Spaceship 2 and the commercialization of private space flight

Spaceship 2 and the Push for Low Earth Orbit Vehicle Development

The Spaceship 2 project is the first privately funded space exploration project to achieve the goal of entering sub-orbital space. From a development perspective, this project was designed to encourage private interests to become involved in space exploration. More specifically, the project represents an attempt to explore all possible options relative to the future of space flight, both privately and publicly funded. Aiming to make spaceflight more accessible, Spaceship 2 carries a crew of two and up to six passengers. The spacecraft will be carried into space by a separate vehicle, dubbed "White Knight," which is in development stages currently (Virgin Galactic, 2011).

The Spaceship 2 project also represents a privately funded foray into the development of commercialized space flight, which is something that is just now on the horizon as a viable option. The project is a collaboration between many different people and funding sources, including Virgin's Richard Branson and Microsoft's Paul Allen (Virgin Galactic, 2011). Eventually an entire fleet of spaceships will be created that are centered on these original ideas and innovations. The project is a dry run so to speak of the future spaceflight programs in which certain design and implementation flaws are worked out and the project can be streamlined into a future commercial venture. As far as a timeline, the project was projected to produce results in 2008, when the aircraft was slated for rollout. However, the project was delayed and the first flight of Spaceship 2 did not occur until 2010. In early 2011, the program moved forward wit its initial flight of the spaceship in a specific configuration.

Looking at the program itself, from a critical perspective, it has followed many of the same lines as the X Prize creators have drawn out relative to commercial spaceflight vehicles (Virgin Galactic, 2011). This is to say that the X Prize has been much of the central motivation for the initial project, which includes the ship's predecessor, Spaceship 1. Since the Space Shuttle Program is no longer and now that NASA has really no other short or medium term direction relative to space flight, travel, and exploration by humans, the Spaceship 2 project is alone in scope and scale, and offers humans the ability to fly into space in the near future. Therefore, looking at the investors and the market involved with this project, there can really be no specific timeline for development, since there is no competition to the project.

However, as people begin to expect that spaceflight will be within reach for the general public over the next generation, the development of the Spaceship 1 program will be an important step toward the commercialization of space flight and sub-orbital experiences. Looking at the way NASA developed its spaceflight program, the Spaceship 2 project is leaps and bounds ahead. This is to say that design, implementation, and testing is far quicker within the private sector for this industry than it has historically been in the public sector with NASA and other government funded programs and organizations.

NASA's Puffin Program

This program is based on a similar idea of personalized flight experience, on the individual scale. The craft that NASA has designed would carry one person through the air at around 140 mph and be available for individual use (NASA, 2011). This would help to open up the possibilities of flight for everyone on a daily basis. The potential of incorporating Puffin in the Spaceship 2 project is rather slim, given that Puffin is electrically powered and uses propulsion systems that are only currently viable within the Earth's atmosphere (NASA, 2011). However, the concept, irrespective of the specific systems that would be used within it, is an interesting one, and one that is not far from the idea that Spaceship 2 is central to.

Individual flight, whether through space or the air on Earth has been a dream for NASA as well as privately funded engineers and scientists for decades. If both concepts were married into one, it could represent a departure from the passenger craft that Spaceship 2 embodies and would more closely represent a jetpack of sort which h could allow for individual space exploration. Perhaps the Puffin project could be incorporated into the Spaceship 2 project in the future by allowing the six passenger Spaceship 2 craft the unique ability to give individual passengers the option of individual exploration of space or the air.

Conclusion

While the Spaceship 2 project has a very lose schedule or timeline, it will likely be just one of many different concurrently developing LEO vehicle projects (Commercial Spaceflight Federation, 2009). The next 20 years will certainly be interesting in that there will likely emerge new opportunities for humans to visit space. Relative to private sector funding and development, the Spaceship 1 and 2 programs have proven very successful and will likely be at the leading edge of such future development.

The Puffin project, which is much more ambitious in scope due to the fact that it truly individualizes flight, will require some refinement. However, if different technologies are combined as they have been with the Spaceship 2 project, NASA's Puffin and Spaceship 2 may very well have some sort of close technological relationship in the future, at least conceptually. It is not out of the question to begin looking to individual vehicles to help provide humans with the next generation of commercial space flight opportunities.