X-Prize

Brian Feeney, team leader for the da Vinci Project was the special guest on this edition of The Space Show. Please listen to the last ten minutes of this program as Brian can use some help for a very specific product for his entry in the X-Prize. If you can help him, contact him through his website at www.davinciproject.com. During the program, Brian explained the origins of the da Vinci Project, its unique technical and engineering attributes and characteristics, as well as its flight plan for winning the X-Prize.

Robert Zimmerman returned to The Space Show for this program to give us several important updates as well as new information. Mr. Zimmerman updated us on space as a possible campaign issues for this year's presidential election and like he has said before, there is still no indication it will be an issue. We also talked about the X-Prize and both the American and Canadian contestants, the Hubble Space Telescope rescue mission and Nasa, and the level of progress being made toward implementing the recommendations of the Aldridge Committee. Regarding the Hubble, Mr.

Tom Olson, co-founder of The Colony Fund, returns to The Space Show to update us on progress with The Colony Fund and to take a look at 2003 and 2004 from the commercial space perspective. Tom discussed the importance of the X-Prize, RLV and the suborbital industry, the regulatory issues which he believes will see great improvement for 2004. We talked about the aftermath of the Columbia accident and what any possible NASA reorganization might be like and what it means for space commerce and the private sector.

David Ashford is Managing Director of Bristol Spaceplanes Limited, a spaceplane and space tourism consultancy with plans to develop the Ascender sub-orbital spaceplane. Mr. Ashford discusses space tourism, the use of reusable launch vehicles, both orbital and suborbital, his X-Prize entry, the Ascender Suborbital Vehicle, barriers to affordable space access, and space policy by government space agencies such as those in Europe and NASA. Mr.