rocket race

[Eric Rosenbloom]

A "Development to Watch" in Business Week last . . .

A Space Race with $10 Million for the Winner 
By Petti Fong, Business Week, January 29, 2001

Aviation pioneers battled in the 1920s for the $25,000 Orteig Prize for
making the first nonstop flight across the Atlantic. Charles Lindbergh
won in 1927. Today, wanna-be astronauts are competing for the $10
million X Prize. It will go to the first privately funded craft to carry
three people to suborbital space--100 kilometers up, or 62 miles--and
then repeat the feat within two weeks to prove the craft's commercial
viability for space tourism.

Twenty-one teams from Argentina to Russia, including 12 in the U.S., are
working on rockets or spaceplanes. The newest competitor approved by the
X Prize Foundation is Canadian Arrow, headed by industrial designer
Geoffrey T. Sheerin in London, Ont. By adapting existing technology,
including the engine in Nazi Germany's V2 rockets, Sheerin hopes to
launch a test flight within three years for $5 million.

Canadian Arrow will need to move fast: Five teams are already conducting
test flights. The Mojave (Calif.) group led by aviation pioneer Burt
Rutan has reached the highest point so far: 19 kilometers. A winner
might emerge as soon as next year, says Peter H. Diamandis, a St. Louis
physician who founded the X Prize Foundation and collected the prize
money. That would be fitting: 2002 is the 75th anniversary of
Lindbergh's historic flight.

-----------------------
Argentina? (Gaucho Anarchists, perhaps?) Russia? (Any of them Red
Dopers?) And 12 in the U.S. -- hmmmm. But Nazi Germany's V2 rockets ?!!
(they only went 52 miles up) Is this a ploy to flush out one of those
S-Gerat's? Because, shouldn't they also have to bring the 3 people back
safely? What kind of tourism are they promoting ???  Eh--Petti Fong?

--
Ta-ta, foaks.