Today is the official release of FreeSpaceShot.com, a free version of the online skill game launched last year by SpaceShot that awards free spaceflights to winners of its weather prediction game. The free version is funded through advertising, such as Google AdSense ads, and offers a wide range of prizes, from a zero-g flight and $2,250 scholarship to a trip for two around the Moon plus $100 million. (Needless to say, the former will be much less difficult to win than the latter.)

SpaceShot’s founder, Sam Dinkin, describes his thinking about the formation of FreeSpaceShot in an essay in this week’s issue of The Space Review. The ad-supported model is based, he said, on the “forced listening” technique used in radio contests. The focus here is on children, even though they might be too young to immediately take part in the flights, in order to both maintain their enthusiasm for space and perhaps rekindle the parents’ interest. (Another reason to keep parents interested and involved is to comply with federal regulations like the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule.)

FreeSpaceShot still has some rough edges to work out; I noticed this morning some dead links, including to the FAQ and a free lesson plan for those in grades 3-8. It also remains to be seen if children will find a competition like this worth playing on a regular basis, so that FreeSpaceShot can build up the traffic and advertising revenue needed to award the prizes.

UK-based Starchaser Ltd. announced Friday that it has won a study contract from ESA. The award, worth €150,000 (US$194,000), will be used to perform a detailed technical assessment of Starchaser’s Thunderstar/Starchaser 5A suborbital vehicle. Starchaser hopes to have the vehicle ready to begin commercial operations from Spaceport America in New Mexico “as early as” 2009, although that might be overly optimistic, given the level of development and funding the company has disclosed to date.

The award was part of ESA’s Survey of European Privately-funded Vehicles for Commercial Human Spaceflight, announced in July 2006. At that time ESA said it planned to award up to three such contracts, although there’s been no announcement regarding whether any other European firms also won contracts.

The Swedish Space Corporation (SSC) sent out a notice to the media earlier today inviting them to attend the “inauguration” of Spaceport Sweden in the Arctic city of Kiruna on January 26th, and the announcement of a partnership with Virgin Galactic. Kiruna is already home to the Esrange Space Center, used for sounding rocket flights, but the site’s supporters now want it to become known as “Europe’s first and most obvious place for personal suborbital spaceflight.” It would appear that Kiruna has won out over sites in Scotland, such as RAF Lossiemouth, as Virgin’s first European spaceport. Flight International has some more details, and there is already a placeholder site for Spaceport Sweden that will go live on January 26.

(While I’d love to attend, I don’t think I can spare the time and money to do so.)

You may have heard the news earlier this week that the grand prize for Vanishing Point, an online “puzzle challenge”, is a suborbital spaceflight provided by Rocketplane Kistler. (Microsoft, which is co-sponsoring the competition as a way to promote its new Vista operating system, cleverly calls the grand prize “a trip to see the ultimate vista”. As opposed, of course, to Windows Vista Ultimate.)

This competition (announced this week at the gigantic CES trade show in Las Vegas) provides some good publicity for Rocketplane. However, though, this is not the first time a suborbital spaceflight has been offered as a top prize of a competition. Oracle teamed with Space Adventures for the Oracle Space Sweepstakes, targeting software developers, a constituency with a disproportionate share of space enthusiasts compared to the general population. Two people, one in the US and one in South Korea, won reservations on an unspecified future suborbital spaceflight through Space Adventures. And, back in 2000, Dole, the fruit company, had an “Outer Space Trip Sweepstakes”, with a grand prize being a suborbital spaceflight provided by Zegrahm Space Voyages (since acquired by Space Adventures) and Vela Technology. The grand prize winner, an elderly person from the Midwest, reportedly elected (wisely, no doubt) to take the alternate prize of $50,000.

There was also a hubbub this week when the British newspaper The Telegraph reported that Stephen Hawking plans to fly on a Virgin Galactic suborbital flight. This has been a pretty persistent story, which I last noted here a little over a month ago. (Unlike some other celebrities that have been reported to be Virgin Galactic customers, Hawking does appear to be really interested in going.) MSNBC digs a little deeper into reports that Hawking will first take a zero-g flight some time this year, suggesting that opportunity could come as soon as April, when Hawking is scheduled to visit the US.

Today’s issue of the Halifax (Nova Scotia) Daily News provides an update on PlanetSpace and its plans to establish a spaceport in the Cape Breton region of the province. A couple curious things come out of the article: it states that “the Chicago-based company has signed one contract with NASA and is said to be very close to signing another”, according to an official with the province’s business development corporation. The deal that has been signed is with NASA Marshall and is for “co-development of hardware”; presumably this is the Space Act Agreement the company has previously indicated it has with NASA. The other in negotiations right now, though, is with the COTS office at JSC and “should be signed shortly”, according to the article. It’s not clear what sort of contract that would be, since PlanetSpace wasn’t a finalist for the original COTS awards. If it’s another Space Act agreement or small-scale study agreement of some kind, is PlanetSpace the only venture to get one or are other companies, including the finalists who didn’t get awards, also getting something similar? PlanetSpace isn’t saying: they failed to respond to several requests for details by the newspaper.

The article also quotes Cecil Clarke, the member of provincial parliament who represents the Cape Breton North area, as saying that because there has been a lack of criticism of the company’s vehicle plans, they must be sound: “Usually with the aerospace or aeronautics community, if there was question as to the validity of the project, usually there would be sharp criticism of it. I don’t recall nor have I seen, any experts in the industry saying that what they’re talking about is not feasible.” The problem with this assessment is that PlanetSpace has released few details about their plans, therefore, there is little out there to criticize (other than the lack of information, which is understandable and not unique to PlanetSpace.)

The Personal Spaceflight Federation (which, despite the similarity in names, has no relationship to this blog) announced today that Brett Alexander is the new president of the industry organization. Alexander, who will keep his day job as vice president of t/Space, formerly worked at the Office of Science and Technology Policy. He replaces Mike Kelly, who is leaving the PSF “to start an advanced technology business enterprise”, according to the statement.

On Wednesday night PBS aired a pilot of a new science show, Wired Science. (If you missed the show you can watch it online; the show is competing against two others to win a slot in the network’s lineup). One segment of the show featured an interview of Elon Musk, where host Brian Unger first asked him questions about his electric car startup he’s funding, Telsa Motors. Unger then turned to SpaceX and brought up a number of other commercial space ventures, like Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic. That led to this interesting exchange:

Unger: Who is your competition?

Musk: [long pause] We have no serious competition.

Unger: None?

Musk: Not presently.

Unger: So that Branson guy’s kind of a hack, then?

Musk: Well, what Branson’s doing—by the way, I’m a great admirer of Branson—is really a much smaller technological challenge. So their craft would be suborbital, so it would go to about Mach 3. Our craft is orbital, it goes to Mach 25, so 25 times the speed of sound. To do what Branson’s doing you need, say, about nine units of energy. To do what we’re doing you need 625 units of energy. The difference is monumental. So what Branson is doing from a technological standpoint is building something that can cross the English Channel. What we’re building is something that can circumnavigate the globe. I still think what he’s doing is great, and, by the way, I bought a ticket on his effort. But it’s not in the same league, technologically.

Unger: So you’re not particularly worried?

Musk: The things that worry me are, are we going to make a mistake? Our own foolishness, our own errors, can hurt us.

Unger: So rocket science really is rocket science?

Musk: Yeah. [laughs] It looks hard, and it’s harder than it looks.

The Las Cruces Sun-News reports this morning that commissioners from three counties in southern New Mexico—Doña Ana, Otero, and Sierra—are planning a joint hearing on January 15 to discuss plans fox taxes needed to help fund Spaceport America. (A proposal for such a hearing was discussed last week.) The hearing is designed to make sure both county officials and residents—who will eventually have to vote to approve any taxes—are up to speed about spaceport plans and the need for the taxes. Apparently commissioners in Otero and Sierra counties, who are in the “spaceport district” but haven’t been following the issue as closely as in Doña Ana (home to Las Cruces), have some questions about the project that may be answered at the hearing.

The article also notes that spaceport proponents are hoping to get an extra $25 million from the state legislature this session. The money would be used to pay for a road to the spaceport.

In a bid to help drum up public support for the project, spaceport proponents officially launched Wednesday People for Aerospace, an advocacy group that is trying to demonstrate the economic importance of the spaceport for southern New Mexico:

Chances are good you will never ride a rocket into outer space, or visit the International Space Station, so why should you support the spaceport?

For the same reasons we support new schools, airports, roads and education – to promote jobs and economic development in Doña Ana County.

The group’s site provides some general information about the spaceport and the benefits it may offer to the community, as well as answers to some common questions (although many of those answers are little more than barebones talking points.)

I was just sitting down to lunch when a coworker came up to me and asked, “Have you checked out Blue Origin’s web site recently?”

“Umm, no,” I responded.

“You should,” he responded. And I did, and you should, too: the company has provided a major new update on its web site, in the form of a public letter by Jeff Bezos (dated January 2), as well as some photos and videos of the November 13th first flight of Goddard, the first in a series of vehicles for its New Shepard suborbital vehicle. Some initial notes and analysis:

• The flight itself lasted about 30 seconds, a quick up-and-down flight to an altitude of 285 feet (87 meters). From the grainy video it appears the vehicle, which has a conical, almost capsule-like shape, has nine thrusters in the base, with five arrayed in a cross at the center and four closer to the edges, apparently to provide vectoring.
• This was not the first attempt to launch Goddard: an attempt a few days before was scrubbed because of winds, according to Bezos (they had reserved airspace with the FAA from November 10th through the 13th)
• There were a number of friends and family at the site for the test, and the company provided them with a Jumbotron to better see the launch, entertainment for the kids, and “delicious chuck wagon food”.
• Bezos said his only job at the test “was to open the champagne, and I broke the cork off in the bottle.”
• Bezos said that he has a slow, methodical approach to development: “We believe in incremental improvement and in keeping investments at a pace that’s sustainable. Slow and steady is the way to achieve results, and we do not kid ourselves into thinking this will get easier as we go along.”
• The company has a decidedly retro (think 19th, or even 18th or 17th century retro) logo, complete with turtles (a nod, perhaps, to their methodical approach) and the motto “Gradatim Ferociter”. I quick online check reveals that this means something to the effect of “step by step, with spirit”. I’m sure someone who actually knows Latin can come up with a more accurate and elegant translation…