Space Tourism and the World of Robert Bigelow
Guest writer, Julie-Ann Amos’s article can be found in its entirety at “Space Tourism and the World of Robert Bigelow.”
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“Two of the many large giants in the space industry, Bigelow Aerospace and Lockheed Martin, have entered into a joint deal to move towards using Atlas V for private manned space flight–which would include space tourists and other paying passengers. The highly-established non-private firm Lockheed Martin is considered typically a big developer of NASA space technology, with this move by Lockheed seen that they may be moving where the money is—the space tourism market. An open area, the only big player until now has been Russia’s Soyuz, with Bigelow feeling after more than a decade since the Apollo 11 Moon landing made space travel history, it was time to advance forth into space with something besides memories. Presently there is a huge potential in orbital tourism marketing for big money to enter, as it has pretty much been the domain of small “New Space” business companies.
Considered a beginning phase of technical and business model studies, a future study was developed to look at Atlas V’s ability to be used in space tourism, which would include deciding whether or not 16 annual launchings was even possible. This move was seen as a major step to transform the traditional launching marketplace and the idea of what “New Space” was all about. By the end of January of the following year, the United Launch Alliance (ULA) was studying and promoting the use of Atlas V for the transportation of commercial passengers. This study includes transportation and space tourism to the site of Robert Bigelow’s Aerospace orbital station and transportation-part of the original deal with Lockheed Martin.”
This entry was posted on Sunday, August 31st, 2008 at 1:21 pm and is filed under Space Agency News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
