No Civilian Space Shuttle Service

One of the "prophecies" in 2001: A Space Odyssey was that slick-looking "PanAm?" space shuttle. The idea expressed was that commercial spaceflight would be both economically viable and commonplace by 2001.

Well, we're not quite there. I see the problem as twofold:

(1) After the moon landings in the late '60's and early '70's there was no nationalistic reason (e.g. beating the Russians) for the UnitedStates to continue its high expenditure on manned spaceflight.

(2) The economic malaise of the late '70s and early '80's drastically reduced the amount of money available both from private and governmental sources to put into making commercial spaceflight possible. Also, the government of the UnitedStates made a key decision in the mid '70's to "put all of its eggs in one basket" and spend all of its money and effort on the Space Shuttle. However, the shuttle program was hobbled from the start for engineering and project planning reasons -- it tried to be "all things to all people" with the result that it was an overbloated chimera.

The Challenger Disaster was a tremendous waste of human lives not to mention space dollars, and although it later served to reveal problems with the space program's various infrastructures it also necessarily delayed or cancelled the timetables of all space projects the US had involvment with.

While no one would assert that loss of human life is worthwhile or trivial, we routinely lose people in the pursuit of knowledge. We lose them in the jungles and deserts, on the mountains and in the sea. What is different here is that it's usually not as expensive or as spectacular as an exploding space shuttle. The cry "waste of human lives" is what you hear, while "waste of my tax dollars" is what is felt. These guys all know the risks and they do it anyway. I don't want them to stop; I want them to succeed. And I want it privatized so it stops sucking up "government" money from my pocket. See also: SpaceShipOne

Now in the heady economic climate of the very late '80s and early 90's the second problem was reduced a bit. There were many test programs by established companies (the McDonnell-Douglas DC-X, the Boeing X-33) and also startups (Rotary Rocket, Kistler Aerospace, Kelly Space) founded for the purpose of producing cheaper, reusable space vehicles to exploit the commercial possibilities of private spaceflight.

Part of this was driven by the perhaps overly optimistic visions of a few companies like Teledesic and Motorola / Iridium striving for the huge numbers of launches needed to make their satellite services a (an economic?) reality. Well, we've already seen the failure of Iridium, so this market is slowing down considerably. In fact, there is a shakeout of private aerospace companies going on now (such as McDonnell-Douglas & Boeing). However, I still consider it likely that in the near future (maybe 2010) we will see one or two companies with private shuttle services (primarily for freight) into low-earth orbit.

All that talk and discussions of exotic projects, such as a lottery, etc., has produced nothing realistic. We have no right to continue to play this loan game � Russian roulette, as I call it. Yuri Koptev, Director General, Russian Aerospace Agency

Despite the occasional unmanned rocket failure and recent plans to deorbit the MIR spacestation, space activity is still strong and growing, even NASA seems to be taking on new projects or unshelving old plans. --CarstenKlapp

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mission/index.html

Moving slightly to one side of the discussion to pick a small nit of mine. Regarding passenger spacecraft in particular, the obvious problem that engineers rarely address is that there is nothing to fly to. As in, "Great, I'm in orbit. Now what? Take pictures. Whoopee." The real driving force behind airline expansion was business (as with anything). Unless there is a real reason for business to send a lot of people into orbit, there will never be a viable passenger spacecraft. (Now, can someone spell orbital factory?) -- SunirShah

In HalfwayToAnywhere? the author suggests that a ballistic style RLV could make itself profitable with ballistic intercontinental passenger and high value cargo flights. 40 minutes NYC - Sydney anyone?

That would fund the infrastructure and R&D costs. Once we have a cheap orbital launch capabilty the ecionomics of a lot of things change and it sort of supports itself.

Example One: satellite construction costs are slashed because they can be cheaply replaced/repaired. Therefore more get launched.

Example Two: launching a asteroid mining expedition gets a lot cheaper once you have a cheap orbital capability. There are quite a few NEOs that could make a huge return on a 25 year basis (from that starting point) 25 years is a very common Project Finance timescale. --TomAyerst

There's this idea that if only launch costs were reduced, space would be cheap. While that is certainly a prerequisite, it isn't sufficient. Payload costs also have to come down. It's interesting to note that NASA spend less than 3% of its budget on expendable launch vehicle procurement in the period of 1964-1971. --PaulDietz

In 2013 we're getting closer. The first commercial space port has opened in Kansas, although all you can do there is tour it.

Really? Google can't find it.

Maybe this is it:

launching commercial customers into space from the desert of New Mexico
- http://www.virgingalactic.com/overview/spaceport/