Jeff Foust has a good write up on the recent suborbital research conference in Orlando.
3 thoughts on “The Suborbital Research Market Matures”
Comments are closed.
Jeff Foust has a good write up on the recent suborbital research conference in Orlando.
Comments are closed.
About time folks are looking beyond tourism as the market driver.
I like how, “It can’t be done” becomes “It was my idea all the time.”
Too bad there’s no way to profit in space.
Ken,
Did you know that the very first license AST FAA issued was for a commercial suborbital microgravity mission in 1989?
http://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ast/faq/
[[[When did the first licensed U.S. commercial launch take place?
The first such launch occurred in 1989, when a Starfire sub-orbital vehicle carried aloft the Consort-1 payload from White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.]]]
And there has been a steady stream of commercial suborbital STE launches since then. Indeed, the only commercial launches that have taken place at Spaceport America so far have been STE suborbital flights.
Unfortunately New Space Advocates have tended to ignore this market because of their focus on HSF and their obsession with NASA money. And the X-Prize only made that obsession worst while killing funding for non-tourist business plans. That is why it nice to see them FINALLY discussing it.
BTW I was a student at NMSU in 1989 and was fortunate enough to see the first launch from a pull-out on U.S. 70. Friends I had that worked at PSL had informed me of it. And yes when I worked on the Feasibility Study for the Southwest Regional Spaceport (processor to Spaceport America) in 1992 I did indeed point out that it was the low hanging fruit for the spaceport, not the SSTO that everyone was chasing after at the time. I always felt it was a shame, and a mistake, that MDD didn’t focus their proposed DC-Y on this market instead of going after the X-33 competition. But like so many folks in the space industry their “conditioning” to chasing after NASA contracts blinded them to other markets and opportunities.