Something different....prizes

I’m sorry I have not provided much input in the last two weeks I’ve been working on a bunch of related issues, but not making much direct hardware progress.

I’ve seen much on-line discussion of the Google Lunar X prize. Its a cool prize and significant purse, but I think it pales in comparision to the briliance of the origional X-prize.

I think a good prize should have several charactoristics:

1. It should seem like its possible to win a bunch of $. A prize that costs 15M to win 20M is not a prize. There were a lot of people that thought they could win the origional X prize for less than 2M, they were wrong, but it appeared at first blush like it was possible.


2. When the winner is successful it should create a market. The origional Xprize kick started a rush to do suborbital tourisum.


3. The rules should be very simple, the core concept should be a paragraph or less.

I think the world really needs a low cost access to orbit prize. The primary barrier to becoming a spacefaring civilization is the cost to orbit. The traditional players have no incentive to really change this.

Pauls Ideal Orbital prize:

• 10M for the first group to orbit a reusable vehicle.


• Must orbit at least 4 times above 100 km.


• Must return intact.


• Must repeat within one month.

Reusable means:

• All stages are recovered and reused.


• No more than 10% of the inert stage mass may be replaced.


• The replacement/refurbishment does not cost more than 100K per flight.

Possible Modifications:

• Change the amount to 25M and require it carry a single person. For the first of the two flights the person could be simulated. (IE record accelerations temps, pressures etc.. prove person could survive.)


• Remove the reuseablity requirement and substitute a low cost requirement. IE a fullt accounted cost to build and launch the 2^nd flight for less than $200K.

Enough pontificating for one day. Those of you who have followed my blog for a long time will know we lost our 15yr old dog in October. Last Friday we acquired a 3 month old puppy from the Hellen Woodward anmial shelter. I’ve spent the weekend playing with the puppy, I only built one rocket part all  weekend.