[ExI] FW: SpaceX achieves orbit!

Tom Nowell nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk
Tue Sep 30 23:02:48 UTC 2008


I was mostly interested in the SpaceX effort because they were offering themselves as a "preferred partner" for the Lunar X prize. I like the idea of the Lunar X prize, but there are a lot of obstacles in the way:
1. Current economic climate means sponsors are now thin on the ground.
2. Launching a decent payload is expensive (even cheap launches cost millions, and who knows if there will be decent large launches someone else is paying most of the cost of for you to piggyback on, given current economics and government budgets?)
3. Getting to the moon will take even more energy - but then again some missions have made it there slowly using Hall Effect thrusters.
4. Lunar landing is a tough job, and caused a lot of failures for NASA and the USSR in the 60s - will people aim for a soft landing or a "controlled crash"?
 There's 4 years and 3 months left to claim the main prize, here's hoping someone can make it. My personal hope is for the Romanian team, simply because I want to see someone launch a payload from a balloon and then see that payload do something impressive.

Tom


      



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