With the moon visible overhead, Armadillo Aerospace unsuccessfully attempted to win the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge at the Wirefly X PRIZE Cup this weekend at Holloman Air Force Base. The only competitor of nine ready to go for the event, Armadillo Aerospace, led by John Carmack of Doom and Quake fame, experienced both successes and failures during multiple launch attempts. While able to rise 50 meters from the launch pad, move laterally 50 meters, and land after staying aloft at least 90 seconds, the teams vehicle was not able to repeat this feat to return to the launch pad within two and a half hours as required by competition rules. Earlier failures included thrust vectoring problems due to a crack in the vehicle’s engine and an aborted launch soon after liftoff. The team was able to repair some damage rapidly to try again later, but their final attempt on Sunday ended in disaster, with flames engulfing the vehicle immediately after the launch sequence began.

Armadillo Aerospace, a private company started by Doom and Quake game developer John Carmack, has been the leading contender for the prize that is intended to accelerate techniques and innovations for future lunar landers. The other eight registrants were not ready by the time of the event to compete. At stake is $350,000 in prize money for first place in level one of the competition. Level two will award a larger prize but requires 180 seconds aloft over rough terrain. Peter Diamandis, Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation, explained to the audience that the competition’s return flight requirement is meant to demonstrate reusability of the vehicle within a short amount of time by a small team of technicians. This contrasts with shuttle launches that require many people, several months, and approximately US$1,000,000,000 in costs for turnaround.

The failure by Armadillo Aerospace to walk away with the prize opens up the competition to other teams during the 2008 X PRIZE Cup. According to a representative for the Speed Up team, they only need a few more months to make “Laramie Rose,” their entry vehicle, ready for competition.

A race to space is shaping up in the private industry and once a year the public is invited to see the latest breakthroughs, vehicles, and competitions intended to accelerate this progress. The Wirefly X PRIZE Cup was held October 26 through 28 at the Holloman Air Force Base near Alamogordo, New Mexico, USA. Combined with the annual Holloman Air and Space Expo, the event featured a single competitor attempt to win the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, exhibits, flyovers, and, perhaps, a brief lull in space enthusiasm.

• Event Announcement
• Armadillo Aerospace’s Latest Competition Attempt Fails

• 2007 Space Elevator Games
• Davis County Event Center, Greater Salt Lake City Area, USA
• October 19-21, 2007
• Description:
  

  • What: Space Elevator extravaganza, including:
    • Space Elevator Power Beaming Competition
    • Space Elevator Tether Strength Competition
    • Space Elevator Multimedia Special
    • Space Elevator Models
    • NEW! Light Racing - (details) - K-12, families, and Grown-ups ($10,000 in prizes)
  • Why: Because the future is a lot closer than it appears!

[History] | [Commentary]

Plenty of space blogs, organizations, and media outlets are marked last Thursday as the 50 year anniversary of the first artificial satellite in Earth orbit, Sputnik 1. On October 04, 1957 Russia surprised the United States by demonstrating their technological prowess with the successful launch of Sputnik 1. The “artificial moon” did little more than beep:

[Audio file] Sputnik 1 Beeping

but it became the historic launching point for a space race between nations that would culminate with man on the moon.

It is difficult to put into context what Sputnik 1 really marked. We most certainly take space travel for granted now. Prior to October 04, 1957, the best humans could do was touch the edge of space with rockets. Sputnik 1 was fundamentally different, an artifact of mankind that entered, and remained in for three months, a frontier unexplored, by any life form that had ever existed in the billions of years of Earth history. 4,500,000,000 years after the formation of the Earth, perhaps 3,300,000,000 years after the first life forms arose on the planet’s surface, millions of years of primate evolution and tens of thousands of years of modern human development and civilization, we are only 50 years into a presence in outer space.

No other life form in Earth history is known to have directed, let alone created, artifacts like Sputnik 1. Humans alone demonstrate such technological capabilities. We alone can create an artifact that beeps in a near-vacuum to let its creators know it is still there and still functioning, and then find ourselves 50 years later dependent on constellations of much more capable devices that enable activities other life forms cannot even comprehend. Humanity abstracts, humanity acts, humanity adapts and humanity spreads into the great frontiers.

A common question asked in this age of robotic exploration 50 years after the first aluminum technological artifact entered Earth orbit is “Why should we send people into space?” That is the wrong question. The only question is “When?” We will walk again on the moon, and on Mars, and on a myriad other landscapes. Some of us will indeed make our home in space and on worlds other than Earth. We will spread out through the solar system and beyond. Humans will do these things because we repeatedly move forward despite our ramblings about “Why?” Many of us don’t ask why and we just do. A million people ask us why we are doing what we are doing and we simply continue to do. We organize conferences and protests, forge new laws and social constraints, debate for hours, hire politicians to continue the debate ad infinitum, write emotional commentary, and not a single one of these activities stop us from doing the things we keep asking ourselves “Why?” about. We just do, because that is what we do.

Is space too risky, too expensive? Yes. And we will move out into space nonetheless.

Image Credit: NASA/Asif A. Siddiqi - “Sputnik 1“

• 2007 Wirefly X PRIZE Cup
• Holloman Air Force Base, NM, USA
• October 26 - 28, 2007
• Description:
  

  A celebration of forward-looking technology, space exploration and education.

  A true “rocket festival” held in beautiful New Mexico, the Wirefly X Prize Cup brings together science, technology, space exploration and interactive education: the general public experiences how dreams about new frontiers come true through real-time competition for new aerospace technologies.

I ran across this great news on Digg.com. Pay attention, folks. We are turning the exponential bend…

“LifePort has received approval from the FAA test its space elevator prototype. In early fall, a balloon will carry a elevator ribbon up to a mile high. Robotic lifters will then crawl up and down the cable testing the feasibility of the project.”

read more | digg story

Burt Rutan and Sir Richard Branson have agreed to form a new company to build new sub-orbital spacecraft for the emerging personal spaceflight industry. “The Spaceship Company” will provide equipment and launch vehicles using technology licensed from Scaled Composites for space tourism operators, including Virgin Galactic. Burt Rutan is president of Scaled Composites, the company that built the first generation manned rocket SpaceShipOne and its White Knight launch aircraft which eventually allowed them to win the US$10,000,000 Ansari X Prize last year. Sir Richard Branson is the founder of the Virgin Group of Companies, including the recently formed Virgin Galactic which plans to take paying tourists to sub-orbital destinations.

The personal spaceflight industry received a jump start with the first successful launch of a manned vehicle by a private company on October 4, 2004. The Ansari X Prize had been modeled after a similar prize that helped launch the airline industry in the early 1900s. Scaled Composites completed two successful launches less than a week apart using the same reusable vehicles to capture the prize.

During the prize-winning second launch, SpaceShipOne was carried by White Knight to nearly 16.8 kilometers (10.4 miles) where it was released to rocket up to 112 kilometers (69.7 miles). The height set a new record for a manned flight by a private company. Several other companies are working on their own technology as private industry becomes more interested in space efforts including tourism and mining. The industry’s next goal is to develop technology for reaching Earth orbit.

Meanwhile, the formation of “The Spaceship Company” appears to herald the coming rush of tourism to sub-orbital destinations. Thrill seekers and enthusiasts are expected to pay up to US$200,000 for tickets to board next-generation vehicles that will spend only a few short minutes at the edge of space. As private business increasingly views space as a financial opportunity, industry supporters also hope their own successes will reinvigorate government manned space flight programs, now limited to the United States, Russia, and China. With the NASA space shuttle fleet expected to be retired in 2010 if not sooner and as more countries develop their own space programs, the opportunities for private industry appear to be more numerous than ever.

More Information

• Scaled Composites Press Release, July 27, 2005 - “Branson and Rutan Form ‘The Spaceship Company’ To Jointly Manufacture and Market Spaceships for the new Sub-Orbital Personal Spaceflight Industry“
• Scaled Composites, LLC
• Virgin Galactic
• X Prize Foundation

NASA grounded the remaining space shuttle fleet today after video of yesterday’s Discovery launch revealed that a large piece of insulation foam had fallen off the fuel tank. The debris did not hit the Discovery orbiter but the video footage was a frightening reminder of a similar incident that led to the Columbia disaster in 2002 which claimed the lives of all seven astronauts onboard. In that accident a chunk of foam struck Columbia’s left wing. NASA and independent reviewers concluded that hot gases entered the orbiter through the damaged area during reentry, leading to its disintegration.

New measures meant to fix the insulation foam problem apparently failed. Several chunks of the material fell off Discovery’s fuel tank during launch, including one piece over two feet long. As the fuel tank drifted away from the shuttle as they neared orbit, crew members took still images of an area of missing foam. Both crew and NASA engineers will continue the inspection of Discovery over the next few days. So far it appears Discovery was unharmed during launch.

With several ground-based imaging systems trained on Discovery during launch and new technology onboard for the crew to inspect their own vehicle, the safety measures put into place for the STS-114 mission have been unprecedented. However, NASA officials stated in a press briefing earlier today that they will not launch another shuttle until the insulation foam problem has been fixed. What this may mean for the future of the space shuttle program is unclear. The fleet is expected to be retired in 2010.

Future construction on the International Space Station (ISS) depends in part on the space shuttle to ferry equipment, supplies, and new modules. Construction has already been delayed because of the Columbia disaster. Over budget and behind schedule, ISS has not yet realized its original goals, which included a full complement of scientists to conduct cutting-edge research. The smaller crews onboard ISS must spend a large portion of their time on station operations and maintenance rather than scientific research.

NASA and industry partners are developing a next-generation Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) to replace the space shuttle fleet. The first CEV is not expected to be completed until the middle of next decade, leaving a gap in ability to send humans to low-Earth orbit. This gap might be filled by technology being developed by privately-owned companies and other countries, including Russia and China, although no formal arrangements have been considered or made yet.

More Information

• NASA Returns to Flight
• STS-114 Crew