Research in Space (was: Robber Barons in Space)

On Monday, March 17, 2003, at 02:52 PM, jdr7181 wrote:

> Out of all those companies in
> the 90s who were trying to provide pure commercial
> means of space transportation, the only new player
> left is Kistler and they survive because they won some
> government money.
>

They all thought they'd be launching hundreds of low-Earth-orbit comm
sats, but when Iridium went under that potential market disappeared,
followed closely by the new launch companies. Even the established
launch companies are in serious trouble because there's not much
business. If not for massive government subsidies and military
contracts most of the current launch provides would go under very
quickly.

The dinosaurs were destroyed by an asteroid because they weren't
space-faring. It's almost as if Gaia then thought "Well, dinosaurs
worked pretty well, but space-faring is necessary. Maybe I'll should
try mammals this time." Humanity is now developing systems to detect
and deflect asteroids, and could build orbital space colonies to spread
beyond Earth to insure life would survive a planetary catastrophe.

Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html

Views expressed in this email are only my opinions and are not the
position of any organization I'm familiar with.