ALL ABOARD: SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket launched the Dragon spacecraft on its inaugural orbital mission in 2010, becoming the first commercial company to send a spacecraft to orbit and return it safely to Earth.
Image: COURTESY OF SPACEX
In Brief
- Researchers who require access to space have long been frustrated by infrequent launch rates—an inevitable consequence of expensive launches.
- But new privately owned space launch companies are heralding an era of far cheaper and more frequent flights to space.
- Although many of the companies were founded to send tourists into space, researchers will be able to purchase room on the flights for their experiments for a cost that is far lower than their current options.
- Even researchers who would like to send experiments to the moon or on extended journeys in orbit around Earth are likely to benefit from companies now developing lunar landers and private space stations.
More In This Article
One of the most vexing problems in space research is that so little has changed in 50 years about the way we get to space. Consequently, space access remains both expensive and rare. It has still not reached the stage where scientists can themselves routinely travel there to conduct research, unlike oceanographers, who routinely reach the deep ocean, or geophysicists, who venture to the poles.
All this is poised to change. The advent of for-profit commercial spaceflight—most recently highlighted by the successful launches of the Dragon space cargo capsule, built and operated by SpaceX, to the International Space Station (ISS)—will likely transform space research. Scientists will enjoy lower launch costs, far more frequent access to space and the opportunity to personally run their experiments in orbit. These advances will not only help the big space research enterprises at NASA and the Japanese and the European space agencies, they will also probably make space access affordable to a broad, global base of nations, academic institutions and corporations.
This article was originally published with the title The Low-Cost Ticket to Space.
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3 Comments
Add CommentDear SA and Mr. Stern:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI could not help but read between the lines on the ‘cost’ of expanding our horizons and stare up at the astronomical figures and wonder, “where did all the money go?” Seriously, the article starts with the statement that not much has changed in the 50 years we have been ‘breaking’ the surly bonds of gravity, so why, suddenly, is private enterprise doing something that has been done pretty much the same way for half a century and more than halving the price? Has the NASA wallet become such a trough to special interests that we have been forgoing a lot of good science in the name of some corporate entitlements? A fifty percent cost overrun on a moderate project is sometimes the peril of breaking new ground, but hundreds of millions of dollars, per launch, really? I am absolutely flabbergasted. The great things that could have been achieved with that (wasted) money. I have always strongly believed in spending time and money on science and exploration, but the disconnect between what the private sector seems to be offering now vs. the old government open public purse model suggests that most of that money was not going in the right direction, pardon the pun. The author must know what he is talking about based on his credentials, although he offers no criticism of this glaring imbalance. Perhaps it is time for a new model for these sort of projects and research, where competition is encouraged for all the ‘best effort’ it can bring out in the participants. To keep a hand in and near the tiller, I think that government agencies like NASA should be part of competitions, lest the exploration become oriented at the ‘bottom line’ and we lower our collective eyes from the far horizons.
Brad Cunnin
Victoria, BC
I will add my dismay to that of Brad Cunnin.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn addition to the monumental waste of putting men and women in orbit and sending them to the Moon and back...in practice and purpose...now NASA is looking forward to lassoing an asteroid and sending men and women to Mars. The asteroid defense mission, on the back burner of public concern for many years, recently ignited by the Chelyabinsk fireball, now finds favor with crowd-funders and crowds alike, most of whom do not understand what is being proposed or why it is abject foolishness (but for its advocates / direct beneficiaries). Let's be clear; putting men on the Moon in the late 60s and 70s was a political stunt; we did it because we could and wanted to. What justifies our Buck Rogers adventures now but romantic nonsense? So what if Mars once harbored microbial life? Can we not reasonably assume that answer at a tiny fraction of the cost of knowing it for sure?
We have found lots of useful things by way of the space program, with many more to find, no doubt. Someone in authority should evaluate prospective space projects with a critical eye to practicality more than titillation and entertainment. Ponderous bureaucracies and costly equipment are only part of the problem. Cutting launch costs in half by getting government out of the way is not the only outcome that we should hope to achieve.
The real thrust of this article is that competition spurs innovation and decreases costs via efficiencies. The capture of the asteroid is directly aimed at reducing the cost of space exploration by researching the availability of extractable minerals and refining and manufacturing of products from those minerals. It also looks to being able to alter asteroid trajectories so that if we do detect a large asteroid coming for the Earth we may already have something in place to deal with it instead of a last ditch panic effort.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUnlike the 2 previous posters that seem to hate the modern world and all of the technology we enjoy, I avidly support space exploration for not only the technical innovations but also for the expansion of human habitats beyond Earth. It will probably be the better part of a century before we can have a meaningful presence off of Earth but that doesn't mean we should stop exploring or learning. I am reminded of the old saying "If God meant man to fly we would have been born with wings." It was a stupid saying then and in regards to space exploration it is stupid now.