Private spaceflight Private spaceflight America's Space Prize is a US$50 million orbital spaceflight competition established and funded by hotel entrepreneur Robert Bigelow. The prize will be awarded to the first US-based privately-funded team to design and build a reusable manned capsule capable of flying 5 astronauts to a Bigelow Aerospace inflatable space module. The prize expires January 10, 2010. There must be two flights within 60 days. The teams must be based in the United States of America. ...more on Wikipedia about "America's Space Prize"
The Ansari X Prize (formerly the X Prize) was a US$10,000,000 prize, offered by the X PRIZE Foundation, for the first non-government organization to launch a reusable manned spacecraft into space twice within two weeks. It was modelled after early 20th-century aviation prizes, and aimed to spur development of low-cost spaceflight. The prize was won on October 4 2004, 47th anniversary of the Sputnik 1 launch, by the Tier One project using the experimental spaceplane SpaceShipOne. ...more on Wikipedia about "Ansari X Prize"
Space Systems/Loral's Aquarius Launch Vehicle is a low-cost launch vehicle designed to carry small, inexpensive payoads into LEO. Aquarius trades reliability for low launch costs. The vehicle will be primarily intended to launch into orbit bulk products, like water, fuel, and other consumables, that are inexpensive to replace in the event of a launch failure. The target launch cost is $1 million. As currently designed, Aquarius will be a single-stage vehicle 43 meters (141 feet) high and 4 meters (13.1 feet) in diameter and powered by a single engine using liquid hydrogen and oxygen propellants. The vehicle is floated in the ocean prior to launch to minimize launch infrastructure and will be able to place a 1,000-kilogram (2,205-pound) payload into a 200-kilometer (125-mile), 52-degree orbit. The payload, located in the base of the vehicle, will be extracted by an orbiting space tug for transfer to its ultimate destination, after which the vehicle will de-orbit and be destroyed. Space Systems/Loral studied Aquarius under a $110,000 grant awarded by the state of California in April 2001 and delivered a final report in June 2002. Space Systems/Loral teamed with Microcosm of El Segundo, California, and Wilson Composite Technologies of Folsom, California, for the study. Funding of $1 million was provided in the FY 2004 Defense Appropriations Act to develop a prototype of the low-cost engine for the vehicle. The engine would provide 400,000 pounds of thrust using liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen as propellants. For the engine development, Space Systems/Loral is partnered with Aerojet, a GenCorp Company based in Sacramento, California, ORBITEC of Madison, Wisconsin, and Microcosm. This program is now proceeding under the auspices of the Air Force Research Laboratory. (from ** pp. 14–15) ==External links== * http://homepage.mac.com/fcrossman/NorCalSAMPE/Comp_WS_papers/Turner_012204.pdf ==References== * Space Time magazine, May/June 2001 ...more on Wikipedia about "Aquarius Launch Vehicle"
Armadillo Aerospace is an aerospace startup company based in Mesquite, Texas. Its initial goal is to build a manned suborbital Ansari X-Prize-class spacecraft, but it has stated long-term ambitions of orbital spaceflight. The company was founded in the year 2000, but was incorporated on January 1, 2001. ...more on Wikipedia about "Armadillo Aerospace"
The Association of Autonomous Astronauts is a world-wide network of community based groups dedicated to building their own spaceships. The AAA was founded 23 April 1995. ...more on Wikipedia about "Association of Autonomous Astronauts"
Beal Aerospace was founded by Andrew Beal, president of Beal Bank in Dallas, Texas. The goal of the company was to build and operate a privately developed orbital launch vehicle. ...more on Wikipedia about "Beal Aerospace"
Blue Origin is a privately-funded aerospace company initially focused on sub-orbital spaceflight founded in 2000. The company is owned by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos and headquartered in a warehouse situated on 25 acres of industrial land in the Seattle, Washington suburb of Kent, Washington, where its research and development is located. It has its testing and operations center in Culberson County, Texas, on a portion of the Corn Ranch, a 165,000 acre (668 km²) spread north of Van Horn and 15 miles south of the Guadalupe Mountains. ...more on Wikipedia about "Blue Origin"
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The Canadian Arrow is a privately funded rocket and space travel project founded by London, Ontario, Canada entrepreneur Geoff Sheerin. The objective is to take the first civilians into outer space. ...more on Wikipedia about "Canadian Arrow"
Cosmos 1 was a project by The Planetary Society to test a solar sail in space. As part of the project, an unmanned solar sail spacecraft was launched into space at 15:46:09 EDT (19:46:09 UTC) on June 21, 2005, from the submarine Borisoglebsk in the Barents Sea. However, a rocket failure prevented it from reaching its intended orbit. Once in orbit, the spacecraft was supposed to deploy a large sail, upon which photons from the Sun would push, thereby increasing the spacecraft's velocity (the contributions from the solar wind are similar, but of much smaller magnitude). ...more on Wikipedia about "Cosmos 1"
The da Vinci Project is a privately-funded, volunteer-staffed attempt to launch a reusable manned suborbital spacecraft. It was a contender for the Ansari X Prize for the first non-governmental reusable manned spacecraft. The project is based in Toronto Ontario, Canada and led by Brian Feeney. ...more on Wikipedia about "Da Vinci Project"
During the early years of spaceflight only nation states had the resources to develop and fly spacecraft. Both the U.S. space program and Soviet space program were operated using mainly military pilots as astronauts. During this period, no commercial space launches were available to private operators, and no private organization was able to offer space launches. ...more on Wikipedia about "Private spaceflight"
Roton was a concept developed in the late 1990s as a fully reusable Single Stage to Orbit (SSTO) manned spacecraft. Roton was intended to reduce costs of launching payloads into low earth orbit by a factor of ten. Gary Hudson championed the design and formed the startup Rotary Rocket, Inc (rotaryrocket.com), headquartered in a 45,000-square-foot facility at Mojave Airport. A full-scale test vehicle made three hover flights in 1999, but the company ran out of funds and closed its doors in early 2001. ...more on Wikipedia about "Rotary Rocket"
Silver Dart is a proposed eight-person lifting body orbital spacecraft announced by PlanetSpace. The company intends to compete for contracts for cargo and crew flights to the international space station ( ISS). ...more on Wikipedia about "Silver Dart (space craft)"
The Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) is an El Segundo, California space transportation startup company whose stated goal is to improve the cost and reliability of access to space "ultimately by a factor of ten". ...more on Wikipedia about "SpaceX" shortopedia never sleeps.
Starchaser Industries is a British company headed by CEO Steve Bennett, working on the development of rockets for commercial space access. Starchaser was founded in 1992 by Steve Bennett and is currently based in Hyde, Cheshire, UK. ...more on Wikipedia about "Starchaser Industries"
t/Space (or Transformational Space Corporation) is an American aerospace company which tried to compete for NASA's Vision for Space Exploration (VSE) contract. The company's CEO is David Gump of LunaCorp. Some notable members of the company include Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites, Gary Hudson of AirLaunch LLC ** , Elon Musk of SpaceX, and Red Whittaker of the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute. The company is headquartered in Reston, Virginia. ...more on Wikipedia about "T/Space"
Tier One is Scaled Composites' program of suborbital human spaceflight using the reusable spacecraft SpaceShipOne and its launcher White Knight. The craft are designed by Burt Rutan, and the project is funded by Paul Allen. In 2004 it made the first privately-funded human spaceflight and won the Ansari X Prize for the first non-governmental reusable manned spacecraft. ...more on Wikipedia about "Tier One"
Tier Two is Scaled Composites and Virgin Galactic's orbital human spaceflight program. The program's spacecraft will be based on SpaceShipTwo if that is successful. Initial plans call for the spacecraft to be named SpaceShipThree. ...more on Wikipedia about "Tier Two"
The X Prize Cup is an annual competition, hosted in New Mexico, in which private, piloted spacecraft will compete for prizes. The first X Prize Cup will be held in October 2005. The X Prize Cup is designed to spur the development of cheaper, safer, and more capable private space vehicles, as well as increase public interest in space tourism. ...more on Wikipedia about "X Prize Cup"
XCOR Aerospace is a private rocket engine and spaceflight development company based in Mojave, California at the Mojave Spaceport. It was formed by former members of the Rotary Rocket rocket engine development team in September, 1999. ...more on Wikipedia about "XCOR Aerospace"
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