Popular Mechanics: How Private Rocketeers Got Real

[docm]

Link....<br /><br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p><b>Future of the Space Business: How Private Rocketeers Got Real<br /><br /><i>To achieve liftoff at this watershed moment when they could begin to usurp NASA's stranglehold on space, billionaires rely on the propulsive power of profit in an industry based on competition and smarts.</i></b><br /><br />On Memorial Day weekend, I got a glimpse of something new — the beginning of a new kind of Space Age.<br /><br />For the first time in more than a decade, I attended the National Space Society's International Space Development Conference, which was held in Dallas this year. In the late 1980s and early '90s, I attended quite a few of these conferences, which had something of the aura of a science-fiction convention: The people who turned out for them believed in the dream of human settlement in space, but "dream" was the operative word. There was bold talk, but not much was happening to turn that dream into reality.<br /><br />This time things were different. I had barely arrived when I found myself in an elevator with some Brioni-clad venture-capital types. At the Dallas conference, unlike the earlier ones, I noticed a surprisingly large number of these players in attendance, as well as investment bankers and big-firm lawyers. About five years ago, I saw a similar phenomenon at nanotechnology conferences, as the field moved from the province of dreamers and true believers to the province of people who expected to make a buck.<br /><br />The space business has attracted entrepreneurs for a couple of decades, of course, and a few of them, such as private-launch pioneer Orbital Sciences, have built rockets and made money. But partly as a result of the new enthusiasm created by the Ansari X Prize competition, won in 2004 by Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne, the trickle of non-vapor-ware space ventures has turned into a floo</p></blockquote> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[spacelifejunkie]

Great find Docm. It's hard to believe that this industry is not mainstream yet. Most people (>95%) have no idea this is going on. It's fun to watch the tidal wave come in.<br /><br /><br />SLJ

 

[quantump7]

I am SO going to the next one!