Commercial Spaceflight

Commercial spaceflight in science fiction novels helped spark the interest, and money, of the famous men who are researching it. Richard Branson, the Ansari Foundation, and Jeff Bezos are some of the more well known names working to make commercial spaceflight a reality. Despite the high dollar amounts involved, test flights have been flown and passengers are booked into the future.

Commercial spaceflight did not happen overnight. A tremendous amount of research and midnight oil went into taking it from dream to reality. We have assembled some links to articles here on Universe Today that are all related to commercial spaceflight, some of the challenges involved, and a few of the important players in the technology. To help you along, here are a few interesting facts that can be found in the links.

Space Ship One was the first commercial spacecraft to be tested. It made two flights within two weeks and was able to reuse over 80% of the vehicle.

The company Blue Origin plans to use onboard computers to launch, fly, and land its commercial spaceflight program. These will be the first spaceflights of any kind without a ground control crew.

Blue Origin will be using a two part spacecraft. Each part will land separately and be re-used.

The Ansari Foundation is responsible for the Ansari X prize; a prize that rewards viable commercial spaceflight programs. The main impetus of the foundation is to make commercial spaceflight economic enough to become profitable.

These are just a few facts about the players in the commercial spaceflight arena. There are plenty more points of interest in the links below and the links within those articles. Hopefully, you will find everything that you need and, as always, enjoy your research.

• SpaceShipOne
• Anousheh Ansari
• Burt Rutan
• Blue Origin
• Virgin Galactic
• Ansari X Prize
• Bigelow Aerospace
• Scaled Composites
• Commercial Space Flight
• Google Lunar X Prize
• Genesis II