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<br />Race for Next Space Prize Ignites<br /><br /><br /><i>With most of the other space entrepreneurs focused on suborbital flight, Musk is closest to the holy grail of manned commercial spaceflight: orbit. Although Falcon I, with its single Merlin engine, will be able to launch only small satellites, five Merlins will be mated to the first stage of the far more powerful Falcon V rocket, perhaps as early as this year. Falcon V, Musk told Wired News, will be able to carry at least five people into low Earth orbit.<br /><br />Five to orbit is a significant number; it's the number required to win the next big space prize. America's Space Prize is a $50 million purse established last year by Las Vegas hotelier and, yes, space entrepreneur, Robert Bigelow. Bigelow will award the money to the first U.S. company to build, without government funding, a spaceship that can send five people into orbit twice within 60 days. Bigelow has more than an academic interest in commercial spaceflight; through his Bigelow Aerospace, he's expanding his real estate empire off-planet with the first commercial space stations. While he can launch his stations on existing unmanned commercial rockets, he needs an orbital passenger vehicle to succeed in his venture.<br /><br />Musk told Wired News that he intends to win America's Space Prize, and that he can do it by the Jan. 10, 2010, deadline (that's when Bigelow wants to open his commercial space station for business). The space prize is right in line with Musk's business plan. "We hope to be the company that takes people back and forth from Earth to either the International Space Station or to Bigelow's space station, or to applications we don't know about today," said Musk. Ultimately, though, his ambitions extend beyond even orbit. "I think it's very important that we become a spacefaring civilization, and that we eventually become multiplanetary."</i><br /><br /><b></b>