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America's Space Prize
While others yearn for the seventh century... Inflatables are attractive because they offer large volume with enormous launch weight savings. Bigelow Aerospace is also increasing the stakes that low-cost non-government transportation can be available to send astronaut crews to its inflatable space modules in Earth orbit by 2010. Company founder and millionaire Robert T. Bigelow told Aviation Week & Space Technology that he will announce as early as this week a new $50-million space launch contest called America's Space Prize. The objective is to spur development of a low-cost commercial manned orbital vehicle capable of launching 5-7 astronauts at a time to Bigelow inflatable modules by the end of the decade. America's Space Prize will be patterned somewhat after the X Prize that will go to the first team to demonstrate back-to-back suborbital flights. Posted by: The Caucasus Nerd 2004-10-01 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=44771 |