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Getting Into The Private Space Race

Posted by timothy on from the go-fast-don't-turn-left dept.

powerbarr writes "This article has an excellent description of the issues of getting into the rocket industry without government funding and focuses on one startup that is doing it. Sea Launch is a subsidiary of American, Russian, Ukrainian, and Norwegian companies that has cheaper, more accurate, and more reliable launch system that is trying to compete with all the government sponsored systems that are more expensive and less reliable."

7 of 29 comments (clear)

  1. Let's Slashdot Outer Space by stoborrobots · · Score: 3, Funny

    All us techies can get together, launch in to outer space, and knock the "bad people" out with our open source rockets!!! ;-)

    --
    "Go to CNN [for a] spell-checked, fact-checked summary" -- CmdrTaco
    1. Re:Let's Slashdot Outer Space by Dr.+Photo · · Score: 4, Funny

      All us techies can get together, launch in to outer space, and knock the "bad people" out with our open source rockets!!! ;-)

      1. Cramped quarters in space craft.
      2. Stale, recycled oxygen.
      3. Elbow-to-elbow with hundreds of geeks; many having personal hygiene no better than you or I!
      4. Male-to-female ratio: let's just say a rounding error could kill off the species.
      5. "Open source rockets" would be a terrible way to thank the thousands of people who eagerly volunteered to help you pack.

  2. I get it ... by stoborrobots · · Score: 5, Informative
    This is just Boeing trying to edge out Lockheed Martin...

    This private venture is 40% owned by Boeing

    Methinks there might be opportunities for British Aerospace and Concorde to start launching space missions...

    --
    "Go to CNN [for a] spell-checked, fact-checked summary" -- CmdrTaco
  3. Repeat competition comments from previous article by stoborrobots · · Score: 3, Funny

    #include "http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/ 03/2322221"

    --
    "Go to CNN [for a] spell-checked, fact-checked summary" -- CmdrTaco
  4. This is Hardly a Non-Governmental Operation by kalamazoo904 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Sea Launch is a joint project between Boeing, Energiya Ukrainiya, and a Norwegian company that makes oil platforms. All three are private companies, but they are tightly tied to their respective countries' military-industrial complexes. I'll take Elon Musk or Burt Rutan any day of the week and twice on Sunday over these guys. (Check previous Slashdot stories.)

    --
    Your friendly neighborhood nitpicker
    1. Re:This is Hardly a Non-Governmental Operation by powerbarr · · Score: 3, Informative

      Actually, Boeing is leaving the company out to dry because of how cheap they are. They directly compete with Boeing's much higher cost Delta rockets and Boeing really wants the company to fail. This is because of their merger with Lockheed Martin that got them into the rocket business after Sea Launch was set up.

      I was not aware that Burt Rutan is working on large rocket engines to enable geosynchronous orbit. The article is about the commercialization/privatization of space and how it compares to the airline industry (still heavily government subsidized in some cases) which found cheaper ways to do things in order to bring it down to costs the public could afford.

  5. Re:uh... one launch? by powerbarr · · Score: 5, Informative

    Actually, they've had one failure so far out of eight with another launch to occur on June 10. Still while only a few launches, this is pretty good start considering their competition and their costs are way less. Both XM Radio and Direct TV have used them to launch satellites.

    Here is a link to past launches