The age of private spaceflight is almost upon us with a
veritable fleet of new commercial spaceships rolling out to the
launch pad. As NASA iconic space shuttles retire for good, here's a
look at new private ships soon to be reality.
10) Lynx
8) Soviet-Era Almaz Space Ride
Excalibur Almaz Limited, based in the Isle of
Man, acquired several of the former Soviet Union's Reusable Return
Vehicles (RRVs), spacecraft designed for transporting cosmonauts to
secret 1970s Almaz space stations. Excalibur Almaz has not quoted a
price for a week-long trip, but plans to update the RRV spacecraft
design with modern technology. The spacecraft consists of a
cone-shaped RRV for launch and re-entry, and an expendable service
module. The vehicles can carry three people, a commander and two
passengers.
7) Dream Chaser
SpaceDev, a subsidiary of Sierra Nevada
Corporation in Centennial, Colo. (which received $20 million from
NASA in February 2010 under a commercial crew development
competition), is developing Dream Chaser, a seven-person spacecraft
designed to launch astronauts into space using an Atlas 5
rocket.
6) Armadillo Aerospace's Vertical
Tourships
Virginia-based tourism company
Space Adventures plans to sell space tourist seats on new
suborbital rocket ships developed by Armadillo Aerospace, a Texas
company founded by computer game entrepreneur John Carmack.
Armadillo's vertically-launched rocketship will take two passengers
62 miles (100 km) above the earth for $102,000, quite a bit less
than the amount Space Adventures charges for a trip to the
International Space Station.
5) Sundancer: A Private Space Station
Bigelow Aerospace in Las Vegas,
Nevada, offers an unusual twist on space station design with
Sundancer, a human-rated module that inflates in space. Multiple
modules would combine to create a space complex, or even a moon
base, capable of supporting three crew members. Bigelow has already
launched two prototype modules, Genesis 1 and 2, which are unmanned
but still in orbit today. The company has contracted with SpaceX to
fly aboard a Falcon 9 in 2014.
4) New Shepard
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