Commercial Spaceflight Ticket Or NASA Ticket To Space And Beyond?

NASA is dragging their heels when it comes to space exploration. Money just isn’t available to make space exploration as quick as some people would like. This is where commercial spaceflight is taking over. Unfortunately commercial spaceflight doesn’t mean travelling to the moon and back to drop off people at the Moon Hotel. To get some idea of how far into space you can get today with a reasonable amount of money with spaceship one from virgin Galactic compared to the space shuttle to the space Station and the moon etc take a look at this list-

• 238,794 miles the moon. The view from the moon.
• 6000 miles to 12,000 miles global positioning satellites.
• 600 miles to 1200 miles spy satellites keep their beady eyes on us.
• 250 miles to 435 miles the Earth’s Exosphere.
• 200 miles to 250 miles the International space Station.
• 150 miles to 400 miles the space shuttle.
• 68 miles spacecraft one from virgin Galactic.
• 62.5 miles space begins.
• 50 miles NASA awards astronaut wings.
• 5.5 miles Mount Everest.

As you can see spaceship one would have to go much further to reach the International space Station as it just touches space. It is not designed to go anywhere above 68 miles so comparing it to the space shuttle is a bit unfair.

View from spaceshipone

Spaceship one also is what is classed as a sub orbital flight which means that it just glances space and then returns to the Earth. It will not carry out any orbits of the earth like the space shuttle or the space station either.Obviously there are a few differences on the price though. Flight on spaceship one will cost $200,000 and the occasional tourist going out with the space shuttle has cost around $20 million.

When choosing between a flight on spaceship one or a flight on the space shuttle cost is not everything (well in this case it is for us normal folk anyway). If you look at the photos that I posted you will see the difference between the two.You do get the feeling of being weightless in both but in the space station obviously you are weightless for a long time as it is in orbit. One good thing though is that you do get your astronaut wings on

View from the space station

both flights and can go into parties with them sown to every jacket that you own. Having been a pilot myself I know that the glamour wears off very quickly though.

The whole commercial spaceflight program was kicked off really by the X prize. This gets a certain amount of prize money for carrying out a certain task. Obviously this is a good incentive and acts like a catalyst. Spaceshipone won the first X prize, called the Ansari prize, raking in a good $10 million. To win the prize it had to make two flights to 100 km within two weeks. The x-prize YouTube channel contains a lot of decent videos well worth watching.

There are three other X prizes. The Archon prize for Genomics, the Progressive automotive prize and the one that really concerns us the Google lunar X prize. The Google Lunar X prize is a $30 million competition for the first privately funded team to send a robot to the moon, travel 500 meters and transmit video, images and data back to the Earth.

There are 19 teams going for this prize from all over the world.

Lunatrek is a team that was considered an underdog but is it’s showing its true colours now slowly catching up to the

Lunatrek

more conventional methods of getting to the moon with it’s electric propulsion engine. This will mean that it will take a few months to get to the moon as it will have to slowly gather speed orbiting the Earth, but who’s counting? Perhaps the most unusual feature of the Lunatrex plan involve the rovers. One rover idea is an inchworm that uses piezoelectric “muscles” to scoot along the lunar surface. Another rover could use an icosahedrons shape with 12 telescoping legs that slowly “walk” in any direction – the legs would handily double as the transceiver antennae.

The Romanian team called ARCA operates a balloon that can carry ARCA’s European Lunar Explorer (ELE) space probe into the upper atmosphere of Earth eliminating the need for a traditional launch pad and allowing ARCA to launch close to the equator from a sea platform. The “0″ pressure balloon design is similar to a giant black hot-air balloon that uses solar energy to heat the air inside, instead of the burner that normal hot-air balloons use.

Once the balloon soars above 11 miles (18 km), the three-stage rocket slung below will fire and boost itself into low

Team Italia's Spider Bot

Earth orbit. ELE will then travel to the moon and deploy its Lunar Lander, which resembles a knobby rubber ball that uses its own rocket engine to ensure a soft landing.

Team Italia lunar robots resemble skittering spiders or crabs that could deploy as a swarm of mobile cameras and sensors on both legs and wheels.

Lunar Odyssey is aiming to use tried and tested technology to complete the prize.  It announced plans last year to fly cremated human remains to the moon, as part of a partnership service with Celestis. Odyssey Moon also signed on recently with Paragon Space Development Corporation to help deliver the first flower to the moon.

A new idea is moon bots. This is a challenge for adults and children in teams to build a Rover very similar to the one that is required for the Google lunar X prize. But the difference is it is made with specified bits from Lego. It hasn’t started yet so you are just in time if you found you didn’t have the money to make a real rocket and lunar lander.

The X prize is not the only competition at the moment. The space elevator games were invented to try and conquer NASA Centennial challenges, especially the power beaming and tether parts. These are some of the main challenges to

Space Elevator

building a space elevator. Once on the elevator games site take a look at the video for an idea of what it’s all about.

The Centennial challenge from NASA also has a few mini competitions available such as making a glove for the astronauts and excavating soil similar to the moon. These challenges are really just contracting out the bits that NASA doesn’t really want to do. It is a great idea as it will kickstart industries which will in the future be able to provide all sorts of equipment and rockets.

The Earth and space foundation have a set of awards  for going to Mars and doing things when you get there. The awards are realistic but the the actual money that you will receive on doing these things is not. As far as I can see there are no big players backing it and they are asking for donations to put into an endowment policy.

So what sort of challenges are waiting for us to go to Mars? Perhaps this is the cheapest way? I wonder how much is in my savings account? perhaps I should save up for the Y prize contest to the nearest star or perhaps just buy a £15 rocket and launch it in my back garden.

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