Posted on 09/02/2006 5:39:43 PM PDT by saganite
AFTER the destruction of America’s Columbia space shuttle three years ago, the final frontier was in danger of becoming a frontier too far.
The shuttle programme began to be wound down, aspirations for the International Space Station were scaled back and scientific projects such as the Hubble telescope were decommissioned.
However, beyond the shuttle, space is a booming market and, for the first time, much of the drive is coming from the private sector. The multibillion-dollar satellite business continues to be very important to companies including Boeing, Lockheed Martin and EADS, which builds the Ariane rocket.
Russia, China and Japan also have growing commercial satellite launch systems.
Manned flight is also making a comeback, with Lockheed Martin winning a $4 billion (£2.1 billion) contract from Nasa to build the next generation of manned spacecraft for the United States.
The Orion project, which was announced two days ago, will replace the space shuttle from about 2014. According to Lockheed Martin, Orion will transport “a new generation of human explorers to and from the International Space Station, the Moon, and eventually to Mars and beyond”.
However, while these giant aerospace corporations soak up government-funded projects, there are dozens of small companies, often backed by successful and famous entrepreneurs, that are already aiming for the stars.
The highest-profile of these is Virgin Galactic, which has signed up about 200 people for suborbital flights starting in 2008, including the Superman director Bryan Singer.
Galactic’s space ship is being built by Paul Allen, the Microsoft co-founder, and Burt Rutan, an aerospace designer. Sir Richard Branson is providing the commercial power and the company has already taken $16.8 million in deposits from customers.
The five proposed Virgin Galactic ships will be launched from a carrier aircraft at about 55,000ft and then rocket up to 70 miles above the Earth.
The passengers will be on the very edge of space before gliding back to Earth.
However, tourism is only the start of Virgin’s plans. Will Whitehorn, president of Virgin Galactic, said: “In time, we want to be launching orbital craft, science ships and transport ships, but we think that to get there we need to develop the tourism market first. That is where the demand is at the moment and we are telling our customers that they are helping us to invest in the future of space travel.”
The Russians were the first to recognise that tourism could be used to fund other space activities and in two weeks they will carry their fourth paying customer to the International Space Station. Anousheh Ansari, who lives in Texas, has paid $20 million for the trip on the Soyuz rocket. She is indulging part of her $750 million fortune, which she made by setting up an American telecoms company, on the eight-day trip.
Other high-tech entrepreneurs are also moving from the digital world to out-of-this world. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, has set up Blue Origin to build a three-man suborbital rocket ship.
John Carmack, developer of Doom and Quake, the computer games, has set up Armadillo Aerospace to build liquid oxygen and ethanol rocket ships. Elon Musk, who founded PayPal, has just won a $278 million contract from Nasa to build a cargo spaceship.
Mr Whitehorn said: “Space has been a government monopoly for 50 years and it will take people like us to prove that we can make it work in the private sector too.”
ROUTE TO MARS
Nasa and the European Space Agency (ESA) are focusing on Mars as the medium-term goal of their exploration programmes. Both intend to send a flotilla of unmanned craft there over the next decade and a half, and the Americans are also planning manned missions to the Moon to test technologies that would be required for a Martian voyage.
2007
Nasa will launch the Phoenix, a relatively cheap landing probe, to Mars.
2008
Nasa will launch the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which will survey potential landing sites for manned missions.
2009
Launch date for Mars Science Laboratory, which will be the most sophisticated lander sent to the Red Planet. The nuclear-powered rover will be twice the size of the Spirit and Opportunity probes that landed there in 2004 and will look for signs of life. It is to arrive in the autumn of 2010.
2010
The scheduled completion date for the International Space Station (ISS). Atlantis, Discovery and Endeavour, the remaining Nasa shuttles, are to be retired, leaving Nasa without its own manned spaceflight capacity until Orion becomes operational. Until then Nasa will rely on Russian Soyuz modules to launch astronauts.
2011
Proposed launch date for ESA’s ExoMars rover. ESA’s member states have pledged €650 million to the project, which may enable the agency to launch a dedicated Mars orbiter at the same time. Instruments will seek life.
2014
Proposed date for the launch of Orion. A crew of six will go into low Earth orbit and visit the ISS. The same module is designed to take four to the Moon. Nasa intends that it will form a key part of a Mars mission, possibly transferring astronauts to a staging post on the Moon.
2016
ESA and Nasa are planning return missions to Mars; unmanned probes would land, collect samples and return to Earth. The agencies may end up collaborating on a single project.
2020
Nasa proposes to send Orion astronauts to the Moon.
2025 to 2035
Likely period in which Nasa and/or ESA will embark on a manned mission to Mars.
ping
You can pretty much ignore anything NASA related in this post as they won't accomplish anything mentioned. The real news is the private sector moving into space in a big way.
What does the ISS have that the Shuttle doesn't, aside from larger stores of habitation supplies and generators?
Check out the Bigelow module. It's more resistant to radiation and micro meteorites than the ISS.
It's off topic but the ESA has an interesting photo sequence from SMART 1 and I don't expect there will be many more.
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/SMART-1/index.html
No need for vulgarities.
The ISS does serve some purposes, but it certainly isn't worth the ~$100 billion lifetime development cost. The research and engineering knowhow that it will teach probably isn't worth more than $5 billion. To summarize the ~$5 billion usefulness of the ISS: it teaches us how to build and assemble complex 10-20 ton life-support components that are launched into space with with about 3 Gs of force. This is certainly important, but overrated. It serves three purposes: 1) it helps us with our next generation of 20 ton component space stations (perhaps around the Moon or Mars), 2) it gives us a little technical knowhow if we want to start launching 100 ton components with a 5 G rocket, and 3) it gives us a little knowledge on how to make a life support compartment for an interplanetary mission.
It is useful to acknowledge that when the Ares V program comes online, the US will no longer be required to play with 10 shuttle flights to assemble and provide supplies for 8 15-ton components. A 130 ton (or optionally higher) Ares V rocket could do that in one launch. The final mass of the ISS, for example, could be put up with 3 Ares V rockets. The biggest winners from the ISS program will be the Russians and the Europeans--the ones who are paying less than half the cost.
Nah, tourism is just a money generator to get some positive cash flow and keep the accomplishments in the public eye. There are more important goals these guys are shooting for. For instance, Bigelow is studying the possiblity of supplying their inflatable modules to the military for sattelite repairs. Turns out their design makes them very stealthy and the military wants to carry out unobserved updates and repairs in space.
Thanks for your response. It's not far from the normal responses I get from those employed in this field. But I look at everything you said and ask, "To what end?" We went to the moon. I was disappointed to find that it was not made of cheese, as I'm sure most others were. But what did we really gain? And what do we hope to gain in the future?
Sorry you feel that way. I fully support space based exploration and research. I just happen to believe that NASA has totally lost it's way and is nothing more than a bloated bureaucracy. The private space exploration groups on the other hand are spending their own money, not the taxpayers, to do what NASA can't or won't do. I expect that within the next 20 years the privately funded groups will surpass NASA and make it irrelevant.
Do they plan on sending images right up to impact?
I hope they can give us images till impact.
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