[/caption]Back in 2009, Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte fired up the imaginations of would-be astronauts the world round when he paid an estimated $35 million dollars to spend 12 days aboard the International Space Station How many of us who are too large, too small or too out of physical shape to be a space traveller cheered when a rather “ordinary” human took place in space? Well, get in line for the next adventure… because just a mere $28,750,000 might buy you a ticket for a 30-day stay in Earth orbit.
Away from the glitz of Las Vegas, real estate developer Robert Bigelow is making use of the quiet Mojave Desert setting to solidify plans which border on the down-right incredible. His Bigelow Aerospace company owns 50 acres of barren land with buildings that aren’t much different than neighboring contractors – with the exception of high security. So why would these unassuming structures need armed security guards with futuristic alien patches on their uniforms?
Because he’s building the first space hotel.
These high-tech, low-cost inflatable space stations may very well be our future. As Bigelow believes, we’ll need a place to stay if we’re to further our studies in space – so why not in affordable accommodations? Bigelow has amassed his terrestrial wealth over his lifetime by providing rooms here, and the last 15 years have seen him invest approximately $210 million of his own money towards futuristic plans. In the long run, he’s willing to put forward up to $500 million to see his project through. His goal is to prove that space is a safe place for those willing to make the jump.
“We have a way of building stations that are far less expensive, far more safe and can be built more quickly,” says Bigelow. “And the timing is right.”
According the the entrepreneur, he’s engaging more than a dozen nations and has “memorandums of understanding” from countries including Japan, the Netherlands, Singapore, Sweden, Australia and the United Kingdom. In February NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver visited Bigelow Aerospace’s plant in North Las Vegas, and the agency is currently evaluating the company’s expandable modules for use as expansions to the International Space Station.
While it would be easy to write off such grand schemes as another of Bigelow’s “big” adventures, these inflatable space habitats are founded in solid technology. Bigelow’s prototypes have been orbiting Earth since 2006. His expansion of the desert plant will provide at least double the amount of work space, allowing him to construct a a scale model of the Sundancer, the first habitat he plans to launch into space. And when that’s done, he’ll build a model of its big brother, the BA330: At 11,600 cubic feet, it has nearly as much volume as the entire ISS!
When can we expect to book a room with a real view? Bigelow expects to have a fully functioning station in orbit by 2016 and to begin charging rent for it. While a little less than a million dollars a night isn’t going to exactly threaten Super 8 rates, one thing we can look forward to is knowing exactly what lights they’ll leave on…
Docked Endeavour at ISS through a fish-eye lens. A fish-eye lens attached to an electronic still camera was used to capture this image of NASA astronaut Michael Fincke (top center) during the fourth EVA of the STS-134 mission as construction and maintenance continue on the International Space Station. The docked space shuttle Endeavour is visible at left. The blackness of space and Earth's horizon provide the backdrop for the scene. Credit: NASA
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Absolutely remarkable exterior panoramic photos of the ISS and tributes by Shuttle Astronauts marked two major milestones in spaceflight history today, May 27; the last spacewalk ever by Space Shuttle Astronauts and the formal completion of the US segment of the International Space Station after 12 years of construction.
Today’s spacewalk by shuttle Endeavour Astronauts Mike Fincke and Greg Chamitoff was the last ever outing in the three decade history of NASA’s Space Shuttle Program.
Check out the breathtaking photos taken by the astronauts today showing a wide angle view of the complex, including all of shuttle Endeavour at one end and a Russian Soyuz at the other end – backdropped by Earth.
A portion of the ISS and docked Space Shuttle Endeavour.
This image was photographed by a spacewalker, using a fish-eye lens attached to an electronic still camera, during the STS-134 mission's fourth extravehicular activity (EVA). The blackness of space and Earth's horizon provide the backdrop for the scene. Credit: NASA
The seven-hour, 24-minute spacewalk was the fourth and final EVA of the STS-134 mission and simultaneously finished the assembly of the US portion of the orbiting lab complex.
The primary objectives of the spacewalk were to attach Endeavour’s 50-foot-long Orbiter Boom Sensing System (OBSS) and install a new grapple fixture to make the OBSS available to significantly extend the reach of the space station’s robotic arm. The OBSS was used to examine the shuttle’s heat shield tiles. But they are no longer needed aboard the shuttles since they are being retired and was therefore permanently handed over from Endeavour to the station.
This spacewalk was the 159th in support of assembly and maintenance of the ISS which now totals more than 1000 hours of astronaut and cosmonauts work time.
Greg Chamitoff’s amazing twitpic of the ISS, Soyux and ATV
On today's spacewalk @Astro_Taz took the most amazing #ISS px ever Can't wait to see @Astro_Paolo 's from Soyuz.
Gregory Chamitoff marked the milestones with these words of tribute; “At this time, now that we’re almost done here, I wanted to say a few words. This is the last flight of the space shuttle Endeavour and it’s also the last spacewalk of shuttle crew members in station assembly.
“It’s kind of fitting that Endeavour is here because Endeavour was the first shuttle to begin construction of the station and so it’s fitting that she’s here for the last mission to finish assembly.
“During this EVA, we tallied altogether collectively over a thousand hours of spacewalks as part of station assembly. Mike and I have the honor here to share this last spacewalk and of course, with all the folks working on the ground, the thousands of people who helped build this, working in the shuttle and the station programs.
“We’re floating here on the shoulders of giants. This space station is a pinnacle of human achievement and international cooperation — 12 years of building and 15 countries. And now it’s the brightest star in the sky and hopefully the doorstep to our future. So congratulations everybody on assembly complete,” said Chamitoff.
A bright sun, a portion of the International Space Station and Earth's horizon
This image was photographed by a spacewalker, using a fish-eye lens attached to an electronic still camera, during the STS-134 mission's fourth EVA on May 27, 2011
From inside the Quest airlock, Mike Fincke took his turn and added these comments, “I wanted to say congratulations to the shuttle program for all the wonderful successes we’ve had over the past 30-something years. It’s a privilege that Endeavour’s hosting the last spacewalk by a space shuttle crew. So congratulations to the EVA development teams. We’ve come a long way. From me and Greg and the rest of the crew, congratulations.”
Today, Fincke also claimed the record for most time in space by a US astronaut, surpassing Peggy Whitson’s record of 377 days in space.
Astronaut Greg Chamitoff outside ISS during 4th EVA of STS-134. A fish-eye lens attached to an electronic still camera was used to capture this image of NASA astronaut Greg Chamitoff during the mission's fourth extravehicular activity (EVA). Astronaut Michael Fincke is visible in the reflections of Chamitoff's helmet visor. Credit: NASASoyuz capsule docked at the ISS, twitpic from Astronaut Mike Fincke
Our ride home 4 months from now Px from @AstroIronMike on today's spacewalk #NASA #ISS #FromSpace, tweets ISS Astronaut Ron Garan
On May 4, 2011 Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo achieved a major milestone by flying for the first time using its “feathered” configuration, and the company has now released a close-up video of the flight. Feathering is designed to create drag and slow the ship down after it reenters the atmosphere from eventual suborbital flights taking tourists into space. This flight confirmed the feathering design should work.
At the end of the movie “Apollo 13,” when the character of Jim Lovell says “I look up at the Moon and wonder, when will we be going back, and who will that be?” he probably didn’t have anything like the Google Lunar X PRIZE in mind. Similarly, when the GLXP was announced back in 2007, the founders had no idea that nearly 30 teams would be vying for the $30 million in incentive prizes to return to the Moon’s surface with a robotic craft.
Will Pomerantz, the former Senior Director of Space Prizes from the X PRIZE Foundation recalled an advisory committee meeting several years ago before the prize was announced. “We went around the room and asked everyone to estimate how many teams are going to compete in this,” Pomerantz said. “The answers ranged from zero on the low end to maybe a dozen or fifteen at the absolute max and that probably came either for myself or from Peter Diamandis, our founder. The fact that we have almost thirty blows us away, and we couldn’t be more thrilled.”
The X PRIZE Foundation recently announced the official roster of 29 teams that will attempt to send a robot to the Moon that travels at least 500 meters and transmit video, images, and data back to the Earth. The organization says this signifies a “new era of exploration’s diverse and participatory nature.”
The teams are headquartered all over the world — seventeen different headquarter nations — and most of the teams are actually multinationals, so team members are working in almost seventy different countries on every continent except for Antarctica.
“This is going to be the first time anything has been on the lunar surface since the final Soviet robotic mission in 1976,” Pomerantz said and those of us in the states really haven’t seen any data directly from the lunar surface since 1972, so we think that there’s at a ton to be learned scientifically, but also there’s a huge inspirational factor there for people to be able to see those images again.”
Of course, the robotic missions being designed are much less complicated and expensive than a human mission to the Moon.
Synergy Moon's spherical rover. Credit: GLXP
The concepts range from snake-like robots that slither along the surface to ball-shaped vehicles that can shift their mass internally move along the lunar surface to small robotic vehicles – “not too much bigger than the cell phone you’ve got your pocket,” Pomeranzt said – to rovers that look very much NASA- or ESA-designed vehicles. Others won’t rove at all, but reignite their engines to take off and fly to another location. This may allow them to explore totally different types of terrain that is totally inaccessible to a rover.
The landing sites that the various teams are shooting for differ as well. “Essentially everyone is going on the near side for obvious communication reasons,” Pomerantz said. “Almost everyone is going in a fairly low latitude and going in the equatorial zones.”
There are bonus prizes of several million additional dollars for teams that can go to particular sites, such the South Pole, where they could possibly confirm the findings at the LCROSS impact site, or if they go back to visit one of the Apollo landing sites or one of the sites of a non-human mission.
“I know that causes some concern for some people,” Pomerantz said. “People very rightly want to make sure that we are being respectful of those treasured historical sites. But I think it is important to recognize that no one values those sites more than the men and women around the world who are dedicating their careers to getting back to the surface of the Moon. They absolutely understand that those are our valuable treasures that need to be respected but they also understand that there’s an enormous amount to be gained from going back and respectfully revisiting the. There is some very interesting science that we can do by going back and seeing how the site and how those materials have changed over the past forty years.”
Why offer a prize to return to the Moon?
“We want to open the space frontier in the way similar to what we did it for the first X PRZE, the Ansari X PRIZE,” Pomerantz said. “We want to make space exploration and lunar exploration in particular radically cheaper. We think when you create a much lower price point, when you bring the price of missions down to a tenth to what it historically has been or even a hundredth of what it historically has been, you’re opening it up to a huge variety of new customers, new science communities, new industries that just can’t exist at the current price points.”
All the teams have to come up with their own funding.
“This is really a cash on delivery kind of model,” Pomerantz said. “But we don’t want to pay people to try. There are enough other people out there that are funding people to try new things. We want to reward people upon success. That means that no matter how crazy an idea might seem today, if it happens to be the best one, then we’ll reward it.”
Right now, the prize money is set to expire by the end of 2015, but the GLXP organizers are quite confident that at least one of the 29 teams will successfully reach the Moon before then. And obviously, NASA is confident, as well, as the space agency is offering a program called the Innovative Lunar Demonstration and Data Program, which is essentially $30 million dollars worth of data purchases from commercial efforts that reach the Moon.
“This is NASA saying for first time ever we are able to buy data about conducting lunar missions and about the Moon itself, rather than having to go out and pay for the acquisition of that data directly on the hopes that it will work,” Pomerantz said. “This is a great buy for NASA and I think they are getting a tremendous value and is a great way for teams to show their investors and supporters that, hey we’ve got a willing customer here. And NASA is not afraid of us; this isn’t an ‘us versus them competition.’ This is an area where our success is their success and vice versa.
Pomerantz is leaving the X PRIZE Foundation to begin work with Virgin Galactic. “I’ve loved every minute of being with the X PRIZE, but this was an opportunity just too good to pass up and I’m extremely excited about it even though I’m sad to be leaving X PRIZE.”
The Liberty launch vehicle combines the proven systems from the Space Shuttle and Ariane 5. (PRNewsFoto/ATK)
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An idea too good to die, or a case of recycle, reuse, reduce? Two rocket companies are joining forces to use part of the Ares-1 rocket and combine it with elements of the Ariane 5 launcher to create a new launch system called Liberty that they say will “close the US human spaceflight gap.” US company ATK (Alliant Techsystems) and the European firm Astrium announced their collaboration today on a 90-meter (300-ft) rocket that would fit under NASA’s Commercial Crew Development-2 (CCDev-2) procurement. The companies say the new rocket could be ready by 2013.
“This team represents the true sense of international partnership in that we looked across borders to find the best for our customers,” said Blake Larson, President of ATK Aerospace Systems Group in a press release. “Together we combine unique flight-proven systems and commercial experience that allows us to offer the market’s most capable launch vehicle along with flexibility to meet a wide variety of emerging needs. Liberty provides greater performance at less cost than any other comparable launch vehicle.”
The partners say Liberty would be much cheaper than the Ares I, because the unfinished upper stage of the Ares I would be replaced with the first stage of the Ariane 5, which has been launched successfully 41 consecutive times. The lower stage of the Liberty, a longer version of the shuttle booster built by ATK, would be almost the same as what was built for Ares-1.
he new Liberty launch vehicle will use existing infrastructure at Kennedy Space Center, such as the Mobile Launcher shown here. (PRNewsFoto/ATK)
Since both stages were designed for human-rating, the collaborators say this “would enable unmatched crew safety.” The team has planned an initial flight by the end of 2013, a second test flight in 2014, and operational capability in 2015.
Liberty would be able to deliver 20,000 kg (44,500 lbs) to the International Space Station’s orbit, which would give it a launch capability to carry any crew vehicle in development. This is less payload capability, however, than the 25-ton payload that the Ares-1 was advertised to deliver to the ISS.
With the announcement of the collaboration (and quick turn-around) the companies are hoping to be the recipient of some of the $200 million in funding NASA is planning to give out in March 2011 to private companies that are developing space taxis. Smaller NewSpace companies like SpaceX and , Orbital, along with big companies Lockheed Martin and Boeing are all vying for the CCDev-2 contracts.
With some space experts and Congress expressing concern about the length of time it might take for commercial companies to provide reliable transportation to space, as well as concerns about relying on the Russian Soyuz vehicles, this new collaboration could fit NASA’s needs nicely. Plus, the collaborators are hoping the new Liberty rocket will be a bargain compared to other contenders. They are targeting a price of $180 million per launch, which is slightly less than the Atlas V rocket launches by the Boeing-Lockheed Martin United Launch Alliance, ($187 million).
The two companies have touted the new rockets’ ability to carry a wide array of spacecraft and satellites.
“The Liberty initiative provides tremendous value because it builds on European Ariane 5 launcher heritage, while allowing NASA to leverage the mature first stage,” said former NASA astronaut Charlie Precourt, Vice President and General Manager of ATK Space Launch Systems. “We will provide unmatched payload performance at a fraction of the cost, and we will launch it from the Kennedy Space Center using facilities that have already been built. This approach allows NASA to utilize the investments that have already been made in our nation’s ground infrastructure and propulsion systems for the Space Exploration Program.”
If NASA chooses the Liberty system and it works well, it could mean that the money NASA spent on the Ares rocket was not wasted after all.
Space Florida and Bigelow Aerospace signed a Memorandum of Understanding to open an exhibit center on Florida's Space Coast. Photo Credit: Jason Rhian
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CAPE CANAVERAL – Another NewSpace firm was in the Cape Canaveral area to ink a deal with Florida’s aerospace organization, Space Florida, today. A meeting was held today at the Radisson Resort at the Port to discuss the partnership of Space Florida and Bigelow Aerospace to establish a exhibit center on the Space Coast. Numerous dignitaries and officials in the space industry attended as did elected officials such as Rep. Bill Posey. The brief session started at 1 p.m. EDT and lasted about an hour.
“My purpose by coming here today is to provide a message of hope, that this country is absolutely capable of taking charge of the future of space, not just bequeathing it to other countries and other nations,” said Robert Bigelow founder and president of Bigelow Aerospace at the end of Wednesday’s meeting. “The private sector in this country has the ambition and the chutzpah to go ahead and take this on…”
Space Florida and the commercial space firm inked a deal to build an exhibit center that will showcase one-third scale replicas of Bigelow Aerospace’s inflatable space stations. Two prototypes of which have already been sent into orbit via Russian rockets. The exhibit will primarily be utilized for marketing purposes.
The event was closed with a signing of the Memorandum of Understanding and a brief question and answer session with those in attendance and the media.
Frank DiBello president of Space Florida shakes hans with Robert Bigelow, the founder and president of Bigelow Aerospace. Photo Credit: Jason Rhian
This new effort does however highlight the growing interest of the emerging commercial aerospace market in Florida’s established space infrastructure. Bigelow stated that it was possible that Florida could be the place where much of his firm’s hardware is launched from. However, he mentioned other U.S. launch facilities as well. Approximately 25 flights will be required to make Bigelow’s space station objectives a reality.
“If you think about the process of a country or a major corporation wanting to fly something into space to conduct research, it’s not a simple device that they fly, it is a research program that they find that fits into a multi-year plan,” said Frank DiBello the president of Space Florida. “It is a multi-year project for every one of these customers, we see this as an industry that we are growing – and this is a brick that were placing into the wall of that industry.”
If Florida is selected this could well bring something very valuable back to the Space Coast region of Florida – jobs. These efforts could bring about 1,800 jobs to the area.
Robert Bigelow, president of Bigelow Aerospace discusses his plans for the future. Photo Credit: Jason Rhian
Space Florida is the arm of the State of Florida that is responsible for economic development of aerospace business. The organization was established by the Florida legislature back in 2006 from three separate entities, the Florida Aerospace Finance Corporation, the Florida Space Authority and the Florida Space Research Institute.
Bigelow Aerospace was founded in 1999 and it has since flown two prototypes into space Genesis I and Genesis II which were launched atop a Dnepr ICBM from the Dombarovskiy Cosmodrome in Russia. At the meeting in Cape Canaveral on Wednesday Bigelow stated that one of the main customers that his company is looking at is smaller nations that cannot afford their own space program and would like to send payloads into orbit.
Replicas of two of Bigelow Aerospace's spacecraft. The ones on display at the exhibit center will be one-third the size of the actual flight models. Photo Credit: Jason Rhian
Orbital Sciences is one of many space companies that are vying to produce a 'space taxi.' Image Credit: Orbital Sciences Corporation
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Once, the field had only had few entries, but now there are several companies vying to send American astronauts into orbit. With NASA’s Commercial Crew Development program, or CCDev 2, and the encouragement of commercial space firms to produce their own vehicles, the number of potential ‘space-taxis’ has swelled, with virtually every established and up-and-coming aerospace company either producing – or proposing one.
SpaceX has successfully demonstrated the capabilities of its Dragon spacecraft. Image Credit: SpaceX
One of the first firms to unveil a potential means of transportation to the International Space Station (ISS) was Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX). SpaceX launched the first of its Dragon spacecraft on Dec. 8, and shortly thereafter became the first private company to safely recover a spacecraft after it returned from orbit.
Boeing was once of the first companies to unveil its proposal. Image Credit: Boeing
Not to be out done by the ‘new kid on the block’ Boeing unveiled its version of a space taxi this past September. Boeing’s Crew Space Transportation-100 (CST-100) spacecraft which it described could be used for missions to the space station or other ‘LEO platforms.’ One potentially exciting prospect about this endeavor is that any excess seating capacity will be available for purchase through Space Adventures.
Orbital Sciences has proposed using a space plane to ferry astronauts to orbit: Image Credit: Orbital
A step away from what most of these companies are doing, Orbital Sciences has proposed producing a ‘mini-shuttle’ to ferry passengers to and from orbit. Most aerospace companies that have submitted designs and ideas have stepped away from the space plane concept as it is now viewed as too complicated and expensive. However, the U.S. Air Force recently successfully demonstrated the viability of its unmanned X-37B space plane. It was perhaps with this in mind that emboldened Orbital to go a step further and produce a man-rated mini space plane. Orbital images show their spacecraft proposal being lifted to orbit atop a Delta IV Heavy.
Just this month Virgin Galactic also announced its plans to produce a space plane (the company uses a space plane in its sub-orbital commercial efforts – this new space plane appears to be an extension of that).
Sierra Nevada also has proposed using a space plane as an orbital transport vehicle. Image Credit: Sierra Nevada Space
Lastly Sierra Nevada Corp also has thrown its name into the ring proposing a winged spacecraft. Their ‘Dream Chaser’ spacecraft is similar to Orbital’s proposal, a winged spacecraft that would be launched to orbit atop an expendable launch vehicle.
These companies are all vying for the $200 million that NASA has placed into a program to promote ease of access to orbit. While the Orion spacecraft, produced by Lockheed Martin, is part of a NASA program – these other organizations are hoping that by demonstrating the viability of their technology – that they can also secure a strong position in the emerging commercial space market.
An artists illustration of a manned mission to Mars. Credit: NASA
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What will it take to actually get humans to Mars? The best answer is probably money. The right amount of cold, hard cash will certainly solve a lot of problems and eliminate hurdles in sending a human mission to the Red Planet. But cash-strapped federal space agencies aren’t currently in the position to be able to direct a mission to another world – at least in the near term – and seemingly, a trip to Mars is always 20-30 years off into the future. But how about a commercially funded effort?
At first glance, a paper published recently in the somewhat dubious Journal of Cosmology appears to have some merits on using an independent corporation to administer and supervise a marketing campaign – similar to what sports teams do to sell merchandise, gain sponsors, garner broadcasting rights and arrange licensing initiatives. The paper’s author, a psychologist named Dr. Rhawn Joseph, says that going to Mars and establishing a colony would likely cost $150 billion dollars over 10 years, and he lays out a plan for making money for a sustained Mars mission through the sale of merchandise, naming rights and even creating a reality TV show and selling property rights on Mars.
Could such a scheme work?
Not according to former NASA engineer Jim McLane, who has a fairly unique scheme of his own to get humans to Mars: a one-way, one person mission.
For years, McLane has been a proponent of getting humans to Mars as quickly as possible, and his plans for a one-way mission are outlined in a very popular article Universe Today published in 2008. So, what does he think of a commercially funded effort?
Artists impression of a future human mission to Mars. Credit: NASA
“I am a vocal proponent of an early settlement on Mars,” McLane replied to a query from UT, “ So I should have welcomed Dr. Joseph’s proposal to establish a colony in 10 years with private funds and clever marketing. Regrettably, after reading the details of his scheme I believe the good Doctor should stick to peddling his patented herbal sexual dysfunction treatment and refrain from speculating about technologically intensive endeavors like a trip to Mars.”
For starters, McLane wonders about the costs that Joseph proposes. “It’s questionable,” he said. “One cannot propose a cost without first devising a technical approach and he has not done that. He justifies the large investment by alleging that there will be significant financial returns, for example the investors might be able to claim the mineral wealth of the entire planet. However owning such an asset is of dubious value since there is no way to send anything valuable back to Earth.”
Unlike ancient Spanish treasure fleets loaded with silver that sailed every year from the New World, McLane said, nothing on planet Mars will ever be worth the expense of shipping it home. Plus, selling real estate on Mars might not even be a viable option. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty prohibits governments from making extraterrestrial property rights claims, and even though some especially ambitious entrepreneurs have tried selling real estate on the Moon and Mars, ownership of extraterrestrial real estate is not recognized by any authority. According to current space law, any “deed” or claim on another extraterrestrial body has no legal standing.
McLane was also not impressed with Joseph’s statement about the wastefulness of spending on the US military as a justification for spending money on a Mars mission. “It is not as if one program could be substituted for the other,” said McLane. “But, substitution is not what Dr. Joseph proposes. He feels inclined to speculate on the wastefulness of current wars even though this is an essay on Space.”
Some of the ideas Joseph outlined for marketing does have some validity, McLane said. “Long ago NASA should have realized that the image they cultivate of nerdy, ethically and sexually diverse astronauts does not inspire the tax payer nearly as much as the early astronauts who we expected to be risk taking, hell raising test pilots,” he said.
In respect to finances, McLane said he agrees with Joseph that there is a place for private capital, but not in regards to the venture capital proposal.
“Private money could jump start a manned Mars mission,” McLane said, “but persuading billionaires to invest based on some speculative financial return is doomed to fail. I believe rich folks might be willing to help pay to put a human on Mars, but the motivations would be philanthropy and patriotism, not financial gain. Several wealthy citizens might contribute seed money (say a quarter billion dollars or so) to finance a detailed study of the design options for a one way human mission – a concept that thus far NASA refuses to consider. Such a study would reveal the technical practicality of the one-way mission and the relative cheapness of the approach. The study would probably show that a human presence on Mars would cost little more than a human moon base assuming the same 10 year time span for accomplishing both programs.”
Dr. Joseph concludes his paper by asserting that several foreign countries “are already planning on making it to Mars in the next two decades.” McLane said this seems highly improbable since the funds spent today by these nations on manned spaceflight are a tiny fraction of what the US currently spends.
Artist concept of a future human Mars mission. Credit: NASA
While Joseph – and seemingly the current President and NASA leaders favor an international effort to get to Mars, McLane believes this is short-sighted for two reasons.
One, there would be enormous technological returns from a human Mars landing that would greatly stimulate business and the economy. “Why should the US share these large returns with foreign countries,” McLane asked? And second, an all American effort could potentially take advantage of classified US military technology.
McLane did say previously, however, that the world would be excited and unified by a mission to Mars. “The enthusiasm would be the greatest effect of a program that places a man on Mars, over and above anything else, whether it makes jobs, or stimulates the economy, or creates technology spinoffs. We’re all humans and the idea of sending one of our kind on a trip like that would be a wonderful adventure for the entire world. The whole world would get behind it.”
Artist impression of the proposed Commercial Space Station. Credit: Orbital Technologies.
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Will there soon be another human destination in low Earth orbit, or is this a redundant pipe dream? Two Russian-based companies hope to build the first-ever commercial space station, named, fittingly, Commercial Space Station (CSS). Orbital Technologies and Rocket and Space Corporation Energia (RSC Energria) said in a press release that they will work together to build, launch, and operate the station, which they foresee as will being utilized by private citizens, professional crews as well as corporate researchers interested in conducting scientific programs.
“I am pleased to announce our intention to provide the global marketplace a commercially available orbital outpost,” said the CEO of Orbital Technologies, Sergey Kostenko. “Once launched and operational, the CSS will provide a unique destination for commercial, state and private spaceflight exploration missions. The CSS will be a valuable addition to the global base of orbital assets. We look forward to working with corporate entities, state governments and private individuals from around the world.”
The two companies provided no schedule for launches of the modules, or information about their funding or resources, except to advertise they are looking for partnerships.
A US-based company, Bigelow Aerospace, has also been planning to construct a commercial space station using expandable habitats. They launched prototypes in 2006 and 2007, and in 2011 plan to launch a larger 180,572 square ft. module, which they tout as “fully operational.”
“What competition do we see on the horizon?” said Robert Bigelow, founder and president on the Bigelow Aerospace website. “Nobody.”
This Russian space station, if it actually goes forward, would change that.
Reportedly, the CSS will be able to house up to seven people with “modules and technologies of the highest quality and reliability will be used in the construction of the station,” to “lead the private sector in the commercializing human spaceflight platforms in low Earth orbit.”
The CSS will be serviced by the Russian Soyuz and Progress spacecraft, as well other transportation systems available from other countries, enabled by a “unified docking system that will allow any commercial crew and cargo capability developed in the Unites States, Europe and China.”
Proposed interior of a CSS module. Credit: Orbital Technologies
Having second space station in orbit will allow the crew of the International Space Station to leave the ISS “if a required maintenance procedure or a real emergency were to occur, without the return of the ISS crew to Earth,” said Alexey Krasnov, Head of Manned Spaceflight Department, Federal Space Agency of the Russian Federation, allowing the ISS crew to have a safe haven in the event of an emergency.
But the main goal of the CSS is to be a hub for commercial activity, scientific research and development in low Earth orbit. Orbital Technologies said they already have several customers under contract from different segments of industry and the scientific community, representing such areas as medical research and protein crystallization, materials processing, and the geographic imaging and remote sensing industry.
“We also have proposals for the implementation of media projects,” said Kostenko. “And, of course, some parties are interested in short duration stays on the station for enjoyment.”
And for the future, the developers see the CSS as a “true gateway to the rest of the solar system,” said Kostenko. “A short stop-over at our station will be the perfect beginning of a manned circumlunar flight. Deep space manned exploration missions planned in the next decade are also welcome to use the CSS as a waypoint and a supply station.”
