On Thursday Obama spoke about his new space vision. I'm not going to go into it cause it's been all over the web for the past three days, but if you've read some of my other space-related posts you'll know I totally agree with it.
Let the private companies deal with shuttling people to and from low Earth orbit and let the big government funds take us to more distant locations. Will it work? Probably not, but we know the old way wasn't working cause we haven't gone anywhere in some 30 years. At least this has a chance.
If it works, I envision privately built ships taking us to privately built stations and bases in orbit and on the moon with NASA ships exploring asteroids and Mars and other far-off targets. If it doesn't work we'll be exactly where we are now so no harm no foul.
It's been a while since I've posted anything space related... I've been reading up on all things private space sector and there are a few folks I'm keeping my eye on:
I completely believe that these private aerospace companies are what's really going to get humanity into space in a big way in the next couple of decades. I admit most of these companies are in their infancy, but they're developing relatively quickly and cutting deals with NASA and finding funding... I have no doubt that most if not all will grow into major players in space. We're in the space version of the late 70s just before the big Internet boom of the early 90s. Trust me, once these guys take off (or blast off) they're going to play off each other and compete and it's going to snowball.
It's not a huge stretch of the imagination to envision a near future with ships routinely flying around the solar system made up of standardized components developed by these different companies. The ship could have a version of SpaceX's Dragon command module as the bridge, Bigelow's BA 330 habitats for crew and cargo, Ad Astra's powerful VASIMR ion drives propelling them to distant targets, and once there dropping down with Armadillo landers!
I, for one, am looking forward to my retirement cruise to Mars on one of these ships.
When I was a kid I wanted to be an astronaut, but then my 4th grade teacher quickly dispelled me of that ridiculous illusion by pointing out the cruel realities of my bad eyesight and even worse grades.
Watching that video above has just reignited that childhood dream of one day going into space. Sure it's insanely expensive, but over time it'll become more affordable and much more common place. To put things into perspective, in 1903 the Wright brothers were the first to fly in a plane and by the 1950s airports and airplanes were totally ordinary.
So it may take fifty years to get there, but at least the notion doesn't seem so absurd anymore.
So glad SpaceX was able to successfully launch the Falcon 9. Can't wait for them to get Dragon up there later this year.
