> if the combination of this craft & an off the shelf kick stage like a Thiokol can put 1000kg
> into LEO for around US$1m

It would be quite a trick for a vehicle capable of carrying 300 kg (three people) to 100 km to carry a kick stage capable of lofting a 1000 kg PAYLOAD to orbit...

An X-Prize vehicle could carry a stage or stages capable of putting at most 10kg into orbit, and even that would require extraordinary measures. Being realistic, you might be able to orbit a little beeping radio transmitter. But hey, that's not a bad place to start...

I discussed this issue a bit recently on sci.space.tech:

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&oe=ISO-8859-1&selm=c0e0a1dd.0202250154.74ddb987%40posting.google.com

John Carmack
www.armadilloaerospace.com