Slides from talk given at British Science Festival, University of Bradford, 15 Sept 2011

1. The Commercial Spaceflight
Revolution
Duncan Law-Green, University of Leicester
Thursday, 15 September 11

2. Commercial Spaceflight
The What & Why of “NewSpace”
• What: Innovative, low-cost, efficiently
managed programmes
• Why: To open the space frontier to all of
humankind
Thursday, 15 September 11

3. TWA Rocket: 1955 - 1961
Sponsored by Trans World Airlines
Opening Centrepiece of
Tomorrowland, Disneyland
Adjacent to “Rocket to the
Moon” movie exhibit
Thursday, 15 September 11

4. 1968: Space Tourism in Film
Thursday, 15 September 11

5. 2001: A Space Adventure
US company Space Adventures forms agreement with Russian Space Agency
for space tourism trips to International Space Station. Cost $20-30 million
2001 2007/2009
Dennis Tito (US) Charles Simonyi (Hun/US)
Soyuz TM-32 Soyuz TMA-10/TMA-14
2002 2008
Mark Shuttleworth (SA/UK) Richard Garriott (UK/US)
Soyuz TM-32 Soyuz TMA-13
2005
Greg Olsen (US) 2009
Soyuz TMA-7 Guy Laliberte (Canada)
Soyuz TMA-16
2006
Anousheh Ansari (Iran/US)
Soyuz TMA-9
Thursday, 15 September 11

6. Peter Diamandis
Founder of the X-Prize organisation
Thursday, 15 September 11

7. Ansari X-Prize
Devised by Peter Diamandis,
inspired by Orteig Prize for first solo
transatlantic flight, won by
Charles Lindberg in 1927. Anousheh Ansari
$10 million for first vehicle to carry 3 people (or one person and
equivalent mass) to 100km altitude and back, twice in two weeks.
Prize funded by Iranian/American telecoms entrepreneur Anousheh
Ansari
Prize won 4 October 2004, by SpaceShipOne, built by Burt Rutan,
funded by Paul Allen (co-founder of Microsoft).
Thursday, 15 September 11

8. Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo
Under construction at Scaled Composites, Mojave
Thursday, 15 September 11

9. SpaceShipTwo & WhiteKnightTwo
Completed, official rollout 8 Dec 2009
Thursday, 15 September 11

10. Spaceport America
World’s first purpose-built commercial passenger spaceport
Thursday, 15 September 11

11. SpaceShipTwo Drop Tests
Aerodynamic glide tests started 10 Oct 2010
Thursday, 15 September 11

12. XCOR “Lynx” suborbital rocketplane
Artist’s impression
Thursday, 15 September 11

13. Thursday, 15 September 11

14. VTVL
Vertical Takeoff,Vertical Landing
• Several companies including Masten Space
Systems and Armadillo Aerospace working
on fully-reusable VTVL rockets
Thursday, 15 September 11

15. Armadillo Aerospace
SUPER MOD TEST
CADDO MILLS, TEXAS, 16 SEPT 2010
Thursday, 15 September 11

16. Armadillo Aerospace
SUPER MOD TEST
CADDO MILLS, TEXAS, 16 SEPT 2010
Thursday, 15 September 11

17. Blue Origin
• Founded by Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com, working on
suborbital and orbital manned spacecraft
• Private spaceport at Van Horn, Texas
• Unmanned PM-2 launched 24 Aug 2011
Achieved 45,000ft, Mach-1.2 before loss of vehicle
Thursday, 15 September 11

18. Thursday, 15 September 11

19. To Orbit and Beyond...
Thursday, 15 September 11

20. SpaceX
• Founded by software entrepreneur
Elon Musk in 2002
• Developer of low-cost launch
vehicles (Falcon-1, Falcon-9), spent ~$500M
• Dragon: orbital spacecraft for cargo and crew.
Winner of a NASA COTS (Commercial Orbital
Transportation Services) contract.
• Successful Falcon-9 first launch 18 June 2010
• Successful Dragon flight test and re-entry 8 Dec 2010
Thursday, 15 September 11

21. Falcon 9/Dragon launch, Cape Canaveral
Thursday, 15 September 11

22. SpaceX Dragon in orbit
Thursday, 15 September 11

23. SpaceX Dragon
LAS (Launch Abort System) to enable powered landings
Thursday, 15 September 11

24. SpaceX: Falcon Heavy
53 metric tons to LEO
Thursday, 15 September 11

25. COTS & CCDev
• COTS: Commercial Cargo to ISS
- SpaceX (Dragon)
- Orbital (Cygnus)
• CCDev: Commercial Crew to ISS
- SpaceX (Dragon)
- Sierra Nevada Corp. (Dream Chaser)
- Boeing (CST-100)
- Blue Origin
• Funding in low hundred million $
Thursday, 15 September 11

26. Bigelow Aerospace
• Founded by construction magnate
Robert Bigelow in 1999
• Commercial space stations, based
on “Transhab” inflatable habitat
technology developed at NASA JSC
• Two subscale demonstrators already in orbit (Genesis-1, II).
• Leases access to stations, $8 million/month
• Oct 2010: Signed MOUs with Japan, Singapore, Netherlands,
Sweden, Australia, UK. Full-scale due to launch 2014.
Thursday, 15 September 11

27. Bigelow Aerospace:
Full-scale mockups of space station modules
Thursday, 15 September 11

28. Thursday, 15 September 11

29. Private Space Stations
• Excalibur Almaz
(US/Russia/Isle of Man)
• Orbital Technologies
(Russia)
Thursday, 15 September 11

30. Return to the Moon...
...this time to stay
Thursday, 15 September 11

31. Google Lunar X-Prize
• £30M prize for first commercial rover on lunar
surface. First landing by 2015.
• 29 teams competing, includes major universities and
aerospace companies
• Rover must land, travel 500 metres, return science
data and HD video
Astrobotic (US) Odyssey Moon (US, UK)
Thursday, 15 September 11

32. Circumlunar flight
DSE Spacecraft
• Space Adventures planning circumlunar flight ($150M/
seat)
• One ticket already sold, one under negotiation
• Modified Soyuz plus boost stage, “free return” trajectory
(similar to Apollo 13)
• Flight expected around 2016.
Thursday, 15 September 11

33. Mining the Moon & Asteroids
• Helium-3 Schmitt et al.) fuel for fusion reactors
(Harrison
from lunar soil,
• Platinum group metals (Paul Spudis et al.)
• Rare earth elements (MoonEx)
• Iron, aluminium, titanium...
• Oxygen from lunar minerals
• Water (Shackleton Energy Company)
Thursday, 15 September 11

34. Satellite Solar Power
• April 2009: Pacific Gas & Electric makes
agreement to purchase space solar power
from Solaren
Thursday, 15 September 11

35. Future NASA Policy
Thursday, 15 September 11

36. NASA Budget Challenges
$$
Commercial Crew
$$
Science Missions
$$
SLS: Space Launch System
$16bn to first flight Exploration Tech
Thursday, 15 September 11

37. Deep Space Missions?
Design for a “true spacecraft” proposed by NASA
Technology Applications Assessment Team
Thursday, 15 September 11