Privatization of Space

Back in 1953 when I was in Jr. High I told my science class that man would go to the Moon within our life time. I soon became the butt of class jokes as everyone thought I was crazy.
Sixteen years later my prediction was proven right and I never got an apology from any of my classmates. All through the seventies and eighties I waited for commercial use of space to start - - nothing. I waited for mankind to return to the Moon - - nothing. To me it seemed that mankind was giving up on space except for robotic space probes. I once visited the Kennedy space center in the mid nineties and saw all of the old hardware from the Apollo times. All there were there were memories of the inspirational and glorious time in American space history. I left sooner than I planned to do as I was so sad. On the way home I stopped at the Huntsville Space center. I was disappointed in lack of imagination for the future of space travel.

However, last year my spirits were lifted a bit by the winning of the X-prize.

My hopes for the future of mankind was lifted last Wednesday by the launch of a private module for the testing of concepts for a private space station. Bigelow Aerospace of Las Vegas successfully launched its pathfinder mission the module Genesis I using a Russia rocket. Robert Bigelow owner of Bigelow Aerospace wants to privatize space. To that end he plans to have a private space station by 2010. To encourage ways to get there, he has setup a prize, America's Space Prize, for an American company to develop an space ship that can orbit earth with a crew of five or more twice within 60 days with at least 80 percent of the ship reusable.

To learn more about Bigelow Aerospace visit their web site here.

I like to close this post with a quote from that site.

"In any event, you have my word that myself, and all of us at Bigelow Aerospace, will do everything in our power to transform the dream of a robust human presence in space into a reality. I hope that the whole world will join us in this adventure."

Robert T. Bigelow