Lol!
I'd ride that rocket on a 50/50 chance too!
Orbiting 1,075 miles above the Earth, a 250 foot wide, inflated, reinforced nylon "wheel"...Looks more like Bigelow than NASA!
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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.
I have to agree with Jaysun on the waste. Where is the big wheel with cintrepital gravity allowing for coninuous habitation? Where are the Lunar colonies? These things could be done. These would be real steps into space. What we have is an outrageously expensive low-Earth-orbit program reduced to bragging about zero G high school science fair projects.
I have watched the Shuttle take off, and I have had the fortune to see it come in over West Texas pre-dawn. Spectacular, the latter more so than the launch. Compared to a Saturn V launch...well, ya had to be there.
More than any other factor, the Saturn V was still on the optimistic, we are going there curve. The Shuttle is now on the "let's hold on to our jobs" curve. None of the Apollo astronauts would have believed me if I had told them then that 35 years later we would never have gone to the moon again. I will always remember where I was when Armstrong (sliightly) flubbed his lines. Can you remember with that vivedness any shuttle cruise that did not result in death?
The Shuttle program has racked up a one in fifty fatality rate. We would regard this as unacceptable for fighter pilots on combat missions, I believe the rate there is 2 orders of magnitude better.
I will say this: if I were offered a chance to go up and told my chance of returning alive was 50/50, it would require physical restraint to keep me off that flying bomb.
It is sad. Celebrities and crotch topics are more important than American ingenuity!
The module Bigelow put up was based on NASA research on composite materials with the aim of building modules like the one up there now. They abandoned the program but let Bigelow have access to all their research and patents and even consulted with Bigelow on the project. The lead engineer at Bigelow ran the NASA program until they cancelled it then he went with Bigelow. The major advantage Bigelow has over NASA is the ability to control costs and cut the red tape.
The original module has performed so well that Bigelow announced there will be a major course correction in the program early next year. They had planned to launch several of these small test articles but I'm betting he's going to announce they will move on to the next stage and cancel the intervening tests.
NASA has become welfare for engineers and managers.
Disband it, use the money for prizes (like in the early days of aviation) for demonstrated accomplishment by private groups.
Interesting...Private enterprise can do it cheaper!
Interesting woman. She emigrated from Iran to the US after the Iranian Revolution because they wouldn't let woman study science and engineering. Eventually with her husband she forms a couple of extremely successful companies. Later she and her husband invest in the X-Prize and other space related companies. It is amazing what a woman can do if you don't put a burka on her!
Oh, and the obligatory photo:
Hmmmmmm.......
Must be the lights.
Separated at birth? :)
> Lockheed Martin winning a $4 billion (£2.1 billion) contract from Nasa...
Nasa? Who or what the hell is Nasa? Or do they mean *NASA*?
Friggen ignorant Europeans...
Both women are (or in Counselor Troi's case were) attractive, and wealthy enough to be able to marry for love instead of money.
Anyhow, on a different subject, might anyone here know whether Iraq's democratically elected president is closely aligned with those asinine mullahs? Iranian acquaintances here in the states tell me the mullahs are what keep the elected government there from doing what the voters want. The Iranian president is visiting the USA perhaps this week and maybe there's more common ground than some think. Or perhaps he's a flaming nutcase like some have told me. I admit to my ignorance as I've focused on a different country's political chaos lately (Mexico).
Great picture. Might there be any neat discoveries awaiting us on the Moon that are even remotely as interesting as that [Tyco?] monolith? It could be that artifacts (even merely an alien ship's thruster) survived up there while our planet's wet climate caused similar ones to corrode and vanish with time. Or maybe the ocean covered 'em. The universe is pretty vast though. Seems kind of unlikely that they'd have stopped by unless they've got literally out-of-this-world transportation technology. Rant rant rant :-)
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