Plans[edit]
Many have speculated on where private spaceflight may go in the near future. Numerous projects of orbital and suborbital launch systems for satellites and crewed flights exist. Some orbital crewed missions would be state-sponsored like most COTS participants. (that develop their own launch systems). Another possibility is for paid suborbital tourism on craft like those from Virgin Galactic, Space Adventures, XCOR Aerospace, RocketShip Tours, ARCASPACE, PlanetSpace-Canadian Arrow, British Starchaser Industries or non-commercial like Copenhagen Suborbitals. Additionally, suborbital spacecraft have applications for faster intercontinental package delivery and passenger flight.
Private orbital spaceflight, space stations[edit]
SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, first launched in 2010 with no passengers,[69] was designed to be subsequently human-rated. The Atlas V launch vehicle is also a contender for human-rating.
Plans and a full-scale prototype for the SpaceX Dragon, a capsule capable of carrying up to seven passengers, were announced in March 2006,[70] and Dragon version 2 flight hardware was unveiled in May 2014.[71] As of September 2014, both SpaceX and Boeing have received contracts from NASA to complete building, testing, and flying up to six flights of human-rated space capsules to the International Space Station beginning in 2017.[72]
In December 2010, SpaceX launched the second Falcon 9 and the first operational Dragon spacecraft. The mission was deemed fully successful, marking the first launch to space, atmospheric reentry and recovery of a capsule by a private company. Subsequent COTS missions included increasingly complex orbital tasks, culminating in Dragon first docking to the ISS in 2012.
Bigelow Aerospace develops BA 330 module (based on the former NASA TransHab design) intended to be used for activities like microgravity research, space manufacturing, and space tourism with modules serving as orbital "hotels". To promote private crewed launch efforts, Bigelow offered the US$50 million America's Space Prize for the first US-based privately funded team to launch a crewed reusable spacecraft to orbit on or before 10 January 2010; such feat is yet to be achieved as of December 2018.
The British Government partnered in 2015 with the ESA to promote a possibly commercial single-stage to orbit spaceplane concept called Skylon.[73] This design was pioneered by the privately held Reaction Engines Limited,[74][75] a company founded by Alan Bond after HOTOL was canceled.[76]
As of 2012, private company NanoRacks provides commercial access to the US National Laboratory space on the International Space Station (ISS). Science experiments can be conducted on a variety of standard rack-sized experimental platforms, with standard interfaces for power and data acquisition.[77]
SpaceX announced that Japanese entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa will launch with the dearMoon crew in 2023 to become to first civilian on a lunar Starship mission.[78][79]
On-orbit propellant depots[edit]
In a presentation given 15 November 2005 to the 52nd Annual Conference of the American Astronautical Society, NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin suggested that establishing an on-orbit propellant depot is, "Exactly the type of enterprise which should be left to industry and to the marketplace."[80] At the Space Technology and Applications International Forum in 2007, Dallas Bienhoff of Boeing made a presentation detailing the benefits of propellant depots.[81] Shackleton Energy Company has established operational plans, an extensive teaming and industrial consortium for developing LEO Propellant Depots supplied by Lunar polar sourced water ice.[82]
Asteroid mining[edit]
Some have speculated on the profitability of mining metal from asteroids. According to some estimates, a one kilometer-diameter asteroid would contain 30 million tons of nickel, 1.5 million tons of metal cobalt and 7,500tons of platinum; the platinum alone would have a value of more than $150 billion at 2008 terrestrial prices.[83]
Space elevators[edit]
A space elevator system is a possible launch system, currently under investigation by at least one private venture.[84] There are concerns over cost, general feasibility and some political issues. On the plus side the potential to scale the system to accommodate traffic would (in theory) be greater than some other alternatives. Some factions contend that a space elevator — if successful — would not supplant existing launch solutions but complement them.
Non-launched efforts[edit]
Failed spaceflight ventures[edit]
After earlier first effort of OTRAG, in the 1990s the projection of a significant demand for communications satellite launches attracted the development of a number of commercial space launch providers. The launch demand largely vanished when some of the largest satellite constellations, such as 288 satellite Teledesic network, were never built.
In 1996, NASA selected Lockheed Martin Skunk Works to build the X-33 VentureStar prototype for a single stage to orbit (SSTO) reusable launch vehicle. In 1999, the subscale X-33 prototype's composite liquid hydrogen fuel tank failed during testing. At project termination on 31 March 2001, NASA had funded US$912 million of this wedge shaped spacecraft while Lockheed Martin financed US$357 million of it.[85] The VentureStar was to have been a full-scale commercial space transport operated by Lockheed Martin.
In 1997, Beal Aerospace proposed the BA-2, a low-cost heavy-lift commercial launch vehicle. On 4 March 2000, the BA-2 project tested the largest liquid rocket engine built since the Saturn V.[86] In October 2000, Beal Aerospace ceased operations citing a decision by NASA and the Department of Defense to commit themselves to the development of the competing government-financed EELV program.[87]
In 1998, Rotary Rocket proposed the Roton, a Single Stage to Orbit (SSTO) piloted Vertical Take-off and Landing (VTOL) space transport.[88] A full scale Roton Atmospheric Test Vehicle flew three times in 1999. After spending tens of millions of dollars in development the Roton failed to secure launch contracts and Rotary Rocket ceased operations in 2001.
On 28 September 2006, Jim Benson, SpaceDev founder, announced he was founding Benson Space Company with the intention of being first to market with the safest and lowest cost suborbital personal spaceflight launches, using the vertical takeoff and horizontal landing Dream Chaser vehicle based on the NASA HL-20 Personnel Launch System vehicle.[needs update]
Excalibur Almaz had plans in 2007 to launch a modernized TKS Spacecraft (for Almaz space station), for tourism and other uses. It was to feature the largest window ever on a spacecraft. Their equipment was never launched, and their hangar facility closed in 2016. It is to be converted into an educational exhibit.[89]
Escape Dynamics operated from 2010 to 2015, with the goal of making single-stage to orbit spaceplanes.[90]
In December 2012, the Golden Spike Company announced plans to privately transport space exploration participants to the surface of the Moon and return, beginning as early as 2020, for US$750 million per passenger.[91]
XCOR Aerospace planned to initiate a suborbital commercial spaceflight service with the Lynx rocketplane in 2016 or 2017 at $95,000. First test flights to be conducted by 23 pilots from the Axe Apollo Space Academy, one of which is a Filipino named Chino Roque, were planned for 2015.[92][93][94]
Private space stations[edit]
By 2010, Bigelow Aerospace was developing the Next-Generation Commercial Space Station, a private orbital space complex. The space station was to have been constructed of both Sundancer and B330 expandable modules as well as a central docking node, propulsion, solar arrays, and attached crew capsules. Initial launch of space station components was planned for 2014, with portions of the station projected to be available for leased use as early as 2015.[95] As of 2018, no launches have taken place.
Lunar private ventures[edit]
Robotic Lunar-surface missions[edit]
The following companies and organizations had made initial funded launch commitments for Google Lunar X Prize-related Lunar launches in 2016:
Private Lunar-surface crewed expeditions[edit]
- Shackleton Energy Company[101] intends to undertake human tended lunar prospecting for water ice. If significant reserves of ice are located, they plan to establish a network of "refueling service stations" in low Earth orbit and on the Moon to process and provide fuel and consumables for commercial and government customers. If the prospecting is successful—ice deposits are located, the appropriate legal regime is in place to support commercial development, and the ice can be extracted — Shackleton proposes to establish a fuel-processing operation on the lunar surface and in propellant depots in Low Earth Orbit. Equipment would melt the ice and purify the water, "electrolyze the water into gaseous hydrogen and oxygen, and then condense the gases into liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen and also process them into hydrogen peroxide, all of which could be used as rocket fuels."
Mars exploration[edit]
In June 2012, private Dutch non-profit, Mars One, announced a private one-way (no return) human mission to Mars with the aim to establish a permanent human colony on Mars.[102] The plan was to send a communication satellite and pathfinder lander to the planet by 2016 and, after several stages, land four humans on the Martian surface for permanent settlement in 2023.[103] A new set of four astronauts would then arrive every two years.[104]
Mars One has received a variety of criticism, mostly relating to medical,[105] technical and financial feasibility. There are also unverified claims that Mars One is a scam designed to take as much money as possible from donors, including reality show contestants.[106][107] Many have criticized the project's US$6 billion budget as being too low to successfully transport humans to Mars, to the point of being delusional.[108][109] A similar project study by NASA estimated the cost of such a feat at US$100 billion, although that included transporting the astronauts back to Earth. Objections have also been raised regarding the reality TV project associated with the expedition. Given the transient nature of most reality TV ventures, many believe that as viewership declines, funding could significantly decrease, thereby harming the entire expedition. Further, contestants have reported that they were ranked based on their donations and funds raised.[106][110]
In February 2013, the US nonprofit Inspiration Mars Foundation announced a plan to send a married couple on a 2018 mission to travel to Mars and back to Earth on a 501-day round trip, with no landing planned on Mars.[111] The mission would have taken advantage of an infrequently occurring free return trajectory—a unique orbit opportunity which occurs only once every fifteen years—and will allow the space capsule to use the smallest possible amount of fuel to get it to Mars and back to Earth. The two-person American crew – a man and a woman – will orbit around Mars at a distance of 100 miles (160 km) of the surface.[112] "If anything goes wrong, the spacecraft should make its own way back to Earth — but with no possibility of any shortcuts home."[113]
On September 27, 2016, at the 67th annual meeting of the International Astronautical Congress, Elon Musk unveiled substantial details of the Interplanetary Transport System (ITS) design for the transport vehicles—including size, construction material, number and type of engines, thrust, cargo and passenger payload capabilities, on-orbit propellant-tanker refills, representative transit times, etc.—as well as a few details of portions of the Mars-side and Earth-side infrastructure that SpaceX intends to build to support the flight vehicles. In addition, Musk championed a larger systemic vision, a vision for a bottom-up emergent order of other interested parties—whether companies, individuals, or governments—to utilize the new and radically lower-cost transport infrastructure to build up a sustainable human civilization on Mars, potentially, on numerous other locations around the Solar System, by innovating and meeting the demand that such a growing venture would occasion.[114][115]
In July 2017, SpaceX made public plans for ITS based on a smaller launch vehicle and spacecraft. The new system architecture has "evolved quite a bit" since the November 2016 articulation of the very large "Interplanetary Transport System". A key driver of the new architecture is to make the new system useful for substantial Earth-orbit and cislunar launches so that the new system might pay for itself, in part, through economic spaceflight activities in the near-Earth space zone.[116][117] The Super Heavy is designed to fulfill the Mars transportation goals while also launching satellites, servicing the ISS, flying humans and cargo to the Moon, and enabling ballistic transport of passengers on Earth as a substitute to long-haul airline flights.[118]
Since March 2020, SpaceX conducted several test flights of their Starship spacecraft. The Starship is a fully reusable two-stage vehicle designed to take passengers and cargo to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. SpaceX had initially planned to have an orbital-flight in 2021. On Wednesday, May 5, 2021, the twelfth Starship prototype (SN15) made a 10km suborbital flight and achieved soft landing. SpaceX is currently in the process of improving and understanding the Starship spacecraft.[78]
NewSpace terminology[edit]
The term "NewSpace" emphasizes the relative modernity of private spaceflight efforts, encompassing international and multinational efforts to privatize spaceflight as a commercial industry. Such corporations fall under the governance of international treaties and national governments.[119]