The Wall Street Journal has a front page story on the X Prize tiff between Benson and Rutan. This was pretty heady in 2004 on October 3 when Discover aired its special and Rutan’s team poised to win the $10 million suborbital prize. It’s probably pretty rare in NASCAR for the engine maker and the team to make dueling announcements on the nights before the race. I got to talk to Benson the night before the X Prize during the commercials while he was watching the Discover special. He had the restaurant at the Mariah Country Inn & Suites decked out with a big-screen TV. Benson’s group was already touting its Dreamchaser vehicle which was designed as an orbital vehicle, but was also being offered as a suborbital vehicle in direct competition with Space Ship Two. Benson was moved by the visuals in the Discover special. This was the culmination of his victory over eAc to win the engine contract.

Alas, Space Ship One did not enter passenger service. Perhaps because of the shudder or the cost of the hybrid motor, Paul Allen decided it was wiser to sell it to the Smithsonian.

WSJ’s lateness is forgivable. The story has never really gotten wide circulation. And Rutan, Benson and others still have not tested their passenger spaceships. On the other hand, mistakenly calling the suborbital fight an orbital fight is 25 times as bad.

New players ziggy and space traveler are working their way up the Free Space Shot tournament and are a couple of wins away from the lead. That makes the free site about 10 times as popular as the pay site was.

In the US, we send up about 6 thousand million metric tons of carbon a year. That’s 20 tons per person. Carbon offsets are trading in Europe right now for about $15/ton. If we put in place a $15/ton carbon tax and a $15/ton carbon sequestration subsidy that would create money flows of $90 billion from the carbon emitting sector (33% more generation cost at most for electricity which costs $280 billion a year) and small but growing flows into forestry, biomass, ethanol and sequestration and long-term storage. If that is not enough to lick carbon, perhaps a $200/ton tax/subsidy would. That would be a $0.60/gallon gas tax but shoot the price of coal up by a factor of 10. The former tax might have a total distortion on the economy of about $15 billion or what we pay for the space program. 0.1% of the economy. The trillion plus money flow needed for the $200/ton tax/subsidy would probably distort the economy on the order of the existing generation industry and perhaps reduce productivity by $280 billion. That’s about a one-off hit of 1/40 of GDP. If the net carbon tax were used to lower the existing tax burden on the non-carbon portions of the economy, the effect might be far less. I think it’s an overly expensive insurance policy at $4000 per person, but at $300 per person it’s no big deal.

Want a 2048 x 1536 monitor? They sell the medical monitors at eizo.com

Try to drive it with a laptop though. If you have a laptop, it likely has an analog VGA cable. The 17″ Mac has 256 MB vram and a mini DVI. I asked sales at Eizo if they pair up seeing as they drive their monitor with a DVI-2. Dell has the video card, but not the dvi plug. There’s a PCI card and dongle to drive a couple more monitors, but they top out at 1920×1200 per monitor. I saw mention that Lenovo has a DVI on it’s Thinkpad, but I couldn’t confirm it in the specs or in the picture or on their sales support.

I don’t want to go all the way to the 30″ apple monitor. I am thinking there is room for a 16:9 monitor at 3 megapixels. What should the resolution be? We know we can drive 2048×1536 (at analog VGA speeds) on a regular laptop, even the Toshiba Portege. So what 16:9 can we fit in that? 2360×1328 is 3134080 pixels which is less than 3145728 pixels in the 2048×1536. That gives us a near perfect 16:9 to four nines at 1.777 ratio.

Can we do better? Yes. 2368 is divisible by 32 which is true of the long dimensions of our favorite resolutions {640, 800, 1024, 1280, 1440, 1600, 1920, and 2048}. But what about the memory management? They chose 2048*1536 because it is a multiple of 1024*1024. They were trying to get inside 3*2²⁰ or 3 MB which is 3 * 1048576. And if we divide that by 2368, we get 1328 with .43 of a column of pixels to spare. A little wider than 16×9, but what’s so magical about 16:9? The Golden Square is 1.618 anyway if we want to be classical. Let’s optimize instead!

If you want a Golden Square and long dimension divisible by 32 and stay in 3 MB, you have to choose between 2272×1384 (1.641) and 2240×1404 (1.595). They bracket the Golden Square ratio almost in half (divisible by 16 anyone? 2256 x 1394 just like fire wire), but 2240×1404 only leaves over 1/3 of a column of pixels so I prefer that vs. 4/7.

So build me a cinematic display at one of these resolutions, build me a laptop with a 256 MB card to drive it at 75 Hz, a port to get to the monitor and a video driver to drive it.

In 1992, I got so disgusted with my monitor’s native flicker that I installed Linux and wrote my own video driver for it, ultimately settling for 1152×720 (1.6 aspect ratio anticipating by a few years a VESA standard resolution) which was just the right number of pixels so my 386SX20 could refresh at a 72-75 Hz speed so I wouldn’t see the flicker. Without that sensitivity to flicker, I might be much more shy about optimizing and programming projects. I might be more trusting in big corporate technology machinations. 15 years later we are ready for the (almost-)quad version of VESA 361. Lay it on me. $4000 is a smaller share of my income now than the hundreds of dollars to get a 15″ CRT was then. Hit me with it. I will bet you $100 it will be mainstream in 5 years. 1920×1200 is so yesterday’s news–1200 scan lines is part of the 1994 VESA standards to be precise.

Bill Richardson’s actions to attract aerospace jobs to New Mexico and to incubate the personal spaceflight industry put his state in the lead of US states promoting personal spaceflight. The only government that has done more to promote personal spaceflight is Russia’s. We would not make his choices about how to allocate those state dollars, but wise spending can come later after New Mexico reaps the benefits of being one of the leading states if not the leading state in personal spaceflight.

Our endorsement is provisional because we are looking for a national space commercialization and settlement policy from each candidate (and other policies to the extent they affect space commercialization and settlement) before we make a final endorsement. We’ll let you know who is leading throughout 2007 and 2008.

Things were going along swimmingly with my hosting contract until we got to their “process” for contract review upon account closure. I find the so-called process very annoying and time consuming. I recommend not using them unless you:

1. Don’t mind a 20+ email process.
2. Are willing to part with comments like “Received the fax [termination].. I will review with our billing department.. since the contract renewed for a year as you didn’t get the cancellation in by 1/11.”
3. Then when pressed: “I have made no statements regarding any amount of money.”

This is a lot harder than cancelling ISDN service at the phone company, my previous record. AOL in its heyday were ‘potsers’ in comparison. Am I a coiner for web use of this to be a variant of poseur with some potsy and Potsie thrown in? For networks, I note that it also has POTS elements. I found potzer at urban dictionary as a mispelling of patzer. “A person who plays for traps in a game of chess.” Maybe it is Net Actuate / VR Hosted that wins the potser comparison with AOL.

Video games, movies, plays and such are standardized. They have standardized pricing, standardized distribution and standardized categories. Reviews by critics have been standardized. We don’t really need that for free games. It’s free. Try it. You haven’t spoiled the plot. When there is three hours and $20 at stake, good critics are a must. From the seller side, standardized marketing and standardized advertising are critical. If I were a critic what would I say? Don’t play it if you are looking for fun. It’s fun, but there are more fun games out there. But this is the best way to win a space flight. Free hope. Game of the Year! Editor’s Choice!

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So what genres are there for sweepstakes, contests and lotteries? There’s the monopoly state lottery franchise. They keep a good deal of the money. A great value proposition for the schools, not so great for the players. Then there are the occasional sweepstakes. And? Well, there aren’t that many because they all lose money. Until now that is. Complain about Free Space Shot like you complain about there being no meals and no first class on Southwest Airlines. We have to get rid of something to make it pay. Would you put up with three times as many competitors to have the prize insured by Warren Buffett?
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We have been trained by the FTC, Attorneys General and our parents to be skeptical of prizes. You may have already won! Spanish Prisoners and foreign lotteries and all that. Do you ask for the terms and conditions when you go to McDonald’s for a cup of coffee? No–it’s probably not even worth your time to get a refund if the cup tastes bad. Free Space Shot is free and easy. Come to my house and I’ll give you a dollar if you tried it and you didn’t like it. What have you got to lose? Your skepticism?
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It’s tough to put together a brand for a legitimate contest. There are few comparables.

So let me give it a try:

Are you a daily lotto player? If so, you might like our skill contest. It’s cheaper. And instead of watching ping pong balls, you can watch the thermometer.

Do you love sweepstakes? If so, you might like our skill game. No stamps. We don’t need to contact you if you win, you get to see how you are doing all through the process.

Do you love space? We offer the most exciting range of space prizes and our has no expiration.

Do you love bingo? Have fun and win prizes and support good causes.

Do you believe? Are you under 18? Do you dream about buying something you can’t afford like college or a house for your parents? Do you want to better yourself, learn statistics, learn science and math? Do you want to live the life of Dennis Tito and Anousheh Ansari? Fasten your safety belt. We’re it. It’s us or staying an Earthbound science fiction fan.

Free Space Shot.com is attracting a lot of press. Takeup of our press release is about 900 media folks (I’m told the average is about 250). We have over 60,000 folks who have downloaded our press release. We’re on track to get 5 times as many page views as Hobbyspace.com this month.

We have also attracted some skeptics. Part of our marketing effort was to find out that there is a deep cognitive dissonance afflicting people over 13 in this country. Not only are they dissatisfied with NASA’s efforts to produce a space age, but they are bitter and resentful. They have not satisfactorily mourned the loss of their childhood and adolescent fantasies of being an astronaut. Not only are they jaded about spaceflight, but they are hostile to anyone who puts forward a legitimate prospect of success. That’s why we are targeting students 9-13. They are pre-sold on space.

Hence, Free Space Shot’s target market is not people over 13; they are not only not pre-sold on space, but had those hopes dashed. They may say they want to see spaceflight, but that is frequently just a license to gripe about NASA. Or private industry. Or the government of their choice in one of the real or potential space powers in the last 60 years. When it comes to lifting a finger to actually fly into space themselves or help others do so, they don’t.

The most severe form of this affliction is outright hostility to personal spaceflight such as that exhibited by Rep. Jim Oberstar.

The skepticism gets louder when people are onto something. For example, I’ve had two folks pick on Free Space Shot as impossible and sinister. Sinister?! Lucas wasn’t pilloried for making millions on Star Wars. Science Fiction books? No, perfectly safe psychologically. Is it that I am hawking non-fiction hope? Let’s look at comparative track records for other non-fiction hopes:

Hope for world peace: not doing so good

Hope for peace in the middle east: not doing so good

Hope for end to religious strife: not doing so good except in Ireland

Hope for carbon abatement: not doing so good (although I am bullish)

Hope for energy independence: not doing so good

Hope for nuclear disarmament: not doing so good

Hope for winning the lottery: Illinois thinks it’s peaked and is selling

Hope for winning a poker tournament after paying by credit card: Against the law

Hope for NASA settling the Moon and Mars: about 15 years away and holding.

So I am putting hope for personal spaceflight for the middle class out there. Am I being held to the standard of a hope? No, I am being held to the standard of a juvenile ideal. Businesses sometimes fail, but I am considered a swindler if mine does. I am pilloried a cheat if I promise less than I should. So perfection drives out the good. Kudos to an I-think-I-can small business? No, pilloried for not having terms and conditions that make it cost $1 million for Virgin or Microsoft to give away a $250,000 space flight.

Teachers and parents take note. Your schoolchildren will be told that the dream they follow is impossible. The evidence? Just that improbable is close to impossible. I offer license to hope. Am I offering a good or a bad if I fail? If Google can raise $10 billion in ad revenue and NBC $2 billion a year, why not Free Space Shot $100 million? It can. If enough believe it and play, it will. 200,000 kids is only 1% of kids 9-13. That’s all we need to have our own private economy where the skeptics will just shake their heads and say that fools being led by fools have done the impossible and start harping on the next “impossible” dream that comes along.

I wouldn’t be attracting the criticism if I wasn’t starting to sound eerily plausible; too good to be true. What if it is true? What if it really is this easy? Go back to sleep while the kids and I prove it out. Join the fun in a few years when even your subconscious is convinced.

As they say in Little Miss Sunshine, “You can’t fail if you don’t quit.” We’re not quitting. The Moon or Bust.

check out freespaceshot.com

Should be an interview at Out of the Cradle and the essay at The Space Review is up.

In October 2000, I left IBM Research to form a company, First Intellectual that would build “patent walls” of hundreds of patents to protect financial service companies’ service offerings, create a tidy royalty stream, parry any future efforts by competitors to collect royalties and preempt many “patent trolls” from doing the same thing. This is common practice in technology businesses, but new to services. We did OK. We got some meetings with the heads of IP at ML, MSDW, Qualcomm, JP Morgan and a few others. They didn’t really want the service we were providing, but would buy IP consulting services. After a few months, we realized that to be freelancers we’d need a big war chest to file suits. That the war chest alone was a viable business and that invention alone was not. That is, that good patents are inexpensive. We also learned that financial services are a cooperative network because for an offering, one needs the customers of all entities to participate to make the float successful. Playing mean doesn’t work well. These aren’t the kind of folks that thought they needed protection. Certainly not from each other. Trolls had not yet arrived to break up their club. We closed up shop.

Fast forward five years. On December 30, the front page headline on the Financial Times is “US financial service groups rush to join patent stampede”. Sort of. 238 patents, while up 3-fold, is nothing. IBM gets 3000 alone in their sectors. It’s still early. If you want me to be your hired gun and file 500 patents in financial services and get $1 billion a year in royalties, give me a shout. But anyway, I was there over five years ago with the answer.

One gets more myopic with time, so maybe Space-Shot.com is only a few years ahead of its time. Certainly, we don’t need to spend $1,000,000 to stay open for five years waiting. It’s run mostly by robots. First Intellectual needed people. If one comes too early to the battlefield, there is only half a decisive win. As Sun Tzu puts it, “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” I knew the answer, but not the people who didn’t care for the answer I had. I suffered a defeat despite having the billion dollar business. My buddy who said next time I had a billion dollar business, I should let him syndicate it passed on this one. His loss. Life is a repeated game though.