Private Spacecraft Prospects

mwallis writes "Space.com has an article on the recent Space Access conference in Scottsdale a few weeks ago. The article talks about the (slowly) emerging commercial space transportation industry with interviews and quotes from Space Access Society's Henry Vanderbilt, XCOR's Aleta Jackson, Armadillo's John Carmack and many others."

Comments

Not impressed.

[moogla]

Why would you want to pay to sit in low-earth orbit for (any) period of time?

We need:

1) High-altitude high-speed space/planes to make the 3 hour trip from Chicago O'hare to Tokyo

or

2) Some sort of destination for the space trip, ala the moon.

If it's weightlessness you want, I'm sure you can buy a vomit comit for much less than funding your own rocket program.

Now, if your enterprise is purely geared towards privatizing small-scale space work, and gaining a foothold in that area, then I have to applaud that. If we're going to have an inter-sol-system trucking company we've gotta have pioneers. ^_^

Re:Not impressed.

[jellomizer]

If it's weightlessness you want, I'm sure you can buy a vomit comit for much less than funding your own rocket program.

Some people will be willing to pay a little more so they dont crash into the floor every 30 seconds. when the plane changes direction. It would be cool to have a fiew hours of weightlessness and a full view of the earth. Uninhibited with computer graphic representation or borders lines. Or a pixaly monitor view. If it was designed right it could be a very relaxing vacation. Free from the problems of the earth, you can just flot there without stress on your body.

Re:Not impressed.

[Wyatt Earp]

"Right now, we're still at the Lewis & Clark stage."

No we aren't.

Right now we are at the Land Bridge from Asia to America and/or the Europe to America land bridge.

When we have 5 million people in space and getting ready to send men further we will be at the Lewis and Clark stage.

A whole new battlefield

[TopShelf]

How long before cheaper access to space leads to various parties messing around with satellites that are currently in orbit? If some baddie with vast financial resources (two immediately come to mind) had the gumption, he could probably wreak havoc with commercial and military communications networks.

Re:A whole new battlefield

[Anonymous Coward]

How hard is is really to get a 55 gal drum of bb's into orbit?
Heck, how hard is it to build a railgun that could shoot a bb into orbit once a minute? (errr maybe once a second would be preferable. Oh wait! Just build 60 of them!!)

Re:A whole new battlefield

[JimDabell]

Not all satellites are owned by the USA government. What about commercial satellites, like telecommunications? How cheap would it be to damage a competitor's satellites, what are the risks of being caught, and what laws would apply?

Need funding... go with the entertainment industry

[zakezuke]

I've always felt that one aspect of the computer revolution was not so much their fuctional value, but their entertainment value. From what i've observed, a computer marketed for entertainment resulted in more sales then those marketed for trivial little tasks like word processing.

People like my self have been waiting for years for this to happen, something out there that would generate money to advance the space program... and I think we have a winner. Not only will it fund R&D into manned space vehicels, but will renew an interest in the space program in general.

Let's face it, the last moonshot i'm aware of was 30 years ago, and the shuttle has proven to be most inadquate for any sorta high orbit depoyment and recovery. The private sector could provide funding to make a *real* space program possible, rather like how Atari and Commodore actually got people to buy their products, cause it's fun!

Here is an idea...

[WegianWarrior]

I'm all for civilians building and launcing their own suborbital or orbital crafts, but it'll never recapture the thrill of the early spaceflights. Unless, off course, someone with money gets the same idea as I just got as I read the article:

The Gusmobile, better known as Gemeni, is close to the perfect 'light spaceship'. All around the Gemini was considered the ultimate 'pilot's spacecraft', and it was also popular with engineers because of its extremely light weight. It ought to be possible with todays advances in electronics and metalurgy to build a replica - or better; a fleet of replicas - that are semiautomatic and reusable. Bring back the Rogallo wing (basicly a cross between a paraglider and a hangglider) it was intended to have in the first place to fasilitate GPS guided landings on dry land. Launch it with a semi-reusable rocket (first stage reusable, possible solid, second stage disposable).

Now here is the core of the idea; don't offer people just a ride with five or ten minutes of microgravity. Offer them some basic training to let them control the attitude of their craft during non-vital parts of the flight (vital parts should be guided by a onboard computer or from the ground), and offer them a day or a week in space. It won't be cheap, but it'll give people a change to really experience the thrill of spaceflight.

Off course, I don't have the money to realise this idea, and it probaly ain't that original anyhow. But I'll place it in the public domain - if anyone reading this wants to do it, you have my blessing and my best wishes.

Re:Here is an idea...

[JimPooley]

I don't understand why we aren't taking the Gemini and Apollo and Agena systems, retrofitting the designs with modern electronics and using those for trips to ISS or for supply up there.

Ahem.That's what NASA are doing. They've been evaluating bringing back Apollo capsules, firstly a modified version to act as a lifeboat for the ISS, but then going on to use them to deliver astronauts to the ISS.
A panel investigated this in March and decided the idea had several merits, being cheaper than developing a new winged vehicle, and using tried and tested design.

(Not to mention I submitted this very news story to Slashdot a few days ago and it was rejected...)

Adventure Markets and Their Limits

[Baldrson]

In order for privately capitalized launch services to work, there needs to be market support. Presently asset ownership is so centralized that the market is being reduced to servicing those who hold net assets. What could the few people who have all the net assets want? An obvious answer is adventure. I think this is the source of the predominance of talk of "space tourism" as a driver of capitalization of entrepreneurial space ventures.

However there is an especially insidious reason to believe this market will be quite limited this time around, compared even to the depression of the 1930's, and that is the nature of the individuals in whose hands the net assets are concentrated.

When Greenspan decided to depart from his gold standard by keeping interest rates high relative to gold during the crash he in effect decided to concentrate net asset ownership in the hands of people who don't necessarily have the best of characters -- indeed they are far from the ideal of heroic capitalists so promoted by Alan Greenspan himself when he was a devotee of Ayn Rand's.

As I stated in a white paper posted to sci.space in 1992 (resulting from having spent a few years doing politics in Washington to promote commercial incentives for space launch companies):

Just as important, capital welfare severely distorts the
optimization of asset ownership in society by placing, as a
matter of public policy, ever more assets under the control of
those who already have the most assets. Capitalism expresses its
worst potentials when capital welfare debilitates the character
of the wealthy while it gives them ever more economic authority.
This asset centralization impoverishes the population at large,
ending with a collapse in consumer demand. Supply-side theory
fails to predict this collapse because it fails to deal with the
fact that the wealthy are just as prone to character erosion by
welfare as are the poor. It is even more destructive than
welfare for the poor because it corrupts the decision makers in
the economy. In the face of collapsing consumer demand and
capital welfare, acquisition of more capital assets is promoted
over the productive use or investment of those assets.

Political rhetoric defining "the rich" or "the wealthy" as those
with high levels of income or capital appreciation, focuses
public sentiment against the most productive members of society
and away from the centralization of net assets as the underlying
problem.

The incentive for productivity in the economy, left after the
disincentives of capital welfare are subtracted, is the long-term
economic growth rate minus the interest rate on the national
debt. When the interest rate being paid on the national debt
equals the growth rate of the economy, the fruits of all
productivity are being confiscated to pay capital welfare and the
incentives for productive investment and labor disappear. When
the incentives for productivity become negative due to capital
welfare in excess of the economic growth rate, wealth is
structurally centralized at the expense of others in the economy.
The absolute level of net assets owned by the general population
actually decreases so as to increase the net assets of the
wealthy. This not only removes all incentives for production and
entrepreneurial investment from the economy, but consumer demand
collapses as credit is liquidated to pay for necessities.
Depression ensues. It is under these circumstances that demands
for socialist intervention in the economy via "pub

Space Mutual funds

[bigattichouse]

I want to see various space mutual funds, of various "riskiness", attached to all these little companies... I'd like to put a few dollars on the line to further such concepts.