There's an article at Space.com that says that the Columbia disaster hasn't dampened enthusiasm for the X-Prize or public space travel. If anything, it's enhanced it.

And here's a good roundup of what's going on in the current issue of Wired (via an anonymous commenter in this post). Some choice bits:

Thompson and Ressi are after more than profit, though. Having participated in and grown rich from the Internet revolution while still in their twenties, they have boundless faith in their own power and importance, not to mention the power of technology. They feel betrayed by NASA, which promised so much with those first ounces on the moon. It's been 34 years since Armstrong took his small step, and they're still waiting for the next leap, for colonies on Mars and the liftoff of the starship Enterprise.

"For the dotcom folks who got a lot of money in tech ventures," says Thompson, "the evolution from mainframe machines to the PC is parallel to the shift from the traditional space industry to space tourism. Yes, the X Prize is suborbital. But that's just a baby step, like the first PC. People said there'd never be a market for them and look what happened. Most techies are geeks who as kids read science fiction, and we all dream of something grander."

Ressi nods with Buddha-like certainty as three more flasks of sake arrive. "I saw the potential of the Internet to change the world," he says. "Now I believe the world will be meaningless without the changes that going to space will bring.

"Of course I won't recoup the money I put into X Prize in the next 10 years," he says, refilling cups all around. "If space tourism works, some folks will make tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. But that's not my focus. History has proved that exploration is always worth the cost and risk. There's just no way to guarantee human survival unless we move off this planet - and our days as a space-faring race start the moment someone wins the X Prize."

And this one, from John Carmack:

Carmack is pragmatic about how space exploration is luring him away from gaming. "We're always pushing hard for innovations in our gaming software, but if I disappeared tomorrow there'd be a lot of people doing similar things," he says. "It's appalling how in aerospace, we've been using the same stuff for decades. There's a big difference between what's been done and what's been possible and that's the definition of opportunity..."

..."I think there's definitely a tourism market," he says, "but I don't know that it's huge." That's why he's looking at making a variety of spacecraft that could do everything from carry tourists to launch trinkets - or even go orbital. "You've got to build a lot of vehicles to learn. Space has been mythologized way out of proportion," Carmack says. "We've just not had enough people doing it to be comfortable with the challenges. We're blasé about doing remarkable things with electronics that are much more difficult than rocket science."

There is a misconception, though (not surprising, considering that "critics" are the source).

Critics point out that there's no intermediate step between suborbital and orbital: Reaching 100 kilometers requires speeds of 2,500 mph; going orbital requires hitting 17,000 mph - which introduces complex challenges like the extreme heat generated when a craft exits or reenters the atmosphere at high speed. That's but one reason why, for instance, NASA pulled the plug on the X-33, a 1990s effort to create a reusable single stage-to-orbit concept demonstrator. "NASA spent a billion dollars on the X-33, 100 times more than the X Prize, and they couldn't make it work," says John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a defense and space policy consulting group in Alexandria, Virginia. "And the X-33 was just a subscale version of something that would have cost 10 times more than that. It costs $10,000 a pound to get into space, and the reason isn't the government - it's physics."

Ahhh, yes, John Pike--the usual suspect.

Two points. The problem is not, as John so confidently and incorrectly states, "physics" (this is a common fallacy among physicists, who don't understand anything about operations or economics).

And there are intermediate steps between suborbital and orbital. That is, faster and higher suborbital. It's simply a matter of progressing further and further until the magical velocity is achieved. Somewhere short of that, markets may open up for rapid intercontinental delivery, if the business issues can be worked out, but once people realize that they can affordably get to a hundred klicks, and Mach 3, it will be off to the races to see how much more they can do just for the hell of it.

Fortunately, the John Pikes of the world are going to rapidly lose mind share, once we start showing them for the false prophets that they are.

On topic of intermediate steps from X-prize to orbital:
spacetethers.com has a "single-stage-to-tether" concepts. SS1 looks like very close to being suitable for such "carrier&a half stage to tether" application. At least for launching small payloads.
Second, lets assume a X-prize vehicle payload is in the ~500 kg range, it could carry a conventional orbital stage with small payload. Now, if a small fleet ( 3 or more ) of such vehicles are built, and somebody comes up with cheap low-tech orbital staging methods, there are already a bunch of useful things that could be accomplished this way.
For instance, a small moon probe can easily be launched in 10 or so parts and self-assembled on orbit.
Such low-tech staging and self-assembly methods could easily find their roots in hobby robotics which has made huge leaps in recent years.

And of course, there's always just the "supersonic hop" travel above atmosphere, which could find applications in fast package deliveries first, and maybe eventually as Concorde replacement too.

I'm not a rocket scientist, nor do I play one on the internet but why this need to achieve velocity "x" in order to go to space? I understand the need to get to velocity "x" to achieve orbit "y" but if you can't achieve 17,000 mph for this orbit, why not continue outward to the orbit that your velocity can maintain? Wouldn't it take less fuel to continue the climb to higher orbit than it might take to accelerate to the speeds necessary for a lower orbit?

On a lighter note, has anyone noticed on the Sprint commercial that they show a 400,000 foot tall tower with a space worker dangling in free fall from it reaching for a floating wrench? What's wrong with this picture?

I understand the need to get to velocity "x" to achieve orbit "y" but if you can't achieve 17,000 mph for this orbit, why not continue outward to the orbit that your velocity can maintain? Wouldn't it take less fuel to continue the climb to higher orbit than it might take to accelerate to the speeds necessary for a lower orbit?

No, it takes much more. You're either trying to increase altitude, or velocity, or some combination of the two. In both cases, it takes energy. A high orbit has less velocity, but it has more total energy (potential plus kinetic). That's why it's harder to put things into GEO than LEO.

Taking the staging concept a bit further, why doesn't NASA put up a small unmanned station capable of holding Kerosine (or whatever most non-nasa space planes decide to use as fuel). The fuel can be sent up on unmanned rockets.

Design the station so that it easy to top off their fuel and the spaceplanes can even break into orbit and reduce the heat problems. They also could use the fuel to get into higher orbits. The US government could make some money for pumping the gas and helping provide the infrastructure may spur the space industry.

Maybe the idea is impractical because of bleed off and such but its more along the lines of what the government should be doing. Building highways instead of owning and driving all the cars on teh roads.

The day reporters strike John Pike off of their rolodex is the day commercial space efforts can declare victory.

John actually does occasionally have useful and interesting things to say about military space activities, despite his leftist proclivities. I just wish that the media would expand their rolodex, rather than simply reflexively going to the usual suspects.

John Pike has just made the "Space flight is utter bilge" statement for our century. Clearly he knows nothing of either physics or engineering.

John Pike always comes off looking like the constipated man in the commercial for fiber or laxitive. He needs to get his 'inner workings' regular again and he might be a tad less uptight.

There will be a winner for the X prize, but this will not get anyone into orbit.

When the aerospace industry (NASA) stops trying to react against gravity and instead tries to find out what gravity actually is, then we will have launch costs down to pennies.

It is sad that the scientific community has no idea what gravity is. Ask one. They don't know. Until funding takes a one-eighty turn towards finding the secrets to gravity, the cost of launching will only be lowered due to effects of the economy... not the science.