Its next scheduled flight is 2011

There was a time when it caused a lot of excitement as a means of lowering launch costs and thereby allowing much wider access to space. I seem to remember a test failure or two, but later I understood they had ironed the bugs out. Was this mistaken?

But see, your wrong in your assumption there. They are private space companies, because they aren’t owned & operated by NASA. In fact, the rockets that ULA (IE Boeing & Lockheed Martin) fly are commercially available (the Atlas V & Delta IV).

Moreover, everyone involved in getting private space to help move us forward, consider them vital to the larger project. And there is a lot of evidence that NASA sees it this way as well – that its not NASA & its traditional contractors vs NewSpace, but rather, merging NewSpace & the NASA contractors, to better serve NASA. And, at the same time, make it so that it can serve other, non-NASA human customers (and yes, this applies to both the “Newspace companies”, and the NASA contractors)

Let me show you exactly how this works – Back when NASA first announced this, there was a lot of talk about the Merchant 7 companies. Basically, these were companies that had won NASA contracts that were aimed at enabling private spaceflight. These companies were:
SpaceX (NewSpace company)
Orbital Science corporation (sort of in-between, but more Traditional NASA company)
Sierra Nevada Corp (Sort of in between, but more NewSpace)
Boeing (Traditional NASA company)
Blue Origin (NewSpace company)
ULA (Traditional NASA company)
Paragon (NewSpace company)

The point I am getting at is that we aren’t talking about turning it over to companies who haven’t done anything before with human spaceflight (or at least, we aren’t going to only involve them). We did this quite explicitly with Cargo resupply for the station – you have SpaceX, the new company, and Orbital Science, which is a traditional NASA contractor. The key thing is that NASA is treating the companies (and will do so when commercial crew comes on) as commercial operators, rather than contractors. And yes, this applies to those who have traditionally been NASA contractors (IE Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Orbital Science Corporation).

Its time you reconsider your terminology.

Let me put this quite clearly – if there was a guarantee (I mean guarantee) that among the commercial contracts handed out for delivering crew to ISS was at least 1 or 2 options that were entirely traditional NASA contractors (using this new contracting mechanism) would you still oppose it?

Thanks for that.

I’ve learned a bit from you on this issue here &, okay, I have to admit that things are more advanced than I’d previously thought esp. when it comes to the Bigelow Genesis stations.

I’ve even done some extra research there & can direct y’all to :

http://www.bigelowaerospace.com/genesis_II/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_I

&

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX

However, they haven’t launched people yet & I’m still not convinced they are necessarily the way to go for the immediate future.

I’d like to see them accomplish much more first before I’d be willing to rely on them as any sort of substitute for NASA when it comes to space exploration and development.

I’d include your “oldspace companies” as part of NASA – contracting for the National agency & working under NASA direction for NASA’s ends – & would not count them as “private space” as I’d define the term.

Has that actually happened then or just been planned? If it has happened then I’m afraid that I missed it. Not saying it *hasn’t* just that I’m not aware of it. I agree it looks like the Falcon team is doing something but not sure if it has or will take off or how much it will be able to do.

You are confusing Falcon 1 & Falcon 9. There have been 2 Falcon 1 launches, with satellites & everything. The Falcon 9, which hasn’t launched, is the one on the pad right now.

First Falcon 1 launch – Sept 28, 2008
Second Falcon 1 launch – July 14, 2009

Get back to me on that when they’re ready to launch them – like when they’re on the launch pad inside a rocket counting down.

Genesis 1 – launched in 2006
Genesis 2 – launched in 2007

If you have good eyes, and don’t live near major light sources, you can see them orbit (I have not particularly good eyes, and live near a large city, so I haven’t seen them, at least not in the sky)

I don’t & I hadn’t heard of that happening either. But again, how high can these XCOR rocketplanes go, what can they do & when are they doing it and can we really trust that they *will* do it?
The first was a test vehicle, to develop the knowledge base for XCOR – this was called the EZ-Rocket. This has been retired at this point.

The 2nd, called the X-Racer, is for rocketplane racing (for the Rocket racing league). Its primary purpose was to further refine engine technology, and also provide a rocket racing airplane. It can’t get very high or go particularly fast (I know it doesn’t break the sound barrier), but, OTOH, the life cycle & operations cycle of the rockets is damn impressive. I don’t remember the numbers, but it can have multiple cycles per day, and long time cycles at that. In essence, its a real reusable rocket engine, as opposed to the salvageable engine we see on the space shuttle

The 3rd vehicle, currently being built, is the Lynx. It uses the engine developed for the X-Racer (but with some minor & slight improvements), and can go into space (over 100 km), with a single passenger. Its not orbital though.

Aside from winning governmment prizes – which is all well & good – what have these actually achieved, what are their capabilities and, if they are so good, why aren’t they up there , flying and doing stuff like launching satellites or taking supplies to the ISS or flying space tourists already?

Most of them have been developmental vehicles, however some are approaching operational vehicles. For Armadillo Aerospace, I know that they’ve passed 1200 meters, although I can’t speak to what the ultimate altitude of that particular vehicle. For Masten’s Xoie, it should be able to reach 100,000, or get up to 30 seconds of weightlessness. BTW, NASA hasn’t produced a vehicle that can take-off & land vertically, under rocket power. There next vehicle or 2 should be space capable. Figure they are on step 7-8, and step 10 gets a fully space capable vehicle (although they are not orbital capable).

Before I go on, I want to make a very important point – even if you just limit it to these NewSpace companies, and don’t consider the next point I am going to get into, the underlying point is, they are beginning to get awfully close to putting products in space (or even have in the case of a few), and all have test vehicles (substantial test vehicles) currently flying. You basically suggested that the only thing that has happened is the SS1 flights (which there were 3 of, not 2). And that is not the case, not by a long shot. Yes, a lot of it is still in the testing phase, but its in the very advance testing phase.
——————————————-
Now, referring to Oldspace companies
Where are they now? If they were so good, what happened to them?

Well, Lockheed Martin & Boeing are quite successful, and have built the ISS, the Space Shuttle, the Saturn V, the Apollo capsules, and the LEM. Right now, they’ve created a joint merger company, called ULA, which provides launches for various NASA probes, such as the New Horizons (and many other probes launched for NASA do so on a commercial rocket. In fact, the Shuttle’s themselves are maintained by a company called USA.

Orbital science Corporation, another company, has flown multiple satellites & rockets for NASA into space. The Pegasus remains in operation today, carrying smaller satellites into space. They’ve also got a slightly larger rocket, called the Taurus & Minotaur, and are working on a much larger rocket, called the Taurus II.

NASA has never functioned without its contractor base, and so when you say “Private space needs to accomplish a 3rd of what NASA has accomplished”, what you fail to realize is that private space HAS accomplished everything that NASA has accomplished. I will grant, they probably wouldn’t have done it without NASA. OTOH, don’t act like NASA could’ve accomplished those feats without its contractor base.

The point is, when we are talking about commercial spaceflight, there are companies that are pursuing it directly, only using very limited NASA money, and those that have done it using ONLY NASA money. The first is fairly new (although, not as new as you might think, its just this is the first time they’ve gotten this successful), and the 2nd has been around for awhile.

The fundamental question in all of these discussions isn’t whether commercial space can succeed, because we see it succeeding all the time. The real question is can commercial space succeed with markets that aren’t solely dependent upon NASA. We’ve done that for things like Comm sats, but not for humans or something that requires regular too and back access to space. But if we can get that to happen, and get NASA to help that happen, we get to do a lot more.

Plutonium being from Pluto – You asked what has Private space done beyond the SS1 flights

I did indeed – Thanks for your reply.

1. There are the 2 flights from the Falcon 1

Has that actually happened then or just been planned? If it has happened then I’m afraid that I missed it. Not saying it *hasn’t* just that I’m not aware of it. I agree it looks like the Falcon team is doing something but not sure if it has or will take off or how much it will be able to do.

2. There are the 2 prototype space stations from Bigelow Aerospace

Get back to me on that when they’re ready to launch them – like when they’re on the launch pad inside a rocket counting down.

3. There is the multiple rocketplanes from XCOR (true, they didn’t get out of the atmosphere, but don’t think building a rocketplane is easy)

I don’t & I hadn’t heard of that happening either. But again, how high can these XCOR rocketplanes go, what can they do & when are they doing it and can we really trust that they *will* do it?

4. There is the various VTVLs that Armadillo Aerospace has built and flown (Scorpius & Pixel & the like), which allowed them to win 2 government prizes

5. There is the Goddard test vehicle (a HUGE vehicle) that Blue Origin has built and flown
6. There is the Xombie & Xoie vehicles that Masten has built, & successfully flown (and used to win 2 government prizes)

Aside from winning governmment prizes – which is all well & good – what have these actually achieved, what are their capabilities and, if they are so good, why aren’t they up there , flying and doing stuff like launching satellites or taking supplies to the ISS or flying space tourists already?

And all of this excludes the things done by OldSpace companies (such as the Pegasus rocket that OSC did, or the EELVs)They’ve done quite a bit, even if you leave out traditional space companies. Its time to start taking this seriously

Where are they now? If they were so good, what happened to them?

OTOH, lets contrast your examples by looking at how how far NASA – JPL & other national space agencies have gone and all they’ve done :

- 12 Humans on the Moon & around 20+ orbited it.

- Space stations built (Skylab, ISS)

- 500 or so astronauts in space mostly aboard the shuttle (& also the Russian craft)

- Space probes visiting every planet except Pluto with one on the way to that ice dwarf now.

- Robot landings on Mars, our Moon, Titan, the asteroid Eros, Venus (Russians), & maybe the asteroid Itokawa (Japan) too.

- Samples returned or currently on the way to being returned from comets (Stardust), asteroids (Hayabusa -MUSES C - maybe), & the solar wind. (Genesis)

National space agencies have sent robotic craft outside our solar system & human’s to the Moon.

When private companies can do, say about a *third* of that, *then* I might take them seriously!

National public space agencies were sending humans into orbit back in the 1950′s.
Private space companies can’t even do that much yet with only a couple of sub-orbital flights and those in the 2000′s.

I don’t want to knock them or suggest they’re *never* going to amount to anything but my hopes for them have been raised and dashed before and I don’t forget that. I think they’re still a long way off being worth much and I emphatically do NOT trust them to be the immediate short-term future of manned space travel.

They really need to prove themselves capable and successful and meanwhile we need to stick with funding and backing the proven performer – NASA. I trust NASA to get us to the Moon again because it has shown it *can* do the job. I don’t trust private companies to do so because they haven’t.

As I said, I hope I’m wrong but that’s what I think & why I think so. I don’t believe the private /public space operators is an either/or case but will hopefully one day be a both/ and situation. I wish these private space groups luck – they’re goanna need it!

Here is a list of peer reviewed articles so far:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/science/experiments/Publications.html

Some of the stuff that is just happening:
http://blog.al.com/breaking/2010/03/nasa_scientists_open_space_lab.html
http://biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2010/03/09/jatropha-in-space-iss-experiments-on-seed-growing-in-progress-until-april/

This doesn’t list NASA’s contribution to Earth observations,

Not to mention Astrogenetix creating their salmonella vaccine from ISS research and now working on one for deadly staph infections.

There are other ongoing experiments that I haven’t seen results for, like MIT’s SPHERES and UND’s AgCam. Also right now their is a proposal making the rounds to use the ISS as a tech testbed to work on orbital refueling of satellites.