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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