Free Republic

The Pentagon shot two unmanned space vehicles into Earth's orbit in April, underscoring its efforts to develop a super fast, high-altitude weapon system that could dominate from above even the highest-flying jet fighters. The Washington Times reported that the U. S. Air Force, which has jurisdiction in space, launched the troubled X-37B space plane for the first time. The unmanned plane piggybacked on an Atlas rocket into orbit. Once in orbit, it behaves much like the Space Shuttle, descending into Earth's atmosphere and then landing like a plane. The vehicle has been in development for more than 10 years and...

Space Adventures, the company that has sent tourists into space on Russian rockets, is teaming up with Prodea, an investment firm founded by the Ansari family, to develop a fleet of suborbital, reusable spacecraft for space tourism. The Federal Space Agency of the Russian Federation will also participate, by supervising the development of the vehicles. "Our goal in supporting the X Prize was to launch a new space industry through the introduction of commercial suborbital spaceflights," Anousheh Ansari, co-founder of Prodea, said in a statement. "We partnered with Space Adventures because they have proved that there is a market for...

WASHINGTON – Northrop Grumman and Boeing unveiled a back-to-the-future concept for the next generation of space exploration vehicles Wednesday, displaying an Apollo-like capsule and support module as their offering in the competition for a system to take humans back to the moon and later to Mars. The two aerospace giants are teamed in a bid for NASA's Crew Exploration Vehicle program, potentially a $100 billion project that is intended to replace the troubled Space Shuttle for servicing the International Space Station by 2012 and to carry astronauts to the moon by 2018. The Northrop-Boeing team and Lockheed Martin each received...