NASA just released an announcement of opportunity for private space companies to propose building low-Earth orbit vehicles! In their own words, they want to
… solicit proposals from industry for Earth to orbit space flight demonstrations of any combination of the following mission capabilities:
Period 1
a) External unpressurized cargo delivery and disposal,
b) Internal pressurized cargo delivery and disposal,
c) Internal pressurized cargo delivery, return and recovery.
Option Period 2
d) Crew Transportation.
And then (literally) the money quote:
Period 1 demonstration(s) will culminate with a rendezvous and docking or berthing with the International Space Station and either disposal or reentry and recovery, depending on the selected mission.
Wow. The long version is here, in case you have a spare few million bucks to start up and some rocket parts in your basement (and I’ll add, quite a few companies really do…)
December 11th, 2005 at 2:41 pm
I bet SpaceX will be all over this.
They might have even inspired it
December 11th, 2005 at 7:31 pm
Finally I’ll be able to make some money out of this antimatter engine in my garage
December 11th, 2005 at 8:47 pm
Motion sickness in space must be horrible!
December 11th, 2005 at 9:41 pm
if only i had a spare few million…
in the mean time, I’ll just stick to orbiter
December 12th, 2005 at 8:25 am
If only I had a spare few million …
.. hours to build something ..
December 12th, 2005 at 9:32 am
Hooray for the twenty-first century and the magic of capitalism!
NASA: “Okay, we now understand the requirements of what needs doing really really well. What we need is for you guys to come up with ways to do these things in an economical / businesslike fashion.”
The teams that pop out of the woodwork should be very interesting since (a) the team will need to have the capability to get there and back in a cost-effective fashion and (b) see profit opportunities that far outweigh the costs, publicity risks, etc. I.e., it won’t just be transport, it will also involve team members who need to get to the space station / orbit to do … something.
Funnily enough, I’ve been reading some 50s-era science fiction to my son recently and the theme of “let’s develop in Earth orbit first, solar system later” certainly has some parallels with current endeavors.