Proposals for Commercial Space Shuttles Revealed (ContributorNetwork)

NASASpaceFlight.com is reporting a deal to fly the space shuttles Atlantis and Endeavour commercially has fallen through, ending the last attempt to save what remains of the shuttle orbiter fleet from being museum pieces.

But enough of a business case has been made for a commercial version of the shuttle, with its unique capabilities, that the group of investors who proposed to commercialize the existing shuttles now propose to build a new version of the shuttle for commercial use.

How would have the commercialized space shuttle worked?

There have been schemes to fly a space shuttle orbiter commercially since the 1980s, most recently earlier this year by United Space Alliance, according to MSNBC. Each attempt has failed on one sticking point or another, including the cost of operating a shuttle safely, NASA's role in a commercial space shuttle, and commercial markets for a shuttle.

The latest attempt, led by Kevin Holleran, a London businessman, would not have involved any money from NASA, which would have been a show stopper with NASA's plate filled and budget limited. Private money would have been used to refurbish the two orbiters, start up production lines of solid rocket boosters and external tanks, and to revamp processing facilities. The orbiters would start flying against with one flight at the end of 2014, ramping up to four a year in 2017. The cost of operating the shuttles commercially would be much less than had been under NASA's stewardship.

What finally caused the commercial shuttle deal to fall through?

The show stopper for this effort seems to have been the fact NASA had already started to repurpose its various facilities, such as the launch pads from which the shuttles had taken off, for the heavy lift Space Launch System. The effort might have worked out had it been started a year before, but by the time it became a serious proposition it was too late.

What do the investors propose to do now?

Thanks to marketing research by Mary Lynne Dittmar of Dittmar Associates, the investors are confident that a market exists for a space craft with the shuttle's capabilities. These capabilities go beyond just the ability to lift mass to low Earth orbit. They include a large crew, a payload bay, airlocks, and a remote manipulator arm that could be used to deploy satellites and assemble structures in space.

Therefore the investors propose to build an entirely new shuttle, using 21st century technology, that will have many if not all of the capabilities of the venerable NASA space shuttles that had flown for 30 years. If "Shuttle 2.0" could be made to fly cheaply enough and often enough, the full commercial potential of space shuttles could be realized decades after they were first proposed during the Nixon administration.

Mark R. Whittington is the author of Children of Apollo and The Last Moonwalker. He has written on space subjects for a variety of periodicals, including The Houston Chronicle, The Washington Post, USA Today, the L.A. Times and The Weekly Standard.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/space/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20111220/sc_ac/10714089_proposals_for_commercial_space_shuttles_revealed

while you were sleeping happy halloween happy halloween history of halloween eagles cowboys eagles cowboys trick or treat times