SpaceDev has a busy week
On the heels of recent announcements of the DreamChaser and the award of a hybrid rocket motor contrct for the Air Force ,SpaceDev has also announced the results of a three-year study for Lunar Enterprise Corporation. The major result of the study is that it is possible to put more people on the moon, for one-tenth of what NASA is going to spend for its return to the moon, and to do it in a fraction of the time spent by NASA.
Mark Whittington is skeptical of SpaceDev's study, but not for the (admittedly sparse) details in the news release; he points instead to the legal language at the bottom of the article about "forward-looking statements that involve risks" and so forth. One thing that Mark didn't take into account is that this identical legal notice appears at the bottom of all of SpaceDev's news releases. There may be reason to doubt SpaceDev's study results, but the legal notice is not one of them. Doubts should be based on the specifics of the study, of which there are few in the press release.
And SpaceDev isn't done with the news releases: they announced today that they have signed a contract with SpaceX for launch services on a Falcon 1 launch vehicle, tentatively scheduled for May of 2008. To me, this illustrates the power of the free market in the space industry, as contrasted with the way NASA does business. Under the NASA paradigm, the launch vehicle, launch facilities, satellite development and so on are all done out of one big budget. In private industry, each company has a small budget, but they are all buying off each other, and the money circulates around a network; the multiplier effect in action. The net result is lower costs all around.
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