Robert Bigelow has announced the $50 million America's Space Prize, which is intended to foster private U.S. manned orbital capabilities. The prize goes to the first U.S. company to construct a 5 to 7 passenger manned capsule or vehicle suitable for space station recrewing and to launch it to orbit twice within 60 days.
The prize expires at the end of 2010. The requirements state that only U.S. companies are eligible for the prize, even though foreign investment is welcome. Bigelow states that the winning company is first in line for a servicing contract to his first space station that he is launching in a series of modules between 2008 and 2010.
This guy is putting his money where his mouth is. $50 million is a lot of money and it's entirely possible that this prize will ensure that private manned spaceflight is here to stay.
I have a couple of constructive criticisms. First, there is no second place prize that would have encouraged competition among more than one private space transportation company. Second, this is open to U.S. companies only. One of the great things about the Ansari X-Prize was that the publicity generated was global, since each country had its own horse in the race. Also, having a global prize increases the credibility of the prize-winning company. We can make an educated guess that this company will be from the U.S. anyway, so making it global is a "freebie" in that regard. On the other hand, it may be that Bigelow will have requirements from his future customers, such as NASA or the military, which would have required security clearances for working on its stations. So perhaps it is a forced criteria over which Bigelow has no real control.
To my mind, the front runner for this prize is SpaceX, one of the companies that I have been following on this blog most closely. Perhaps SpaceX can launch such a capsule on its Falcon V vehicle, which is to first launch in 2005 or 2006, and which is launching Bigelow Aerospace's first test space station module.
There are lots of dark horses in the race. Scaled Composites of Mojave, California, the winner of the Ansari X-Prize, could scale up its suborbital vehicle. Burt Rutan, the head of Scaled Composites, has stated his desire to go orbital with a Tier Two program. Armadillo Aerospace, a small outfit in Dallas, has one of the most scalable rocket designs, even though they are relatively early in their development program. Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com's Blue Origin's plans are a real mystery, but he has been hiring for years, even though the company has made no announcements. XCOR, a neighbor of Scaled Composites in Mojave, California, has stated plans to do a suborbital vehicle, but I'm guessing they will not stop their program at suborbital.
In any event, we now know that the next 6 years will be action-packed for private space in the U.S. At least I will enjoy watching the race on Robert Bigelow's dime!
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Posted by: bvpsucktjy | February 15, 2013 at 11:18 PM