In the wake of the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, a new generation of rocket-powered launch technologies gets a closer look.
This is the subtitle of a long story written by David Chandler who has been covering NASA missions and policy for 25 years. Here are some short quotes.
People have tried for decades to realize the vision of a reusable rocket plane, with little success. “Rocket science has become synonymous with advanced technology, but the fact of the matter is that there has been very little in the way of new development of rockets since the early 1960s,” says Xcor Aerospace president Jeff Greason, a former Intel executive. What’s different now, he and others say, is that even before Columbia broke apart on February 1, people were actually starting to build and test new designs. Indeed, more than two dozen companies worldwide, not to mention NASA and other national space agencies, are actively developing rocket planes. And with the loss of the Columbia, deaths of seven astronauts, and subsequent grounding of the remaining shuttles, both the number of developers and the urgency of their task are likely to grow.
If rocket planes are coming, what will be their market? The answer: space tourism.
Last year a NASA-commissioned poll concluded that if reliable craft were available, 15,000 wealthy thrill seekers annually would sign up for suborbital flights costing about $50,000 each. That represents a $750 million market. And while it would not equal today’s principal space business of launching satellites -- in 2001, 39 launches worldwide generated nearly $3.3 billion in revenues-- it might mark the start of something far bigger. “Space tourism has the potential to grow into a major new industry as important as civil aviation,” says Patrick Collins, an economist at Azabu University in Fuchinobe, Japan, and a longtime advocate of space commercialization. In the near term, he adds, “There is no other application of space with even remotely similar potential.”
This article then looks at several companies involved in reusable rocket planes. So read it if you have the time. And for more about space tourism, check this former column, "Space tourism 'viable at $15,000 a seat'?."
Source: David Chandler, Technology Review, February 7, 2003
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