Stick To The Basics...

Clark Lindsey is creative with his timeline on private space efforts.

I'd like to believe that private space efforts to get to the moon could beat NASA at it's own game in the race for space - but I can't bring myself to believe it. Imagine that... A private initiative by private citizen's beating big government in space... Reminds me of another Book called Rocket Ship Gallileo.

First of all the only real success civilian or private space initiaves have to draw on is the Space Ship One's win of the X-Prize. But we still don't even have customers flying in the bird yet paying ticket fares. And that's just one supplier, we don't have that essential ingredient for this enchilada of Free Market Enterprise in Space: Competition. I'm sure we will, but until we do thinking about getting to LEO is whole other ball game and requires a lot more effort.

Bigelow's 50 million dollar America Prize is an amazing idea. And I honestly hope I'm wrong in saying this, but I don't believe it's winnable this time around. Bigelow is just too far ahead of his time. A prize like this one would be more usefull in ten years time. Right now we're having problems just getting our collective behinds in sub-orbital let alone LEO, or going Lunar for that matter.

Stick to the basics. Get a sub-orbital tourism market going, and slowly increase the speeds and the altitudes of the vehicles until it becomes another stepping stone to get to LEO. Competition will drive that as soon as TGV, Blue Origin, and SpaceDev come a 'roaring.

It's like Robert Heinlein used to say once your in LEO, you've reached half the energy you'll need to get anywhere else in the solar system. The hardest steps are the first. (Robert Heinlein was the author of Rocket Ship Gallileo, and if you're still breathing and haven't read one of his books I would slap you if I could).

Crap who am I kidding? This world's going to hell in a handbasket faster than a meteorite. I'd better hope we have permanent settlements in space by 2025 at the rate things are going... Go Bigelow! Go!