Courtesy of Space.com
The Space Shuttle Endeavor is poised to launch on April 29th 2011. This is the second to last launch of any space shuttle. It is the end of an era of government run space exploration. And the beginning of the take over by private enterprise.
"Four private companies are the leaders in the effort to build commercial spaceships to carry astronauts to low-Earth orbit and the International Space Station after the space shuttles retire."
"They recieved contracts from NASA in its Commercial Crew Development program, which aims to spur creation of a private replacement for the space shuttles. The U.S. space agency hopes outsourcing travel to low-Earth orbit will free it to focus on building a rocket to carry astronauts to an asteroid and Mars. "
"The four contract winners are Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada, SpaceX and Boeing."
Brokn Dodge posted a comment on http://www.space.com/11502-space-tourism-moon-mission-space-adventures.html
It is interesting. I will quote it. I wonder what article he is referring too.
"I read an article on another site that said something to the effect of: Russia currently holds apx 40% of the $200 billion dollar per year world wide launch business. They reasonably expect to grow that to over 50% by this time next year. Considering their entire program cost them less than $9 billion per year. Thats one heck of a profit. They've bought this whole commercial thing completely. I figure it puts Russia in a conflict of interest. They don't want to lose all those valuable tickets to the ISS NASA buys each year.
SpaceX published prices for the same mission would have 6-7 people on the same mission for about the same money. That would lower the cost per seat for a lunar slingshot mission to less than the current ticket price to the ISS on a Soyuz."
This points out that Russia, the first to launch a tourist astronaught, may be making plans to expand on the tourist space trips. Also, they already make aprox $80 billion, a $70 billion per year profit in being a space taxi. They will compete against the new upcomming businesses. But, costs will come down since Space X will be so much cheaper. This is where competetion makes things affordable to the masses. I will be watching with great interest.
However, I think that these new companies are vying or the billion dollar projects and that leaves a void for the normal income person. What will fill that void and make space available to all?
What about a lottery? I wonder how many people would enter a lottery to win a trip to space instead of millions of dollars like the average state lottery. 400 people have paid the $200,000 ticket price to ride with Virgin Galactic on a Suborbital flight. If a lottery was developed to take people to space.... I might play that lottery.
