$50 Million dollar space race

Get your crazy glue and popsicle sticks ready kids.A Nevada millionare's planning another space contest.

www.space.com...

Wow, Excellent news. I have a feeling that the winner to this will be, you guessed it, Scaled Composites.

This just keeps getting better. A Zero-G jet, Sub-Orbital Space Race, the Virgin Galactic offering trips to space for $170,000, and now this, finally it looks like the commercail and public side of space is kicken up dust. (Probably because people are getting pissed at NASA for taking there sweet little time on making public space flights a reality)

I think Scaled will win because they have been hinting they are making a 150 km high version of there ship that can carry 5 or so people. and this Bigelow company says it wants 160km up and to carry 7 people, it wont take to much more for Scaled to kick it up a notch.

Bigelow's plan would challenge teams to build spacecraft capable of more than just suborbital hops, such as maneuvering and docking abilities with Bigelow habitats more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) above Earth and reentering the Earth's atmosphere at 17,500 miles (28,163 kilometers) an hour

However, the biggest problem will be HEAT. I really hope they dont copy Nasa and use those ceramic tiles, those things have to be replaced all the time, and there very time and maintainence intensive. But if they make the ship out off carbon fiber with a special type off heat absorbing paint then they could be able to do it, also they wouldn't have as much heat and speed if they do the same thing to this craft that they did to there current Spaceship One, and thats make the back end of it lift up creating much more drag and slowing it down while at the same time spreading the heat out.

[edit on 27-9-2004 by Murcielago]

wierd coincidence, Nasa want a 100 mile high spaceship by 2008.

Nasa's new mini shuttle

Bigelow is also known for underwriting several UFO researchers. He's a major contributor to the National Institute for Discovery Science... which recently had its study on the Big Black Triangles carried by Space.com and NBC.

WOW things are really moving forward now, scaled composites could be like the new boeing. I wonder what the astronauts will see when they achieve orbit?

Originally posted by ufo3
WOW things are really moving forward now, scaled composites could be like the new boeing. I wonder what the astronauts will see when they achieve orbit?

Earth, Moon, Space. What, are you expecting them to have UFO's circling them.