Summary: Rocketeers E-Book

BusinessNews Publishing

• Herausgeber: Business Book Summaries
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 48

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

The must-read summary of Michael Belfiore's book: "Rocketeers: How a Visionary Band of Business Leaders, Engineers and Pilots Is Boldly Privatizing Space".

This complete summary of the ideas from Michael Belfiore's book "Rocketeers" shows how entrepreneurs can successfully exploit scientific goals. In his book, the author demonstrates how the X-price has had far-reaching effects. Entrepreneurs can stimulate not only the economy, but also technological advance. This summary explains how the rules of entrepreneurship are changing and what this means for the future of space tourism.

Added-value of this summary:
• Save time
• Understand key concepts
• Expand your knowledge

To learn more, read "Rocketeers" and discover the impact of the X-Price strategy.

Leseprobe

Book Presentation Rocketeers by Michael Belfiore

About the Author

Important Note About This Ebook

Summary of Rocketeers (Michael Belfiore)

The X-Prize Concept

Burt Rutan and SpaceShipOne

The X-Prize Flights

NASA Gets in on the Act

Space Tourism

Hotels in Space and Spaceports on Earth

Other Potential Applications

Book Presentation Rocketeers by Michael Belfiore

About the Author

MICHAEL BELFIORE is a freelance journalist who has been covering commercial space flight for a number of years. He has written numerous articles on the subject which have been published in Popular Science, Wired News, Reuters, New Scientist and a number of other publications. He is also a passionate science fiction fan.

Important Note About This Ebook

This is a summary and not a critique or a review of the book. It does not offer judgment or opinion on the content of the book. This summary may not be organized chapter-wise but is an overview of the main ideas, viewpoints and arguments from the book as a whole. This means that the organization of this summary is not a representation of the book.

Summary of Rocketeers (Michael Belfiore)

The X-Prize Concept

The foundations of what is today the multi-billion-dollar commercial aviation industry were never laid by government funding or by a tightly coordinated research and development program. Instead, a group of tinkerers, garage inventors and part-timers responded to a series of cash prizes which were offered by some of the premier institutions and individuals of that era. Some of these prizes were small and obscure while others garnered huge public interest –

10,000 French francs for whoever could accomplish fifteen minutes of sustained flight.10,000 British pounds for the first nonstop transatlantic flight.$10,000 for the first flight between New York and Albany, a distance of 134 miles by air.$25,000 for the first nonstop flight between New York and Paris – won by Charles Lindbergh flying The Spirit of St. Louis in May, 1927.

When entrepreneur Peter Diamandis read Charles Lindbergh’s biography, he realized that Lindbergh’s main motivation in making the nonstop flight between New York and Paris had simply been to win the prize on offer rather than to be a heroic trailblazer. As Diamandis read that, he had an epiphany. He thought that since offering prizes had stimulated the establishment of the commercial aviation industry, perhaps the same thing could happen to bring affordable space travel to the masses. Diamandis reasoned this would be the ideal way to challenge the perception space exploration was so expensive it required the resources of government funding to be achieved.

Diamandis therefore got the ball rolling on what would later become known as “The X-Prize”. He decided the prize on offer for the first commercial space flight had to be large enough to attract attention and hopefully jump-start the commercial space industry but at the same time it had to be for something which was within reach technically. There was no use offering a prize to send someone to the moon right away because that would be unrealistic. Instead, the prize had to reward a baby step towards space travel. After discussing this for a while with all kinds of different people, Diamandis decided the first X-Prize should be $10 million offered to whoever could achieve a suborbital flight – putting a space capsule into space and bringing it back again safely without actually completing an orbit of the earth. This had been the goal of NASA’s early Mercury program before it had moved on to the Apollo program and Diamandis thought it would be an ideal first step for a private space industry.

With this in mind, the rules for the $10 million X-Prize were drafted. To win the X-prize, you had to:

Build a manned spacecraft without any government funding.Launch three people in the spacecraft to an altitude of 100 kilometers and return to the Earth.Repeat step 2 with the same spacecraft within two weeks.

“Although much easier than reaching orbit, suborbital spaceflight would still represent a real challenge to the X PRIZE contestants. To reach 100 kilometers, the winning ship would have to travel Mach 3 – three times the speed of sound. Even though that required only 1/25 the amount of energy needed to reach orbit, it was still faster than any private aircraft ever built. Although the craft could climb through lower altitudes by conventional means – jet engines or a balloon – it would need a rocket engine to make the final run to space. It would need a life support system to keep the pilot and passengers alive long enough to reenter the atmosphere, and some kind of maneuvering thrusters to orient it correctly for reentry. It would have to be sturdy enough to survive the heat and buffeting created by Mach 3, and it had to land in good enough shape to make the trip again within two weeks. The entire spacecraft and all of its engines and tanks had to be reusable.”

– Michael Belfiore

There were a few minor details still to be worked out – such as where the $10 million required for the prize was going to come from – but Diamandis got to work. He enlisted the help of a partner Byron Lichtenberg and established the X-Prize Foundation. Diamandis also approached Erik Lindbergh, the grandson of Charles Lindbergh, and invited him to sign on as an X-Prize spokesman and trustee. The X-Prize Foundation established offices in the St. Louis Science Center and on May 18, 1996 held a formal launch event. Diamandis was joined on the stage for the launch not only by Eric Lindbergh but also by Apollo 11 moon walker Buzz Aldrin and by NASA chief Dan Goldin who described the X-Prize as a “noble venture”.

Burt Rutan and SpaceShipOne