Saturday, October 20, 2007

Moon 2.0 - Your Chance to Ride Along


As you may have noticed in the videos and posters you can find on the the Google Lunar X PRIZE website, we are referring to this competition and the missions spurred by the prize as Moon 2.0. This is also a theme that's been used, to a limited sense, in talking about the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge. While I was in India, I had a few people come up to me and ask me about this particular phrase,

Partly, of course, the Moon 2.0 theme references the fact that we hope the Google Lunar X PRIZE will kick off a second era of extensive lunar exploration, similar to the era of Lunar Orbiters, Rangers, Surveyors, Lunas, Lunokhods Zond, and Apollo missions. That rationale for the Moon 2.0 theme is apparent, but there's another reason that perhaps isn't as obvious--or maybe just doesn't translate as easily across generational or language gaps.

These days, a lot of the talk about the Internet--at least among my peers here in the USA--is about Web 2.0. This isn't a new internet protocol or a separate network (like Internet2). Instead, Web 2.0 represents a new way of thinking about the internet. If Web 1.0 was about portals and "push" technology--content produced by a central body and served up for the public--Web 2.0 is about public participation, sharing, and, increasingly often, user generated content. If Web 1.0 was a unprecedented and useful window to an enormous library, Web 2.0 is a new sort of town hall, where all users can participate.

We believe that the second era of lunar exploration will have an incredibly important aspect of public participation, and in a way fundamentally different than the first such era. Moon 1.0, to be sure--especially the Apollo mission--captured the public imagination to an extent rarely seen in any endeavor, regardless of the industry. But the members of the public were, for the most part, passive observers in the program, watching the events unfold from home.

This time around, it will be much more common for ordinary citizens from all around the world to actually play a role in the competition. Not only can any person from any country take part by forming or joining a team, but they will also be able to virtually 'ride along' with the lunar probes in new kind of way. I expect that each of our Google Lunar X PRIZE teams will find a new and unique way to do this, but the X PRIZE Foundation has already launched one: the Lunar Legacy program.

As part of the requirements for the Google Lunar X PRIZE, each team will be required to carry a small amount of payload provided by the X PRIZE Foundation to the surface of the Moon. Part of that payload space (and, more importantly, mass) will be used to carry a memory device that carries photos and messages provided by members of the viewing public through this program. Much as Apollo Astronaut Charlie Duke left a photograph of his family on the lunar surface as a symbol or inspiration and a lasting legacy of mankind's first voyages to the Moon, this program will allow anyone to send, for example, a photo of a loved one, to express their support or any other message. At the announcement of the Google Lunar X PRIZE, we took literally hundreds of photos of students, families, and enthusiasts to be included in part of this program. Then, we opened it up to allow anyone to participate.


Every once in a while, we'll spotlight a particularly interesting entry in the Lunar Legacy gallery. Today, I'd like to point you to a particularly poignant one. It would be hard for me to express it any more eloquently than the poster did herself, so if I may quote:

Robert P. (Bob) Verdier was a Boeing test conductor during the Apollo years. On July 16, 1969, he wrote and posted letters to each of his children. When they arrived a few days later in the mail, he said we could open them right away or put them in a safe place for future reading. I gave mine back to him to keep for me. After he died, my mom had boxes of his work life she wanted us to have. In amongst the old Saturn V firing manuals, badges and flightline passes, was his unopened letter to me.

.

Her father ends the letter by imploring the next generation to "use it wisely"--to treasure the ability to reach out to our celestial neighbors. With Moon 2.0, finally--finally--my generation, not yet born during Moon 1.0, gets a chance to do just that.

Update: Funnily, just as I posted this, comedian Stephen Colbert is interviewing Apollo astronaut Jim Lovell on his television show, The Colbert Report. At the beginning of a pretty entertaining (and very complementary, for Colbert) interview, Colbert said, talking about his childhood fascination with the Apollo program and the people who made that possible: "my childhood was better than my children's childhood, because I had these heroes to look up to." I'm hopeful that Moon 2.0 can change that!

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Space Adventures Announces 1st Second Generation Astronaut

Space Adventures, Ltd., the world’s leading space experiences company, announced today that famed game developer Richard Garriott, son of former NASA astronaut Owen Garriott, has begun preparations for a “commercially active” mission to the International Space Station (ISS).


Mr. Garriott’s spaceflight, currently planned for October 2008, will be the first in a series of missions that will accommodate commercial activity aboard the ISS. Involvement from the private sector can include scientific and environmental research and educational outreach programming.


“It has always been Space Adventures’ goal to open the space frontier. Now, with Richard’s flight, we have designed a series of missions devoted to increase commercial involvement in manned space missions,” said Eric Anderson, president and CEO of Space Adventures. “It is a very rare occasion when so many commercial opportunities are available in one space mission. We encourage interested parties to contact us.”


Space Adventures made history in 2001 by organizing the mission of the first private space explorer. Now, the company continues to bring innovation to manned space flight by enabling corporate and non-profit entities to participate in commercial endeavors on the planet’s only orbiting outpost.


“I am dedicating my spaceflight to science,” said Mr. Garriott. “It is my goal to devote a significant amount of my time aboard the space station to science, engineering and educational projects. I understand the necessity for conducting research in extreme environments whether it is collecting microorganisms from deep sea hydrothermal vents to carrying out experiments in the continuous micro-gravity of Earth orbit.” He continued, “We need to be adventurous in mind and stimulate our intellects to answer today’s most daunting scientific questions and to invent tomorrow’s technological marvels.”


The first commercial research partner involved in Mr. Garriott’s mission is ExtremoZyme, Inc., a biotechnology company co-founded by Owen Garriott. The company plans to conduct protein crystallization experiments in space with proteins that have important cellular functions and are usually associated with common human diseases. Having access to these superior crystals will enable researchers to learn more about the molecular details of these proteins which is essential for protein engineering and structure-guided drug design.


“Because of my career, it was almost natural for Richard to be interested in space and exploration. I am so pleased that he is able to embrace this himself and that he is dedicating his flight to research. I am very proud of him,” said Owen Garriott, Mr. Garriott’s father and former NASA astronaut (Skylab II/SL-3, STS-9/Spacelab-1).


Interested parties, including commercial and non-profit entities and space enthusiasts, can get involved in Mr. Garriott’s spaceflight via his web site (www.richardinspace.com). Mr. Garriott will be updating the site continuously via photos, blog entries and individuals can submit questions and suggestions for his mission activities. “I want to involve as many people as possible in my mission,” said Mr. Garriott.

About Richard Garriott:

Richard Garriott is best known as a key figure in the computer gaming field. He was one of the earliest and most successful game developers. Mr. Garriott developed the Ultima series which remains the longest running computer game franchise, and with his brother, Robert, he founded Origin Systems, one of the most respected PC game developers and publishers. Richard also created Ultima Online, which ushered in the new massively multi-player online (MMO) genre, the fastest growing segment in computer gaming today. More recently, he co-founded the North American arm of NCsoft, the world’s largest online game developer and publisher. In October, his latest game, Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa, will ship in North America and in the European Union. For more information, please visit www.rgtr.com.


About Space Adventures:

Space Adventures, the company that organized the flights for the world’s first private space explorers: Dennis Tito, Mark Shuttleworth, Greg Olsen, Anousheh Ansari and Charles Simonyi, is headquartered in Vienna, Va. with an office in Moscow. It offers a variety of programs such as the availability today for spaceflight missions to the International Space Station and around the moon, Zero-Gravity flights, cosmonaut training, spaceflight qualification programs and reservations on future suborbital spacecrafts. The company's advisory board includes Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin, Shuttle astronauts Sam Durrance, Tom Jones, Byron Lichtenberg, Norm Thagard, Kathy Thornton, Pierre Thuot, Charles Walker, Skylab/Shuttle astronaut Owen Garriott and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Usachev.

Saturday, October 6, 2007

Space Adventures Announces 1st Second Generation Astronaut

First private spaceflight open to commercial involvement in mission activities.
September 28 2007


Space Adventures, Ltd., the world’s leading space experiences company, announced today that famed game developer Richard Garriott, son of former NASA astronaut Owen Garriott, has begun preparations for a “commercially active” mission to the International Space Station (ISS).


Mr. Garriott’s spaceflight, currently planned for October 2008, will be the first in a series of missions that will accommodate commercial activity aboard the ISS. Involvement from the private sector can include scientific and environmental research and educational outreach programming.


“It has always been Space Adventures’ goal to open the space frontier. Now, with Richard’s flight, we have designed a series of missions devoted to increase commercial involvement in manned space missions,” said Eric Anderson, president and CEO of Space Adventures. “It is a very rare occasion when so many commercial opportunities are available in one space mission. We encourage interested parties to contact us.”


Space Adventures made history in 2001 by organizing the mission of the first private space explorer. Now, the company continues to bring innovation to manned space flight by enabling corporate and non-profit entities to participate in commercial endeavors on the planet’s only orbiting outpost.


“I am dedicating my spaceflight to science,” said Mr. Garriott. “It is my goal to devote a significant amount of my time aboard the space station to science, engineering and educational projects. I understand the necessity for conducting research in extreme environments whether it is collecting microorganisms from deep sea hydrothermal vents to carrying out experiments in the continuous micro-gravity of Earth orbit.” He continued, “We need to be adventurous in mind and stimulate our intellects to answer today’s most daunting scientific questions and to invent tomorrow’s technological marvels.”


The first commercial research partner involved in Mr. Garriott’s mission is ExtremoZyme, Inc., a biotechnology company co-founded by Owen Garriott. The company plans to conduct protein crystallization experiments in space with proteins that have important cellular functions and are usually associated with common human diseases. Having access to these superior crystals will enable researchers to learn more about the molecular details of these proteins which is essential for protein engineering and structure-guided drug design.


“Because of my career, it was almost natural for Richard to be interested in space and exploration. I am so pleased that he is able to embrace this himself and that he is dedicating his flight to research. I am very proud of him,” said Owen Garriott, Mr. Garriott’s father and former NASA astronaut (Skylab II/SL-3, STS-9/Spacelab-1).


Interested parties, including commercial and non-profit entities and space enthusiasts, can get involved in Mr. Garriott’s spaceflight via his web site (www.richardinspace.com). Mr. Garriott will be updating the site continuously via photos, blog entries and individuals can submit questions and suggestions for his mission activities. “I want to involve as many people as possible in my mission,” said Mr. Garriott.

About Richard Garriott:

Richard Garriott is best known as a key figure in the computer gaming field. He was one of the earliest and most successful game developers. Mr. Garriott developed the Ultima series which remains the longest running computer game franchise, and with his brother, Robert, he founded Origin Systems, one of the most respected PC game developers and publishers. Richard also created Ultima Online, which ushered in the new massively multi-player online (MMO) genre, the fastest growing segment in computer gaming today. More recently, he co-founded the North American arm of NCsoft, the world’s largest online game developer and publisher. In October, his latest game, Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa, will ship in North America and in the European Union. For more information, please visit www.rgtr.com.


About Space Adventures:

Space Adventures, the company that organized the flights for the world’s first private space explorers: Dennis Tito, Mark Shuttleworth, Greg Olsen, Anousheh Ansari and Charles Simonyi, is headquartered in Vienna, Va. with an office in Moscow. It offers a variety of programs such as the availability today for spaceflight missions to the International Space Station and around the moon, Zero-Gravity flights, cosmonaut training, spaceflight qualification programs and reservations on future suborbital spacecrafts. The company's advisory board includes Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin, Shuttle astronauts Sam Durrance, Tom Jones, Byron Lichtenberg, Norm Thagard, Kathy Thornton, Pierre Thuot, Charles Walker, Skylab/Shuttle astronaut Owen Garriott and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Usachev.

Monday, October 1, 2007

First female space tourist blasts into space (Roundup)

Moscow - The world's first female space tourist Anousheh Ansari launched from Kazakhstan on a Russian Soyuz rocket Monday, heading to the International Space Station (ISS) with the orbiter's new crew.


Ansari, 40, an Iranian-American telecommunications entrepreneur, Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin and American astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria blasted off punctually at 10:08 a.m. (0408 GMT) from the Baikonur space centre, Russian mission control said.

Meanwhile, there was concern about the appearance of smoke or vapours on the ISS, apparently emanating from a faulty oxygen generator.

Authorities told the three-man crew to don protective suits with goggles, but said the situation was under control.

'The situation on the ISS is normal, there is not danger, and certainly no fears for the safety of the crew, Roskosmos space agency spokesman Igor Panarin told the Interfax news agency.

The incoming Soyuz is due to dock with the space station early Wednesday. Commander Tyurin and Lopez-Alegria will serve on the ISS for six months while Ansari should return to earth on September 28 with the station's departing crew.

The businesswoman went through the lift-off eyes wide, as footage from NASA, the US space agency, showed. Worried that she was becoming overexcited, Russian controllers told her professional companions to calm her as they embarked on the two-day journey to the station.

'If she carries on turning her head so frantically it may affect how she feels and spoil her first days in orbit, and we want her to receive maximum enjoyment from the flight,' flight director Vladimir Solovyov said.

As the Soyuz rose for nine minutes into its designated orbit Ansari's mascot for the trip, a small toy badger, swung on a string from the capsule ceiling above her. The amateur space traveller gave a smile of wonderment as it then began to float in the conditions of weightlessness.

Ansari, who left Iran at age 16 and is now a US citizen living in Dallas, was preceded in space by three other so-called space tourists, all men.

Paying some 20 million US dollars for the trip, she says she hopes her life and space voyage will inspire young people worldwide, 'especially women and girls.'

During her eight-day stay, she will conduct scientific experiments for the European Space Agency ESA into the effects of anaemia and backache in zero gravity.

The ISS is currently crewed by three people. While German Thomas Reiter will stay on board until later in the year, Russian cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov and American Jeffrey Williams will be busy with cleaning chores during their last hours in orbit, officials said.

The new crew, which is the station's 14th, will have an especially intensive programme.

Four space walks are planned for their stay, during one of which Tyurin will drive a golf ball as part of an advertisement for a Canadian company. The stunt was to have been filmed by the current crew but was postponed amid safety worries.

Three unmanned progress supply ships and at least one US space shuttle are also due to dock at the ISS in the coming months.

To make way for the approaching Soyuz capsule carrying Ansari, the shuttle Atlantis undocked from the station Sunday after completing three spacewalks to install a truss and two solar arrays on the orbital outpost. It is scheduled to land in Florida Wednesday.

The Soyuz will now orbit the planet 22 times as it move into the same flight path as the ISS, which flies around 400 kilometres above the earth. The capsule is due to dock at 0525 GMT Wednesday.

The journey is the culmination of a lifetime of interest in space for Ansari. After selling her Internet company Telecom Technologies in 2001 for 750 million dollars, she was in a position to lend serious clout to efforts to develop private space flight.

She and her family provided sponsorship for the Ansari X Prize, and a ten-million-dollar award for the first non-governmental organization to launch a reusable manned craft into space twice in two weeks. This feat was accomplished by designer Burt Rutan in 2004.
http://monstersandcritics.com

Leads to Space Settlement

Space tourism is a reality. Four tourists have traveled to the International Space Station (ISS) at their own expense and at least four companies are developing sub-orbital tourist vehicles (Virgin Galactic, Space Adventures, Rocketplane Kistler, and Blue Origin). Not only does space tourism extend the freedom to travel into space for those with the means, it promises a profitable market to develop the launch vehicles necessary to expand life throughout the solar system. Space tourism may solve the single most difficult problem holding up space settlement: safe and inexpensive transportation from the surface of the Earth to Low Earth Orbit.

Present launch capabilities, while sufficient for communications, remote sensing, some space science and limited manned operations, are grossly inadequate for large scale space settlement. By space settlement we mean very large numbers of people living in giant orbital spacecraft, on the Moon, on Mars and/or within large asteroids. Space settlement could provides humanity with hundreds of times more living area, thousands of time more physical resources, and millions of times more energy than is presently at our disposal. Such a vast expansion of the resources available to human civilization would eliminate the need, although perhaps not the practice, of resource-driven war. Such warfare kills and maims large numbers of people and destroys their work. Substantially better launch capacity is a necessary precursor to space settlement, but progress over the last 50 years has been disappointing. Space tourism may change that.

Over the last 50 years a wide variety of launchers have been developed, up to and including the U.S. Space Shuttle, the most capable space vehicle to date. However, in spite of decades of development, Earth-to-Orbit transportation costs thousands of dollars per kilogram and suffers a catastrophic failure rate of a one or two percent. Worse, these figures have not improved with time. For example, the Saturn V was developed in the 1960’s to put men on the Moon. This vehicle cost less, measured in man-hours per ton to LEO (Low Earth Orbit), than today’s major launch vehicles. Furthermore, the Saturn never suffered a catastrophic failure, although there were many close calls. By contrast, current shuttle costs run between $500-1,000 million per flight to deliver, at most, a few tens of tons of payload to the International Space Station, and the shuttle has suffered two catastrophic failures in just over a hundred flights.

Aircraft developed much more rapidly in their first 50 years. This may be because hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of flights occurred in that period, but we have only launched a few thousand payloads into space. Substantial launch vehicle improvement may require tens of thousands of launches per year, not the current 50-70. Unfortunately, current markets for space launch: communications, Earth-observing, science, national prestige, etc. cannot support hundreds of launches per year, let alone tens of thousands. However, a new space market has recently been created: Space Adventures, Ltd. and the Russian space program have flown four tourists to the ISS, reputedly for about $20 million apiece. Although the ISS was originally intended to serve a host of space applications, it has not yet done so for a variety of reasons. Space tourism
may be the legacy of the ISS, and it could be a very good one indeed.

The only market for humans-in-space potentially capable of sustaining thousands of flights per year is tourism, if the cost is in the $100,000 range or less. If the price is in the $10,000 range, millions of flights can be supported. Published market research suggests that the space tourism market may become very large if the price is right. In 1994, Patrick Colins, et all found that the Japanese market could provide about one million customers per year for space flight at about $10,000 per passenger. In 1996, Sven Abitzsch found that approximately 20% of the U.S., Canadian and German populations and nearly 40% of the Japanese population would be will to pay over $10,000 (actually, six months salary) for a trip into space. This represents nearly a hundred million people. In 1999, Oily Barrett found that 12% of United Kingdom residents, representing 3.5 million people, said they were willing to pay over $10,000 for a trip to space. In 2001, Crouch surveyed the literature and found that the global space tourism market is a strong function of price, with an annual demand of five million per year at $10,000 per flight and 170 at $500,00 per flight, representing annual markets of $5 billion and $85 million respectively. Table 1 shows Crouch’s demand vs. price per ticket. If these projections are optimistic by no more than a factor of ten, and the price per ticket can be brought down sufficiently, there is good reason to believe space tourism can support tens of thousands of launches per year or more, a rate comparable to the early decades of aviation.

price/ticket (1994 $) passengers/year
$1,000 20 million
$10,000 5 million
$100,000 400 thousand
$250,000 1,000
$500,000 170

All human-capable orbital vehicles to date have been developed as national projects by the U.S., Russia/USSR, and China. For sub-orbital vehicles the picture is quite different. Spurred by the $10 million Ansari X-Prize, a change in the way launch development was rewarded, Scaled Composites, LLC built and flew SpaceShipOne into space twice in as many weeks in 2004. Interestingly, these were the only U.S. manned space flights that year as the Shuttle was grounded after a fatal accident in 2003. While Scaled Composites reportedly spent considerably more than the purse to win, other commercial deals involving advertising and technology sales netted a small profit. As a direct result, Scaled is now developing SpaceShipTwo for Virgin Galactic. Virgin Galactic is building a space port in New Mexico and intends to fly tourists into space for two hundred thousand dollars per trip within a few years. Furthermore, Virgin has serious competitors.

Space tourism may lead to large numbers of people traveling to space in the next few decades. Burt Rutan, the technical genius behind SpaceShipOne, made a prediction in a 2004 talk in San Jose, CA:
Within 5 years 3,000 tourists will have been to space.
Within 15 years sub-orbital tourism will be affordable, and 50,000 people will have flown.
Within 15 years the first, expensive orbital tourist flights will have happened.
Within 25 years orbital tourism will be affordable.

Space settlement has tremendous potential benefits for mankind but requires a much more robust and inexpensive launch capacity than is available today. Traditional approaches to improving launch have failed to deliver a sufficiently capable system over the last few decades and shows little promise of doing so. To address this issue, we propose orienting launch development towards the tourist market, which, at the right price, is large enough to support tens of thousands of flights per year. Just as computers once cost millions of dollars and were only available to the few, space tourism today is the province of the wealthy. However, as the cost of computers plunged, they have become part of everyday life for the world’s middle-class. Space tourism promises to do something similar for personal space flight. Just as one day millions of years ago life, for whatever reason, crawled out of the oceans and onto dry land, space tourism may well begin the spread of life throughout our solar system.
sorce
http://www.nss.org