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New Space Race: Firms Vie To Haul Cargo, Passengers
By Nancy Trejos
August 14, 2012 1:09PM
New Space Race: Firms Vie To Haul Cargo, Passengers | CIO Today
By Nancy Trejos
August 14, 2012 1:09PM
The sky is no limit to what a largely unfettered U.S. space industry can achieve. Many of the firms trying to carve out a niche in space are run by savvy entrepreneurs who've made fortunes in other industries. Perhaps the highest-profile space venture is British billionaire Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, which aims to help the wealthy into space.
The commercial space race is on. Perhaps nothing signified its arrival like this spring's successful cargo flight of the Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station that was launched by private firm SpaceX.
SpaceX, run by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, isn't the only firm vying to haul cargo and people into orbit since NASA relinquished its near-monopoly on U.S. space transportation by retiring the Space Shuttle program last year.
At least a dozen companies are developing spaceships to replace the shuttle's duties or to carve their own commercial pathways in space.
The U.S. government's new approach of letting private companies take over the work NASA used to do in low orbit around the Earth -- and pay for part of it -- has opened the final frontier to free enterprise .
And many advocates of commercial space ventures foresee a new and even grandiose era of U.S. space exploration, development and travel resulting from it.
"We're making space more American. We're making space more democratic. We're making space more available, approachable and real to the average American," says James Muncy, president of the space policy consulting firm PoliSpace in Alexandria, Va.
Even NASA says the sky is no limit to what a largely unfettered U.S. space industry can achieve.
"If NASA is the only game in town our space aspirations will always be limited by the size of NASA's budget," says Philip McAlister, director of commercial spaceflight for NASA. "When you start turning this over to the private sector, there's no limit."
But this new strategy still comes with some government assistance and say.
In the last six years, NASA has doled out about $2 billion to private companies to design and build space taxis to the Space Station. Earlier this month, NASA pledged an additional $1.1 billion to three U.S. companies -- aerospace giant Boeing, Musk's SpaceX and high-tech firm Sierra Nevada -- to finish the work.
Right now, NASA is paying the Russians more than $60 million a person for a ride to the Space Station, money it says it would rather give to U.S. companies. NASA says it would have cost the government about twice more than what it's giving the companies to develop the new spacecraft.
The savings, the space agency says, frees it to use its resources to explore deep space, specifically Mars, the moon and asteroids. But a crucial step for the emerging industry is to be able to survive without NASA funding. (continued...)
New Space Race: Firms Vie To Haul Cargo, Passengers | CIO Today
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