Stephen Hawking.

Branson expects this venture to more than pay for itself, enabling him to
start lowering ticket prices and expanding the business. ''We're going to plow
all the money back into space,'' he told me. ''We'd love one day to have a hotel
up there and keep pushing the boundaries.''

He has ordered five spaceships and plans to send more than 700 people into
space in the first 18 months, which is more than all the government-sponsored
space programs have sent in history. There's a lesson here for Congress and the
White House as they haggle over financing NASA's plans for the Moon and Mars.

The new Virgin Galactic spaceship will be a larger eight-person version of
the ship that last year won the $10 million Ansari X Prize for a reusable
spacecraft. Its designer, Burt Rutan, backed by the billionaire Paul Allen, spent
over $25 million to beat two dozen competitors.

That's the beauty of offering prizes: a little money buys a lot more R.&D.
than you would ever get by giving the funds to NASA. Prizes spurred Charles
Lindbergh and others to quickly turn aviation from a stunt into an industry.
Competition inspires innovations that would never be approved by bureaucrats --
like modeling a spaceship on a badminton shuttle***.

Rutan's spaceship, unlike NASA's space shuttle, doesn't need elaborate tiles
as a heat shield because it re-enters the atmosphere much more slowly. Before
returning to Earth, it changes its streamlined shape by feathering its wings,
enabling it to descend relatively gently, like a shuttle***.

Now that Rutan and Branson and other entrepreneurs are entering space,
there's no need for NASA to poke around in Earth orbit with the space shuttle and
the space station. Nor does it need to return to the Moon. Rutan figures that
private spaceships will be going there before long, so he'd rather see NASA
concentrate on ways to reach Mars.

So would I, but not all by itself. Instead of just financing NASA's plans for
Mars, Congress and the White House should make it compete against engineers
like Rutan. It could offer a prize, to be awarded by the National Academy of
Engineering or the National Research Council, for the best plan on paper for a
manned mission to Mars.

Branson told me he'd be willing to enter that competition for a prize of $10
million -- a pittance next to NASA's $16 billion annual budget. Robert Zubrin,
the president of the Mars Society, said he'd enter it, too.

An even better idea would be to offer prizes for making actual progress on a
Mars mission, not just drawing up plans. Zubrin suggests that the federal
government get entrepreneurs started by offering a $5 billion prize for the first
flight of a vehicle that can lift 120 tons into orbit.

There could also be a grand $30 billion Mars Prize for getting a human to
Mars and planting the American flag. That would be a bargain compared with the
current plans of NASA, which wants to get to Mars by first spending $100 billion
just to reach the Moon.

I realize that Congress and the White House are reluctant to upset NASA's
monopoly because they don't want to offend government workers and the contractors
defending the status quo. But these engineers could be eligible for the
prize, too. The teams competing might well subcontract parts of the mission -- like
tracking the spacecraft -- to divisions of NASA, and those government workers
could share in the cash.

A Mars Prize would have one wonderful political advantage over doling out
money to NASA. Today's politicians could announce the prize without scrimping to
pay for it in any budget anytime soon. They would get the immediate glory of
inaugurating an interplanetary quest, and someone else would get the bill.

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