RANDFREEDOM.ORG - Libertarian Candidate for Colorado HD13

Double BOO!!	Whaaat?... To pretend they are serving a useful function, NASA now preempts the X-Prize. With money stolen from taxpayers? Private enterprise, right. Sorry, NASA, your price is too high. Check out below, how it is "President Bush's vision of putting humans on the moon" that is driving space development. HaHaHahAhA! - Rand NASA mulls cash prizes for private spaceflight milestones By Robert Roy Britt, SPACE.com Posted 6/23/2004 10:49 AM http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2004-06-23-NASA-prizes_x.htm NASA is considering going where it has never gone before, offering cash prizes for space exploration achievements. In the wake of the first private, manned mission to space earlier this week, a NASA official said the federally funded space agency might offer awards for commercial spaceflight milestones. According to Reuters news agency, the prizes might range up to $30 million for the attainment of goals such as a soft lunar landing or bringing back a piece of an asteroid. On Monday, the SpaceShipOne craft designed and built by Burt Rutan climbed to the edge of the atmosphere. Civilian pilot Mike Melvill became an astronaut when his ship reached 62 miles (100 kilometers) altitude. "What we're looking for is innovation like what Burt Rutan brought to the table today," said Michael Lembeck of NASA's office of exploration systems in an interview with Reuters. Lembeck said the agency is even pondering a prize of some $200 million for the first private, piloted mission to orbit Earth. The prize-winning idea sounds a lot like the Ansari X Prize, a $10 million offer to the first privately funded team that can send a vehicle into suborbital flight with three passengers twice in two weeks. Rutan is the odds-on favorite to capture the X Prize and is likely to make an attempt before summer's end. Such prizes would barely cover the costs of innovation. Rutan's SpaceShipOne was financed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. Nobody knows how much Allen contributed, but he has suggested that it was at least $20 million. Rutan and the roughly two dozen other teams competing for the Ansari X Prize have their eyes on long-term goals of carrying commercial payloads or tourists into space. The idea of NASA offering prize money for private accomplishments would be a significant break from agency history. But it is in line with recent recommendations made by a White House commission charged with figuring out how NASA will achieve President Bush's vision of putting humans back on the Moon and then on Mars. Some of NASA's roughly $16.2 billion annual budget should be earmarked for privatizing space, the report concluded, suggesting even that Congress consider prize money for commercial spaceflight milestones.
Yay!	Burt Rutan and Paul Allen team up to make history! But for political purposes, the U.S. government has pre-empted all meaningful space transportation which actually makes money, which this launch on Monday will not, nor will any such flight. Meanwhile, our regulatory agencies like the FAA are queuing up to get in on commercial action, and legislature is busy deliberating over laws to "permit" space companies to operate http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d108:HR03752:@@@D&summ2=m&. But government was never granted that power in the first place (see Amendments 9 & 10 of the U.S. constitution). Our esteemed Senators are even now busy debating just how much space freedom should be "allowed". Keep in mind that the federal government has held a monopoly on space planes like this since 1959 with the piloted X-15 RLV. Will entrepreneurs be allowed to open this market, or will it be regulated to death? - Rand Private rocket ship breaks space barrier SpaceShipOne soars 62 miles to cross space boundary http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5261571/ By Alan Boyle, Science editor, MSNBC Updated: 12:06 p.m. ET June 21, 2004 MOJAVE, Calif. - The SpaceShipOne rocket plane soared high above the Earth on Monday, becoming the first privately developed craft to go into space. SpaceShipOne took off from the Mojave Airport, nestled beneath its White Knight carrier plane, at about 6:45 a.m. PT, sailing up into the clear desert sky. About an hour later, at an altitude of almost 50,000 feet, the White Knight released its companion craft, and SpaceShipOne test pilot Mike Melvill lit up his rocket engine for a 70-second straight-up blast. The project is the result of years of work by famed aviation designer Rutan and his Scaled Composites team, funded by Allen. Allen -- the world’s fifth-richest individual on Forbes magazine’s annual list with net worth of $21 billion -- says he has spent "in excess of $20 million" on SpaceShipOne. Rutan said Monday he and the others watching from mission control at Mojave were in tears at several points throughout the flight. He expressed pride that SpaceShipOne was still basically the same design as the one he put on paper five years ago. Monday’s test flight represented a step toward winning the $10 million Ansari X Prize, which would be awarded to the first team to send a spaceship carrying a pilot and the weight of two passengers to an altitude of 100 kilometers twice within two weeks.
Yay!	This firm http://www.civilianspace.com/ is using some innovative approaches to gain sponsorship for its continued development. Check out this long list of sponsors http://www.civilianspace.com/sponsors/default.asp -- Which is reminiscent of auto-racing sponsorship. Unfortunately, sponsorship of this kind will only yield the kind of money consistent with a racing team - typically under $1M. Not enough to develop big boosters, which will cost in the tens of millions just to begin development. - Rand Amateur rocket fired into space By Dr David Whitehouse BBC News Online science editor http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3724841.stm An amateur unmanned rocket has been launched into space from the Nevada desert - the first time this has been achieved by a privately-built vehicle. The Civilian Space eXploration Team's 6.5m (21ft) GoFast rocket is understood to have exceeded an altitude of 100km. "It just roared off the pad and flew into space," said rocketeer and CSXT avionics manager Eric Knight. The GoFast vehicle and its payload sent back signals from space before falling down to Earth for recovery. 'Fantastic achievement' The sending of an amateur rocket and payload into space marks a significant milestone in the exploration of space. The GoFast rocket - named after one of the project's sponsors - lifted off from the Black Rock Desert on Monday witnessed by officials from the US Federal Aviation Administration. A 14-second burn allowed the rocket to reach an altitude of more than 100km - the official boundary of space - in about three minutes. It reportedly spent several minutes in space before beginning its descent. The rocket and the payload came down on separate parachutes. Eric Knight said the team had detected the payload's telemetry beacon but had not yet reached it. British rocketeers have praised the triumph. "It is a fantastic achievement," Richard Osborne, from the Mars rocketry group, told BBC News Online. "I have been in Nevada with them during their previous attempts. It is a very impressive team." The achievement comes at a time when it is widely expected that the first private astronaut will go into space in the next few weeks.
Info.	Hm. $565 BILLION in adjustments. That's nearly $2,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States. I've known NASA was unaccountable and irresponsible for years. Starting with the fraudulent Apollo "let's burn the fleet" program. But now things are heading into a kind of stratospheric unreality. Time to pull the plug on government programs like NASA, and let those who really know how to build a space transportation industry take over. - Rand NASA's finances 'in disarray' Monday, May 17, 2004 Posted: 9:17 AM EDT (1317 GMT) http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/05/16/nasa.finances.reut/index.html "The documentation NASA provided in support of its September 30, 2003, financial statements was not adequate to support $565 billion in adjustments to various financial statement accounts," the auditor wrote in a January 20 report to Cobb, NASA's inspector general.
Yay!	Almost a hundred years ago, aviation prizes were the driving force behind opening up today's ubiquitous and useful aviation industry. Those who try to develop launch systems face an uphill battle with most attention and resources directed to government-funded efforts. Today, groups like the X-Prize Foundation provide incentive and structure to real development in space. However, like the sponsorship example above, the X-Prize money is not enough to pay for total development costs. - Rand Private Manned Rocket Soars 211,400 Feet May 14, 2004, 10:17 AM EDT Source: The Associated Press http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-private-rocket,0,3716576.story?coll=sns-ap-nationworld-headlines MOJAVE, Calif. -- A privately developed manned rocket soared to 211,400 feet over California on Thursday, marking the third and highest powered flight of the reusable launch vehicle, the builders said. The SpaceShipOne is among contenders for the $10 million X Prize, which will go to the first successful private effort to launch a manned craft to an altitude of 63 miles twice in the span of two weeks. The craft must carry at least one person but be capable of carrying three. The altitude reported Thursday was about 40 miles. SpaceShipOne, piloted by Mike Melvill, was carried aloft by a plane and released at an altitude of 46,000 feet. The rocket motor ignited 10 seconds later and boosted the craft to 150,000 feet and Mach 2.5. The vehicle then coasted to an apogee of 211,400 feet. Results of the latest flight were posted on the Web site of Scaled Composites LLC http://www.scaled.com, the Mojave Airport-based company of aerospace designer Burt Rutan. He is developing the SpaceShipOne rocket and White Knight carrier aircraft with funding from Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft and chief executive officer of Vulcan Inc. During part of the boost phase, a system called the flight director display was inoperative, but the pilot was able to continue the planned trajectory, Scaled said. The onboard avionics system was re-booted and the vehicle made a smooth landing at Mojave, the company said. The flights -- up and down without going into orbit -- will attempt to privately match such government-funded sub-orbital flights as those performed by the Redstone- Mercury program and the B-52-dropped X-15s in the 1960s.

	HUGE PDF Report Prepared by J.C.MARTIN and G.W.LAW for the Department of Commerce provides market research, massive number of contacts, links and information on sub-orbital rockets plus X-Prize vehicles (sub-orbital RLVs). http://www.technology.gov/space/library/reports/2002-10-suborbital-LowRes.pdf Permanent Link Here: 2002-10-suborbital-LowRes.pdf
Andy Beal	Andy Beal followed through on his dream, acquiring Sombrero Island for launches and paid for rocket motor test firing. Then congress voted $10B for government contractors to compete with his BA-2C heavy launch vehicle, and Beal's investors pulled out. The government contractors sneered at him, "Why don't you just play the game." - Rand "Let’s all be thankful that Congress never funded NASA to develop the automobile. If it had, I suspect that the use of these dangerous vehicles would be restricted to “autonauts” and we common citizens would revel that highly trained “autonauts” could operate these incredible high performance automobile machines." - Andy Beal BEAL AEROSPACE TECHNOLOGIES, INC. http://www.bealaerospace.com/ http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/business/beal_firing_000306.html Statement from Andrew Beal Regarding Cease of Operations by Beal Aerospace October 23, 2000 http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=2877 "The BA-2C program was the largest privately funded program ever in existence to build a large capacity space launch system. Unfortunately, development of a reliable low cost system is simply not enough to insure commercial viability. Several uncertainties remain that are totally beyond our control and put our entire business at risk. The most insurmountable risk is the desire of the U.S. government and NASA to subsidize competing launch systems. NASA has embarked on a plan to develop a "second generation" launch system that will be subsidized by U.S. taxpayers and that will compete directly with the private sector. We wonder where the computer industry would be today if the U.S. government had selected and subsidized one or two personal computer systems when Microsoft, Inc. or Compaq, Inc. were in their infancy. There will never be a private launch industry as long as NASA and the U.S. government choose and subsidize launch systems."
	Great website. Includes a BIG list of links to the players in the space transportation industry. - Rand http://www.spaceprojects.com/companies/
	A plan for Luna City by a dreamer. Such dreamers in a free America will not be blocked from following through on their dreams. - Rand The Prometheus Downport Project A Near-Term Lunar City on the Cheap Release 1.0 Jonathan A. Goff http://www.et.byu.edu/~jag42/PDP/prometheus.html

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was born in Berkeley California, 1963, and was raised in Germany, Ireland, England, California, and Illinois. By the age of fourteen, he had developed a purpose that would encompass his entire lifetime. To serve his ambitions, he would bicycle 15 miles in the evenings, to take classes at the local community college, where he received 'A' grades while finishing High School with honors. Rand tested out of freshman year requirements before attending Cal Poly San Luis Obispo on an Electronic Engineering program, followed by San Jose State University in the college of Physics. Rather than following the courses required by his majors, Rand opted to take classes that suited him and then he left school four years later, under a paying contract, to start his own business designing and manufacturing electronic vending machines.

After three years of success Rand began winning contracts to design rocket telemetry and launch control systems per his private passion, and has participated in launching and testing about a dozen high-powered rockets designed to carry payloads from 50,000 to 250,000 feet. However, government intrusion in private space development had already by this time stolen the thunder and stunted the growth of the private space industry, and Rand eventually came to realize there will be no further progress in space development except for military purposes. Whereas many of his fellow space enthusiasts and colleagues chose to shrug their shoulders and follow the path of expropriated money, and immoral and unjust foreign wars, to continue their pursuit of rocketry, Rand realized a dead end when he saw it. So began Rand's political career.

In 2002, Rand, who had first registered Libertarian in the early 1980's, finally showed up at his first convention of the Libertarian party. This was an eye-opening experience, to discover that the party was still so small, and yet was following a real set of bylaws and nominating its own candidates and running campaigns. As the 2002 campaign season progressed, Rand also realized why the libertarian party was still so small; as a virtual newcomer to the party, he found himself mostly alone, handing out literature in front of grocery stores and in public places. He continues to bear, repeatedly, that uncomfortable feeling of standing completely alone in the face of a sea of the public who simply have no clue about the libertarian party or what it stands for. But he stands there anyway, and invites you to stand there with him.

Since 2002 Rand has had only one aim, and that is to make sure everyone in Colorado knows about the libertarian party and has enough information to decide whether or not to vote libertarian.