Not seeing much of a pure commercial story for BEO. COTS isn't aimed
at that. So right now BEO (fuel depot at L2, manned asteroid visits,
Mars) is Orion/SLS-centric and conjecture over beer. My feeling is
that COTS is there to guarantee that we have the industrial base to get
to LEO whenever we want to and to free up NASA to concentrate on more
deep-space (manned and unmanned) stuff. I will be happy to stand corrected.
Carl
On 5/28/12 2:24 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:
On Mon, May 28, 2012 at 12:09 PM, Jochen Fromm <j...@cas-group.net
<mailto:j...@cas-group.net>> wrote:
You have heard about planetary resources and the first commercial
flight to the ISS by the Dragon spacecraft from SpaceX. Is this a
new step forward into commercial space exploration? Or a step back
into the orbit? The first man landed on the moon already 40 years
ago. I am just reading 'Carrying the Fire' from Michael Collins,
an impressive book about a tremendous achivement in an exciting
time. Although nobody has repeated this success in the last 4
decades, space exploration of the solar system with robots and
rovers will certainly continue. Human space exploration is much
more difficult, and I am not sure if it is the right path. Space
veterans like Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins are of course
supporters of manned space flight. What do you think? There is
something profoundly affecting about these spacecrafts, spaceships
and the other technical marvels from rocket science. Do we need
humans to control them?
I like the NASA COTS (Commercial Orbital Transportation Services) approach
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Orbital_Transportation_Services
It defines phases and capabilities with both maned and un-maned
missions. The recent SpaceX mission was COTS 2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COTS_Demo_Flight_2
.. just one of many COTS objectives, for example
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COTS_Demo_Flight_3
The COTS missions look like:
Commercial Cargo Development
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Orbital_Transportation_Services#Awards>
2006 - /2011/
Commercial Space Transportation Capabilities
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Space_Transportation_Capabilities>
2007 - 2010
Commercial Crew Development
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Crew_Development#CCDev_1> (phase
1) 2010 - /2011/
Commercial Resupply Services
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Resupply_Services> (cargo)
/2011 - 2015/
Commercial Crew Development
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Crew_Development#CCDev_2> (phase
2) /2011 - 2012/
As wonderful as exploring the solar system and beyond has been, I like
the new "practical" approach the new commercial ventures are taking.
Mining the moon and asteroids and using them on in-orbit or L5 to
start living in and constructing in space.
I think ultimately this will get us on Mars and on the next star soonest.
-- Owen
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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org