[AR] Re: DARPA responsive launch challenge
- From: Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Arocket List <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2018 19:12:19 -0400 (EDT)
On Sun, 22 Apr 2018, Henry Vanderbilt wrote:
Well, no - but there are significant numbers of people on this list who
aren't actually working for a smallsat startup who nevertheless might
have an interesting opinion.
"If you don't have anything interesting to say, you shouldn't try to say
it." :-)
The tight time scale means that this one is pitched very much at existing
small-launcher startups. It's not likely to do much to encourage people
who aren't already bending metal, because there just isn't time to work up
to that stage on a low budget. (And the prizes aren't large enough to
justify anything less constrained.)
The one thing I found noteworthy was that there doesn't seem to be any
prohibition on foreign teams, aside from a few Officially Evil Nations.
But there's no explanation of how DARPA is going to convince Congress to
put up umpteen million in prize money that doesn't have "US voters only"
strings attached, and right now I'd bet against that happening.
Henry
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