U.S. space tourist Richard Garriott prepares for the launch of the Soyuz-FG rocket in Kazakhstan in 2008. Garriott was a crew member on the 18th mission to the International Space Station.
Richard Garriott paid a reported $30 million to ride Russian government Soyuz spacecraft, above, to the International Space Station in 2008. Garriott contends that privately funded space travel will be the new frontier for NASA after the space shuttle program ends. Atlantis, flying the 135th and final space shuttle mission, launched from Kennedy Space Center on July 8, inset.
There can be little doubt that humanity is destined to expand well beyond the confines of Earth. This expansion will be far more than a worthy adventure; it will create radical benefits for humanity here on Earth, too.
When the space shuttle arrived in 1981, it was revolutionary. It was the first reusable crewed orbital space vehicle.
The shuttle proved we could not only launch but also service satellites in orbit, as we have done with the Hubble Space Telescope. Over the years, it facilitated construction of the International Space Station, something no other vehicle could have done. For just over 10 years, humanity has lived nonstop beyond the surface of the Earth through the continuous occupation of the space station.
Today, we need vehicles that work beyond low Earth orbit, something the shuttle was never designed to do.
With the retirement of the shuttle program, many Americans are rightly concerned about the future of America's human spaceflight program. I have read innumerable headlines claiming that America is abandoning human exploration of space; nothing is further from the truth.
The new American space race has begun. This new race promises to create safer, cheaper spaceships that will explore farther, sooner. More importantly, in addition to exploration and fundamental research, this new era will return economic value from space resources like energy and minerals and microgravity research in fields such as biology.
For the past few years, NASA has been leading a bold new endeavor, challenging private industry to provide it not one but many vehicles to support its missions to and beyond the space station.
The new fleet is being built by both traditional aerospace companies and entrepreneurial startups. One has already flown in space and is scheduled to begin cargo service to the space station within a year and crew service soon after.
The new space race, driven by NASA objectives and awards, is rapidly changing the outlook for future human exploration of the cosmos for the better. Most Americans are not aware of the detail and importance of this new plan.
Today, every NASA robotic space probe flies aboard commercial rockets, the same rockets that private sector companies buy to launch their own satellites and experiments.
But historically, NASA has always owned the vehicles that its astronauts rode into space. What is changing is merely this procurement method. Instead of buying a vehicle, NASA is buying rides, just like it does for satellites. That small change has created a revolution.
Numerous companies are now competing to provide those rides — first for cargo, then for humans traveling to low Earth orbit, where the International Space Station is located, and eventually for exploration of the solar system.
In the past, NASA had no option but to continue the use of the capable but expensive (and unusually dangerous) space shuttle. Even if someone had a half-price, twice-as-safe alternative, NASA was not prepared to use it. NASA has now defined its needs and challenged private industry to provide safe, cost-effective ways to explore space — and industry has responded.
After the X-Prize for suborbital spaceflight was won in October 2004, privately funded space vehicles went from something often laughed at to something that seemed inevitable. Since then, traditional aerospace companies and new startups have competed to get pieces of NASA development contracts and eventually NASA's business to carry cargo and crews to the space station.
Boeing — which makes the main shuttle orbiter and which few can doubt has the capability to build rockets — is one of the major competitors. The company is building a new crew capsule that might ride atop the existing Atlas or Delta rockets.
In November, Space X, the firm started by Elon Musk, founder of PayPal and Tesla Motors, launched its Falcon 9 rocket carrying its Dragon Space Capsule. It orbited the Earth and safely re-entered, and the company recovered its capsule. This monumental event was the first orbit and re-entry of a space capsule by a nongovernment entity.
Sierra Nevada Corp. is building a great "mini shuttle" that could sit atop existing rockets and bring crew comfortably back like an airplane, It's similar to the shuttle but with far less complexity in a simpler and safer system.
These are only three examples of the great work happening right now across the nation that has been in progress for many years and is far along toward ensuring America's leadership in space exploration for the next several decades.
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