Michael Belfiore reports that winners of COTS contracts will be ineligible for America's Space Prize.

This makes sense. Bigelow probably wants to encourage as many players as possible, and he wants to encourage commercial space companies, so this spreads the wealth, increasing diversity in space access providers. And COTS winners don't really need the prize money anyway. It's the same philosophy that disqualified people from winning the X-Prize using government-developed hardware.

I kind of doubt that the prize will be won, between the short timeline and the no-funding and the reusability clauses (since the top 2 competitors break both of those rules). Even SpaceShipThree might run afoul of no-funding given that COTS money is likely to go to t/space, which includes WK2 (or WK3?) as a launch platform.

Even if nobody wins it, though, I expect at least one of the top tier to launch to orbit at least once ahead of the deadline.

Bigelow may get his taxi to orbit and get to pocket the cash, too.

Using the same logic, Lindbergh would have been disqualified for basing the Spirit of St. Louis on a mailplane.

I don't think that's a very good analogy. Lindbergh's plane was custom built, and to the degree that it was "based on" a mail plane (the Ryan M-2), the mail plane wasn't developed under a government contract, as far as I know.

Government funding was critical to the development of the Wright J-series radials that made the Spirit of St. Louis practical.

I don't really have a problem with the no-funding clause; the reuse clause bothers me more, because I'm not sure what it takes to meet it--do you have to recover and reuse *all* stages or otherwise build a SSTO? While throwing away engines is usually wasteful, if you can get the manufacturing costs down low enough, maybe it wouldn't be.

Government funding was critical to the development of the Wright J-series radials that made the Spirit of St. Louis practical.

The J-1 was sold to the Navy, but I don't know if it was on a development contract. And I think that the Whirlwind was developed on spec. You're still stretching. The issue isn't whether or not "government funding is critical." It's whether or not the vehicle that wins the prize is developed on a government contract.

Personally I think it would have been better to specify more than two flights instead of reusability. This prevents expendable type stunts without excluding expendables. It is also much easier to judge and favours a few other useful things, like reliability.

The rule that I think makes the prize untenable at $50 million is the five people carrying capacity. This strongly favours a low flight rate capsule approach, where reusability is otherwise of less benefit.

If one looks at XCOR or Scaled Composites, they seem to favour a pilot plus one maybe two passengers approach as being the safest and easiest to initially develop. This would necessitate a second round of development where the vehicle is up scaled. The flight rates that such companies would be aiming for also make the five person carrying capacity quite unnecessary.

$50 million would be a serious inducement for the development of a vehicle capable of carrying two maybe three. Unfortunately I doubt it is such a significant inducement for a much larger vehicle capable of carrying five.

However, t/space and SpaceX should be able to meet crew requirements handily. I would suspect Kistler would as well, and SS3, when it finally comes along, probably will also.

Of course, most or all of those (including maybe SS3, if WK2 gets eliminated for COTS funding to t/space) fail the funding test, making it a moot point.

Folks,

Bigelow's America's Prize is not comparable to either the Orteig or X-Prize. It is really just a signing bonus for a services contract. The economic return comes from being able to earn a profit selling crew/cargo missions to Bigelow and his customers, not the $50m itself.

- Jim

Well, it's really more of a tickler. Bigelow's gonna buy services from *somebody*, the contest just gives companies an incentive by promising cash up front and a guaranteed contract for paying flights.

Which could wind up with humorous results if SpaceX and t/space are first to market but somebody else wins the prize just in time and locks in the contract.

"The J-1 was sold to the Navy, but I don't know if it was on a development contract. "

It was.

"And I think that the Whirlwind was developed on spec. You're still stretching. The issue isn't whether or not "government funding is critical." It's whether or not the vehicle that wins the prize is developed on a government contract."

More strictly: "The Competitor must not accept or utilize government development funding related to this contest of any kind"

That's rather broad. It would seem to rule out not only a vehicle developed on a government contract, but one derived from such a vehicle. Applied to historical aviation, that would rule out all sorts of pioneering aircraft like Boeing's Yankee Clipper.

Will McLean

How odd.

I was told last year by the Bigelow people that the $100 million DARPA contract that SpaceX received for the FALCON project did not disqualify SpaceX. But now accepting COTS money is disqualifying?

And yes, the Americas Space Prize has very steep requirements for winning. 80% reusability (dry mass) of the whole vehicle including the booster, not just the orbital spacecraft. That requirement plus the minimum five crew capacity and the 2010 deadline makes the challenge almost impossible to meet.