SPACE 2.0

As we approach the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 Lunar landing, some things have changed on the space frontier, but many have not. Since 2011, when the NASA space shuttle was retired, the U.S. has been unable to put its own people into space. It relies on the Russian Federation for that, and pays a hefty fee for each launch. Russian-made rocket engines have powered our expendable boosters since 2002. And since December 1972, when Gene Cernan, Harrison Schmitt, and Ronald Evans returned from Luna on the Apollo 17 mission, low Earth orbit has been the limit for human space travel.

NASA, along with international partners, has continued to support the International Space Station. And it has kept up its robotic exploration of the solar system, as have those international partners. The achievements in this area have been truly remarkable.

The resounding success of the Apollo missions gave rise to a flood of private launch companies. You remember many of them, I'm sure: SSIA and Kistler and Rotary Rocket and Armadillo Aerospace and Pacific American Launch Systems and Beal Aerospace and a host of others. Each was the vessel of big dreams supported by too little financial backing. Most are gone now. But what is changing now is the burgeoning of private space-launch companies and the amount of funding available to them. Some funding comes from individual fortunes; Jeff Bezos leads, with Elon Musk and the estate of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen following. Private space launch is also gaining the attention of conventional venture capital firms. The net result is that the cost of access to orbit has begun a downward trend that bids fair to continue for some time.2 And when you reach orbit, as Heinlein told us, you're halfway to anywhere in the solar system.

Developing in parallel are numerous manufacturers of the other infrastructure needed: special-purpose satellites; space habitats; fuel depots; orbital tugs; and the varied hardware for extracting resources from the Moon and asteroids. Closer to home, a number of firms pursue suborbital launch for both tourism and research purposes.

And many nations apart from the "big five" (America, Russia, the EU, China, and Japan) are joining the party. They include India, North and South Korea, Saudi Arabia, and even tiny Luxembourg.

Rod Pyle explains this complex picture in his comprehensive survey. With its clear explanations, thorough notes, and accurate index, it is an excellent start for anyone looking to get up to speed on the current progress of human efforts in space. The text is enhanced by many color pictures. I detected no mistakes except grammatical ones: mostly subject-verb number disagreements. Full marks.

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This page was last modified on 12 August 2024.