The Speculist

X Prize Update

Via InstaPundit, here's the latest on the X Prize, a $10 million contest to build the world's first do-it-yourself spaceship. The winning craft will be the first to fly to a height of 62.5 miles twice within a two-week period. (I really like precision of that "point five." Why not fly to 60 miles? Why not 65? Something significant must happen right at 62.5.) There is hope that a winner will claim the prize in time for the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers' flight in December of this year. In fact, the organizers of the X Prize contest are inspired by the big aviation prizes of the 20th century that led to major breakthroughs.

An example:

In 1919, hotel owner Raymond Orteig offered $25,000 to the first person to fly nonstop from New York to Paris - a prize won in 1927 by Charles Lindbergh aboard his Spirit of St. Louis.

What followed was the "Lindbergh boom": Aviation stocks skyrocketed as did public interest in commercial air travel.

Now, thanks to the X Prize, we have "astropreneurs" working feverishly to kick of a new space boom. And get a load of the descriptions of the elegant solutions they're working to implement:

They're pod-like. Cone-shaped. Bullet beauties.

They launch from water. From planes. From ships at sea.

They are named Wild Fire, Aurora, Cosmos Mariner. One is a flying saucer christened The Space Tourist.

This is a space race of a different kind. There's money to be won. By putting money on the line and saying exactly how high/how fast/how many times, the organizers of the X Prize have done a tremendous job of specifying an outcome. In response, the contestants have broadened their thought space as to what will and will not work in low-cost spacecraft design, and are even now pushing out the boundaries of the possible.

We need more contests like this.

UPDATE: Rand Simberg says it time to kill the myth that it takes a huge government bureaucracy to get us into space.