Solo wrote:I think the X-Prize for suborbital tourism should demonstrate that these sort of things don't necessarily get what they want accomplished. They seem to just bend the trajectories of existing organizations working on a problem, not creating much new.
Your words don't seem (to me) to make any sense. The X-Prize absolutely, resoundingly, unquestioningly
did achieve exactly what they wanted to accomplish. The parties involved, from Diamandis on down, are all thrilled with how it pretty much single-handedly jump-started a suborbital tourism industry. In ten years we'll have orders of magnitude more people in space on commercial carriers than have ever gone there as government employees. And ten years or less after that, I predict that some of those commercial carriers will be taking people all the way to orbit. All this after 40 years of stagnation. Sure, it would have happened eventually anyway, but it might have taken a lot longer — the whole space industry was stuck in a deep rut, and it took the X-Prize and Scale Composites to give it the kick in the pants it needed to get moving again. (And in the process, they created several things quite new.)
Solo wrote:The other issue is, look at SS1. That ship can't be scaled up to go into orbit.
Says you, but I don't believe you actually know. I don't believe I actually know, either, but I'm more optimistic about it for several reasons. First, I can think of ways that that ship
could be scaled up to be an important component of an orbital system (say, by using a rotovator for the upper leg). Second, because in a documentary about the X-Prize, the camera catches Burt Rutan with something on his screen that looks vaguely like an SS1, but isn't — and Burt with a big knowing grin on his face. He wouldn't say what it was, but in the same documentary he plainly admits that suborbital is only a stepping stone and his real goal is orbit.
So, I will be greatly surprised if SS1 turns out to be a dead end and not just (!) a profitable step on the path to reliable, profitable ground-to-orbit passenger service.
Best,
— Joe