快猫短视频

THEY call it 鈥渢he rule of the eight鈥�. It took eight years between the announcement of the Orteig prize and Charles Lindbergh鈥檚 winning transatlantic flight in 1927. It took eight years for NASA to rise to JFK鈥檚 1961 challenge and put a man on the moon. And now the Ansari X prize has kept up the tradition. Announced in 1996, the prize was won in October when SpaceShipOne made its historic double flight into space (快猫短视频, 9 October, p 5).

That the prize obeyed the rule is a satisfying denouement: the X prize owed its inspiration to the Orteig prize and was set up to prove that the private sector was a match for government programmes. But continuing the tradition was more than symbolic. Just last year there were serious doubts that the prize would ever be won (快猫短视频, 10 May 2003, p 12). SpaceShipOne鈥檚 success is testimony to the verve and potential of the private space movement, otherwise known as alt.space.

And SpaceShipOne鈥檚 victory has had exactly the kind of galvanising effect the X prize鈥檚 creators hoped for: the private-sector conquest of space appears to be well under way. Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin group, has announced plans to build a fleet of tourist vehicles based on SpaceShipOne. Just a week before the first successful X prize flight, SpaceDev of Poway, California, signed up with the NASA Ames Research Center to design a commercial vehicle capable of reaching 160 kilometres altitude, significantly higher than SpaceShipOne. And the X prize winner itself, Mojave Aerospace Ventures of Mojave, California, is privately at work improving on SpaceShipOne.

Amid this flurry of entrepreneurial activity, one individual stands out. Robert Bigelow, who made his fortune in hotels and now runs Bigelow Aerospace of Las Vegas, Nevada, has picked up where the X prize left off and set up an even more handsome prize aimed at furthering the alt.space revolution. 鈥淎merica鈥檚 Space Prize鈥� will offer more money and will literally aim higher: anyone hoping to claim the prize will have to go much farther into space than SpaceShipOne did.

鈥淚t鈥檚 now clear that the prize will be the biggest ever 鈥� a cool $50 million鈥�

Since early this year, Bigelow has been slowly leaking details of the prize, and since the summer it has been clear that the purse would be big 鈥� a cool $50 million, making it the largest technology prize ever offered. It has also become common knowledge that the goal would be orbital space, not the sub-orbital target of the X prize.

The difference isn鈥檛 small: orbital space flight is far more challenging. Space officially starts at an altitude of 100 kilometres above sea level, but to achieve orbit you need to get up to at least 160 kilometres. Orbit also requires a huge injection of speed. SpaceShipOne reached sub-orbital space travelling at Mach 3, whereas the minimum requirement for orbit is Mach 25. What is more, while SpaceShipOne needed only minimal life-support capability and the barest heat shielding for sub-orbital re-entry, these will be significant issues for contestants chasing America鈥檚 Space Prize.

In the past few weeks, Bigelow has formally opened the door to competitors and unveiled the prize rules. America鈥檚 Space Prize will be awarded to the first team that successfully launches a spacecraft carrying a minimum of five people to a minimum altitude of 400 kilometres twice in 60 days (see Diagram). During each flight the craft must complete at least two orbits of the Earth. Like the X prize contenders, contestants for America鈥檚 Space Prize must be private organisations and cannot use government funding, although they can launch from a government spaceport.

While America鈥檚 Space Prize does not specify what launch vehicles can be used, it requires that at least 80 per cent of the flight hardware must be reusable. This rules out existing rockets such as the US Delta or Russian Proton, which are not reusable at all, and thus paves the way for innovation in that area too.

So far, so good. America鈥檚 Space Prize seems to be a worthy successor to the X prize. And while no one has officially declared their intent to participate, Mojave Aerospace Ventures and rocket-building newcomer SpaceX of El Segundo, California, are among those rumoured to be readying the paperwork.

But scratch the surface and there are reasons to question America鈥檚 Space Prize. Most of the doubts stem from the fact that the rules of the prize seem to put Bigelow鈥檚 own business interests ahead of the alt.space movement in general.

For starters, Bigelow is dispensing upfront with the rule of the eight. The deadline is January 2010, less than six years away. That may seem trivial, but the decision exposes what many alt.spacers suspect are the true motives of the competition. January 2010 is also when Bigelow Aerospace hopes to have rolled out its first commercial space products. The deadline is no coincidence. As Bigelow Aerospace spokesman Mike Gold put it: 鈥淭he time line was developed to mirror our needs.鈥�

And the company has needs aplenty. The products Bigelow Aerospace hopes to roll out in 2010 are inflatable habitats for orbit. These are far cheaper to produce and launch than the hard modules that make up the International Space Station, and there鈥檚 no doubt that inexpensive orbital living quarters are an integral part of the alt.space revolution: once tourists make the leap into orbit, they鈥檒l need somewhere to stay.

Needed: one spaceship

Getting the habitats ready by 2010, though, is arguably the least of Bigelow Aerospace鈥檚 problems. At present the company does not have a spacecraft to deliver people to them. NASA鈥檚 shuttle is off-limits to private ventures. The Russian Soyuz is reliable and reasonably priced (about $50 million per flight, compared with roughly $500 million for a shuttle mission) but the process of acquiring one is too erratic and bureaucratic for Bigelow鈥檚 comfort, says Gold. Meanwhile, the new vehicle on the block, China鈥檚 Shenzhou, is only available to the Chinese military, and that probably won鈥檛 change in the foreseeable future.

Bigelow was a guest at the SpaceShipOne flights but he surely found little comfort there, since SpaceShipOne can only attain sub-orbital altitudes. And the very last thing Bigelow Aerospace wants to do is to add spacecraft development to its already full R&D plate. What鈥檚 a budding space entrepreneur to do?

The answer, it seems, is to start your own competition, with the rules set up so that somebody else builds you the ship you need.

There is evidence aplenty that this is exactly what America鈥檚 Space Prize is all about. The winning craft must be able to reach an altitude of 400 kilometres, which is where Bigelow plans to park its modules. Perhaps not surprisingly, the spacecraft must also 鈥渄emonstrate its ability to dock with a Bigelow Aerospace inflatable space habitat鈥� and be able to stay there for six months. The company has yet to explain how this will be assessed, but there is no doubt the rule is designed to ensure that it gets some solid bang for all those millions of bucks in prize money.

Then there is the fact that the $50 million purse is peanuts compared with the $200 million worth of contracts on offer to the winner. Much as Virgin is doing with SpaceShipOne, Bigelow Aerospace wants to use the winning design as the template for a fleet. Deals worth an additional $800 million may follow over the next half-decade.

So what, you might say. Bigelow Aerospace is putting up the money, why shouldn鈥檛 it make up the rules to suit its needs? There is, however, an argument that by doing so, America鈥檚 Space Prize will damage the entire alt.space movement.

Easily the most controversial aspects of the prize are rules 7 and 8, which state that 鈥渢he contestant must be domiciled in the United States of America鈥� and 鈥渢he contestant must have its principal place of business in the United States of America鈥�. The prize鈥檚 name should have been a clue. After all, it鈥檚 not 鈥淭he World鈥檚 Space Prize鈥�. Whatever their approach, those eligible to compete for America鈥檚 Space Prize will have at least one thing in common: they will all be rooted on US soil. In this, America鈥檚 Space Prize is distinctly at odds with the X prize, which drew competitors from about a dozen nations. It is also at odds with the ethos of the alt.space movement, which is fundamentally global in character.

Profit motive

At one level this ethos is idealistic. Alt.spacers long ago concluded that the only route to a space revolution lay in galvanising and sustaining worldwide popular interest.

But there are practical reasons for it too. The long-range goal of alt.space is to increase humanity鈥檚 reach ever further beyond Earth in search of inspiration, resources and, yes, profits. As such alt.space is fundamentally free-market in character, opposed to anything that impedes the competitive forces that should allow the best and most innovative to triumph. If Bigelow Aerospace is sincere about wanting to open the floodgates of innovation, shouldn鈥檛 America鈥檚 Space Prize cast the net as wide as possible? Does it matter where competitors are based?

Unfortunately, in this case it matters a lot. Once Bigelow Aerospace decided that America鈥檚 Space Prize would serve its own needs, the company鈥檚 hand was forced. The problem lies with the regulatory environment in the US. America鈥檚 Space Prize may have a whiff of xenophobia about it, but this pales in comparison with the paranoia that emanates from the US government when it comes to sharing technology with the rest of the world.

As just a small example, I asked Gold if he could email 快猫短视频 a few photos of Bigelow鈥檚 test modules. Gold said he couldn鈥檛. The magazine is based in London, and so sending photos of the technology would constitute a violation of the US International Traffic in Arms Regulations, otherwise known as ITAR, a set of laws created to prevent hostile nations from acquiring US technology.

No one would seriously argue that the UK is a hostile nation, and photos hardly constitute acquiring a technology (particularly since unofficial versions are readily available on the web). But ITAR is draconian legislation that has needlessly stifled the alt.space sector before. In the late 1990s, a deal to commercialise the ageing Mir space station was undone by ITAR constraints over the transfer of technology from the US to Russia.

None of this has been lost on Bigelow Aerospace. The technology at the heart of its modules is subject to ITAR, and so the company is in a bind. 鈥淲e鈥檝e got a lot of respect for the Russians and the accomplishments of non-US space companies,鈥� says Gold. 鈥淏ut you鈥檝e got an export regime in the US that makes working with any foreign entity very difficult.鈥� Hence the US-only rule.

On a practical level, perhaps none of this really matters. Whatever its ideals, the alt.space movement is, to all intents and purposes, a US movement. There are more alt.space players in the US than anywhere else, and they easily command the most investment dollars. America鈥檚 blend of free-market zeal, access to high technology and long-standing alt.space culture all make it a fertile environment for the entrepreneurial space sector. And so, at least for now, America鈥檚 Space Prize stands to lose little by excluding non-US competitors.

The rules also contain loopholes that give non-US players room for manoeuvre. There鈥檚 nothing to stop competitors using foreign subcontractors or launch sites. And the US-only restriction does not stop foreign companies from aiming directly for the jackpot 鈥� all they have to do is set up an independent US operation, as UK-based Starchaser Industries recently did (though the company emphasises that its move was not motivated by the prize). What is more, America鈥檚 Space Prize isn鈥檛 the only competition in town (see 鈥淧rize fever鈥�).

Even so, to deter the rest of the world could be a mistake. After all, the most reliable manned spacecraft is Soyuz, and Russian, European and Chinese rockets now compete on an even footing with US ones. Exploration, too, is no longer just a US-Russia game. President Bush may have vowed to return to the moon, but NASA鈥檚 plans are still on the drawing board and the only craft anywhere near the moon right now is the European Space Agency鈥檚 SMART-1 probe. If China鈥檚 space programme continues to match rhetoric with performance, the next people on the moon might be taikonauts, not astronauts.

America鈥檚 Space Prize, however pragmatic it may be, threatens to lead the alt.space revolution down a blind alley, both by cutting off innovation from outside the US, and by encouraging the rest of the world to tune out. And that would be a serious mistake.