Sean O’Keefe, NASA administrator, said:
“The mission was a testimonial to the persistence of NASA even through tremendous challenges. It was a phenomenal mission.”
JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, not only designed and built the Galileo orbiter, but also managed and operated the Galileo mission for NASA’s Office of Space Science, Washington, DC.
Heinlein Prize
In 2003 the estate of the science fiction author Robert Heinlein offered substantial prize money for innovations in space.
On 2 October 2003 a major new award for practical accomplishments in commercial space activities was announced today at the 54th International Aeronautical Congress underway in Bremen, Germany. Trustees of the Robert A. and Virginia Heinlein Prize Trust revealed that the first Heinlein Prize award has been set at $500,000 USD.
The Heinlein Prize may be given as frequently as annually to one or more individuals who have achieved practical accomplishments in the field of commercial space activities. The Trustees emphasize that the award is for effort by an individual – not corporate or government sponsored activities – and that the Heinlein Prize is intended to be worldwide in scope.
“The purpose of the Heinlein Prize is to provide an incentive to spur the advancement of the commercial use of outer space,” explained Arthur M. Dula of Houston, Texas, USA, one of three Trustees.
“In order to accomplish that goal, the Trustees will establish an Advisory Board drawn from respected persons in space activities from around the world. The Advisory Board will keep abreast of developments in space commercialization and will review nominations and propose its own candidates for the Heinlein Prize. The Trustees will select recipients of the Prize based upon recommendations from the Advisory Board. The Heinlein Prize will be awarded on July 7th of those years in which the Prize is given.”
The Trustees are currently in the process of selecting the Board of Advisors. Until the Board of Advisors is announced, nominations for the Heinlein Prize may be made directly to the Trustees though the Heinlein Prize website at www.heinleinprize.com.
The Trustees of the Robert A. and Virginia Heinlein Prize Trust are Mr Dula, Dr Buckner Hightower of Austin, Texas, USA, and Mr James Miller Vaughn, Jr., also of Houston, Texas.
The Heinlein Prize honors the memory of Robert A. Heinlein, a renowned American author. Through his body of work in fiction spanning nearly fifty years during the commencement of man’s entry into space, Mr Heinlein advocated human advancement into space through commercial endeavors. After Mr Heinlein’s death in 1988, his widow, Virginia Gerstenfeld Heinlein, established the Trust in order to further her husband’s vision of humanity’s future in space. Funding for the Heinlein Prize came from Mrs Heinlein’s estate after her death earlier this year.
Alt.Space
On 8 December 2003 the Space Frontier Foundation in Los Angeles hailed the rollout of a new SpaceX rocket.
The new “Falcon” launch system by SpaceX Inc. was seen as a symbol of major change in the commercial space arena. The group sees the new entrant in the space launch field as the first of several new orbital and sub-orbital systems that will help drive the cost of access to space downward, and open the frontier of space.
Unveiled in front of the Smithsonian’s famous Air and Space Museum, the Foundation believes the rollout of the new rocket can help to alert Congress and the White House that there is a new space industry arising in America, just at the moment when the old space establishment is faltering.
Foundation co-founder Rick Tumlinson said:
“It is time for those who direct national space efforts and policy to wake up and realize that there is a new game in town when it comes to the private space sector. Many leaders have been wringing their hands in despair over the slow decay of our traditional old school space firms and institutions, but today, right there in front of them, is proof that a new order is rising in space.”
The group, while not endorsing any particular firm or company, has been calling for a revolution in space access, and supports the efforts of Alternative Space firms (Alt.Space). The Foundation sees SpaceX as just one example of positive change in the space industry.
It contrasts the 18-month, low cost (less than $100 million) development time of the privately financed Falcon, with the multiyear, billion-dollar plus government-subsidized cost of rocket projects by traditional firms and agencies.
“SpaceX and the other Alt.Space efforts out there, such as Xcor, Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites, Constellation Services, Armadillo and others, are demonstrating that it isn’t the space industry that is sick, it is the systems that we use to finance, develop, build and regulate them that is the problem,” stated Tumlinson. “There is a true genetic split occurring between the old aerospace industrial complex and the new Alt.Space movement, and projects like Falcon are only the beginning.”
The Foundation has long called for the government to support such innovative projects and firms as SpaceX through tax breaks and other investment incentives, regulatory streamlining, and changes in launch service procurement policies. The group believes that the US can regain its leadership in space launch and at the same time lower the cost of space exploration, by changing how NASA, the Air Force, the FAA and other government entities approach space issues.
Tumlinson concluded:
“Although self funded, the Falcon and other breakthrough space systems need to be nurtured by our government, not ignored, tripped up by regulations or competed against by taxpayer financed efforts to prop up the old ways of doing things in space.
“If we are to return to the Moon and begin the exploration of Mars economically and in a sustainable fashion, we must have a partnership that encourages innovation, new ideas and access to capital and government and commercial markets by the Alt.Space community. If this can be done, we will all win, and our children will have a bright tomorrow as they open the space frontier.”
SpaceShipOne
The supersonic passenger aircraft, Concorde, flew its last scheduled commercial flight on 24 October 2003. The next day The Times featured a report by Giles Whittell which described a new spacecraft called SpaceShipOne:
Concorde dies, and with her a little of the test pilot in all of us. We don’t fly supersonic any more except to drop bombs. We don’t go to the Moon anymore except by robot. We don’t visit the Mariana Trench beeause we can’t be bothered. We won’t use the Shuttle for much longer because we’re too scared and not sure what it was for in the first place. The age when nations launched great technological schemes that were defiant but still admirable has ended. The age of zombies is upon us, and we are the zombies.
All of us? Not quite. In a corner of the United States, a group of men in flying suits and baseball caps is on the verge of doing something only military-industrial superpowers once did. The men plan to go into space, any day now, in a three-person rocketplane built entirely and not a little mysteriously with private funds. Powered by rubber and laughing gas, the rocket will scream up to a place 12 times higher than Everest, where the sky is black and Earth is like a big blue ball, then float back down like a shuttlecock.