The Gold Rush is on again! This time, however, it is not in the unexplored wild reaches of the West but in the unexplored wild reaches of space. Space transportation has become a commercial enterprise and new technologies are making it ever more lucrative to investors who wish to explore what is truly the last great frontier. Space transportation experienced a milestone in 1996 when for the first time in its history, commercial revenues from space surpassed the total amount governments spent on space. More than 150 commercial, civil and military payloads were launched into orbit in 1997, most of them into the already filling up geostationary orbit and the rest into low-Earth orbit. Commercial launches appear to be the most lucrative kind of payload for investors and market surveys have shown that more than 1200 telecommunications satellites are due to be built between in the next decade.
However, engineers and space travel advocates are not content with merely launching enterprises into space, they want to tour space, live in space and exploit it commercially. The Space Transportation Association, for example, is a space tourism promotion organization and views space tourism as a way of promoting economic development beyond earth. Many visionaries in the space industry foresee a future space that is akin to a thriving industry on earth, including mining minerals and natural resources for energy and life support as well as space villages where people are able to visit and live. Yet, despite all of these lofty aims about the future of a space industry, there is one major stumbling block in the way of such a future. This obstacle is the fact that getting into space anywhere is extremely risky and difficult not to mention a fortune. It costs at present $20,000 for every kilogram that is launched into space. While scientists and engineers hope to develop methods of achieving
...