Five Years Out

Forty-seven years to the day after Sputnik ushered in the Space Age, Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne won the Ansari X-Prize and the $10 million that went with it by becoming the first private craft to deliver a human into space twice within two weeks.

There have been no more private spaceflights since, but if all goes well the next five years will see the beginning of an extraordinary period in human history. Several private companies have been working hard to lead private enterprise into space in a major way. Rutan and Virgin Galactic are offering paying customers suborbital flights. Bigelow Aerospace is developing the concept of inflatable structures that, potentially, could quickly lead to manned orbital research facilities, space factories, space hotels, and bases on other worlds. SpaceX and Interorbital Systems are developing large, powerful launchers and manned craft capable of reaching orbit. IOS, indeed, plans its first orbital flight carrying two people in 2011. IOS also plans its own lunar base later in the decade.

Couple the private push with what seems to be a building movement among national governments to establish an international lunar base, and there is the real possibility of creating a human economy that would utilize the unque energy and gravitational aspects of free space and the material and water resources of the Moon and near-Earth asteroids. Such an economy would be capable of ending poverty on Earth as well as establishing the technology base to allow humans to expand exploration and settlement to Mars and beyond.