民營航天、私人航天或商業航天是由官方政府機構以外的實體所進行的對航天科技以及空間應用技術的開發和利用。 在人類進入航天時代最初的幾十年裡，美蘇兩國政府的航天機構就曾分別與各自國內的設計局和私營公司展開過合作，透過對上述實體的資金補助等手段來支援航天新技術的開發和運營成本。其後於 1975 年成立的歐洲空間局（ESA）也大致效仿美蘇而遵循類似的空間技術發展模式。但成立於 1980 年的阿麗亞娜空間公司卻先於美蘇成為全球首家商業航天發射服務的提供商 ，其後各國的大型國防承包商開始根據承接自政府機構的航天技術開發並運營各自的運載火箭系統。 目前為止，地球軌道上的私人航天產業包括通訊衛星系統、衛星電視、衛星廣播、航天員天地往返運輸以及亞軌道和軌道級的太空旅遊。在美國，聯邦航空管理局甚至設立了一項名為 商業航天員的新職業。 進入新世紀以來，民營航天企業家們開始有計劃地設計並發展相關航天技術，以預期在 2010 年代左右可研製與冷戰時代政府研發的運載火箭技術相當的運載系統並將之投入使用，這些新產業於 2010 年之後在商業航天發射領域的市場帶來了巨大的競爭角逐，其中主要的競爭點之一是透過降低單次火箭的發射成本以提供更多的發射能力。 現今私人航天飛行的主要成就包括：亞軌道太空飛機的飛行（太空船 1 號和 2 號）、軌道級火箭的發射、充氣式可擴充套件空間站試驗艙段的在軌測試（創世紀 1 號、2 號和 BEAM 試驗艙），以及將宇航員成功送往空間站。 歷史 During the principal period of spaceflight in the midtwentieth century only nation states developed and flew spacecraft above the Kármán line the nominal boundary of space Both the US civilian space program and Soviet space program were operated using mainly military pilots as astronauts During this period no commercial space launches were available to private operators and no private organization was able to offer space launches Eventually private organizations were able to both offer and purchase space launches thus beginning the period of private spaceflight The first phase of private space operation was the launch of the first commercial communications satellites The US Communications Satellite Act of 1962 allowed commercial consortia owning and operating their own satellites although these were still deployed on stateowned launch vehicles In 1980 the European Space Agency created Arianespace a company to be operated commercially after initial hardware and launch facilities were developed with government funding Arianespace has since launched numerous satellites as a commercial entity The history of full private space transportation includes early efforts by German company OTRAG in the 20th century Founded in 1975 as the first private company to attempt to launch a private spacecraft testing of its OTRAG rocket began in 1977 The history also covers numerous modern orbital and suborbital launch systems in the 21st century More recent commercial spaceflight projects include the suborbital flights of Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin the orbital flights of SpaceX and other COTS participants Development of alternatives to governmentprovided space launch services began in earnest in the 2000s Private interests began funding limited development programs but the US government later sponsored a series of programs to incentivize and encourage private companies to begin offering both cargo and later crew space transportation services Lower prices for launch services after 2010 and published prices for standard launch services have brought about significant space launch market competition that had not been present previously By 2012 a private company had begun transporting cargo to and from the International Space Station while a second private company was scheduled to begin making deliveries in 2013 ushering in a time of regular private space cargo delivery to and return from the governmentowned space facility in low Earth orbit LEO In this new paradigm for LEO cargo transport the government contracts for and pays for cargo services on substantially privately developed space vehicles rather than the government operating each of the cargo vehicles and cargo delivery systems there is a mix of private and government resupply vehicles being used for the ISS as the Russian Soyuz and Progress vehicles and the European Space Agency ESA ATV through 2014 and the Japanese Kounotori through 2021 remain in operation after the 2011 retirement of the US Space Shuttle In June 2013 British newspaper The Independent claimed that the space race is flaring back into life and its not massive institutions such as NASA that are in the running The old view that human space flight is so complex difficult and expensive that only huge government agencies could hope to accomplish it is being disproved by a new breed of flamboyant space privateers who are planning to send humans out beyond the Earths orbit for the first time since 1972 particularly noting projects underway by Mars One Inspiration Mars Foundation Bigelow Aerospace and SpaceX American deregulation The Commercial Space Launch Act of 1984 required encouragement of commercial space ventures adding a new clause to NASAs mission statement c Commercial Use of SpaceCongress declares that the general welfare of the United States requires that the Administration seek and encourage to the maximum extent possible the fullest commercial use of space Yet one of NASAs early actions was to effectively prevent private space flight through a large amount of regulation From the beginning though this met significant opposition not only by the private sector but in Congress In 1962 Congress passed its first law pushing back the prohibition on private involvement in space the Communications Satellite Act of 1962 While largely focusing on the satellites of its namesake this was described by both the laws opponents and advocates of private space as the first step on the road to privatisation While launch vehicles were originally bought from private contractors from the beginning of the Shuttle program until the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986 NASA attempted to position its shuttle as the sole legal space launch option But with the midlaunch explosionloss of Challenger came the suspension of the governmentoperated shuttle flights allowing the formation of a commercial launch industry On 4 July 1982 the Reagan administration released National Security Decision Directive Number 42 which officially set its goal to expand United States privatesector investment and involvement in civil space and spacerelated activities On 16 May 1983 the Reagan administration issued National Security Decision Directive Number 94 encouraging the commercialization of ELVs which directed that The US Government will license supervise andor regulate US commercial ELV operations only to the extent required to meet its national and international obligations and to ensure public safety On 30 October 1984 US President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Commercial Space Launch Act This enabled an American industry of private operators of expendable launch systems Prior to the signing of this law all commercial satellite launches in the United States were restricted by Federal regulation to NASAs Space Shuttle On 11 February 1988 the Presidential Directive declared that the government should purchase commercially available space goods and services to the fullest extent feasible and shall not conduct activities with potential commercial applications that preclude or deter Commercial Sector space activities except for national security or public safety reasons On 5 November 1990 United States President George H W Bush signed into law the Launch Services Purchase Act The Act in a complete reversal of the earlier Space Shuttle monopoly ordered NASA to purchase launch services for its primary payloads from commercial providers whenever such services are required in the course of its activities In 1996 the United States government selected Lockheed Martin and Boeing to each develop Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicles EELV to compete for launch contracts and provide assured access to space The governments acquisition strategy relied on the strong commercial viability of both vehicles to lower unit costs This anticipated market demand did not materialise but both the Delta IV and Atlas V EELVs remain in active service Commercial launches outnumbered government launches at the Eastern Range in 1997 The Commercial Space Act was passed in 1998 and implements many of the provisions of the Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990 Nonetheless until 2004 NASA kept private space flight effectively illegalIts illegal for private enterprise to go into space US law regulates private space launches and the current law is quite unreasonable A private company wanting to build and launch a rocket faces a mountain of red tape and very long lead times for getting approval from the government However although these problems add a tremendous amount of cost to private space launches there are no laws that prohibit private space launches But that year the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004 required that NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration legalise private space flightPrivate Spaceflight Bill Signed into Law The Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act or HR 5382 placed a clear legislative stamp on regulations that were being formulated by the Federal Aviation Administration Among other provisions the law was intended to let paying passengers fly on suborbital launch vehicles at their own risk The 2004 Act also specified a learning period which restricted the ability of the FAA to enact regulations regarding the safety of people who might actually fly on commercial spacecraft through 2012 ostensibly because spaceflight participants would share the risk of flight through informed consent procedures of human spaceflight risks while requiring the launch provider to be legally liable for potential losses to uninvolved persons and structures To the end of 2014 commercial passenger flights in space has remained effectively illegal as the FAA has refused to give a commercial operators license to any private space companyWow FAA Paperwork Delays May Block Virgin Galactic Debut The United States updated US commercial space legislation with the passage of the SPACE Act of 2015 in November 2015 The full name of the act is Spurring Private Aerospace Competitiveness and Entrepreneurship Act of 2015 The update US law explicitly allows US citizens to engage in the commercial exploration and exploitation ofspace resources including water and minerals The right does not extend to biological life so anything that is alive may not be exploited commercially The Act further asserts that the United States does not by this Act assert sovereignty or sovereign or exclusive rights or jurisdiction over or the ownership of any celestial body The SPACE Act includes the extension of indemnification of US launch providers for extraordinary catastrophic thirdparty losses of a failed launch through 2025 while the previous indemnification law was scheduled to expire in 2016 The Act also extends through 2025 the learning period restrictions which limit the ability of the FAA to enact regulations regarding the safety of spaceflight participants Indemnification for extraordinary thirdparty losses has as of 2015 been a component of US space law for over 25 years and during this time has never been invoked in any commercial launch mishap Russian privatization In 1992 a Resurs500 capsule containing gifts was launched from Plesetsk Cosmodrome in a private spaceflight called EuropeAmerica 500 The flight was conceived by the Russian Foundation for Social Inventions and TsSKBProgress a Russian rocketbuilding company to increase trade between Russia and USA and to promote the use of technology once reserved only for military forces Money for the launch was raised from a collection of Russian companies The capsule parachuted into the Pacific Ocean and was brought to Seattle by a Russian missiletracking ship The Russian government sold part of its stake in RSC Energia to private investors in 1994 Energia together with Khrunichev constituted most of the Russian crewed space program Launch alliances Since 1995 Khrunichevs Proton rocket has been marketed through International Launch Services while the Soyuz rocket is marketed via Starsem The Sea Launch project flies the Ukrainian Zenit rocket In 2003 Arianespace joined with Boeing Launch Services and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to create the Launch Services Alliance In 2005 continued weak commercial demand for EELV launches drove Lockheed Martin and Boeing to propose a joint venture called the United Launch Alliance to service the United States government launch market Spaceflight privatization Since the 1980s various private initiatives have started up to pursue the private use of space Traditional costs to launch anything to space have been highon the order of tens of thousands of US dollars per kilogrambut by 2020 costs on the order of a few thousand dollars per kilogram are being seen from one private launch provider that was an early 2000s startup with the cost projected to fall to less than a few hundred dollars per kilogram as the technology of a second private spaceflight startup of 2000 comes into servicePrivate space industrialization is here Mikhail Kokorich TechCrunch 18 August 2020 accessed 25 August 2020 The first privately funded rocket to reach the boundary of space the Kármán line although not orbit was Conestoga I which was launched by Space Services Inc on a suborbital flight to altitude on 9 September 1982 In October 1995 their first and only attempt at an orbital launch Conestoga 1620 failed to achieve orbit due to a guidance system failureTim Furniss First Conestoga booster explodes after launch 31 October 1995 Flightglobalcom Accessed 1 June 2020 On April 5 1990 Orbital Sciences Corporations Pegasus an air launched rocket was the first launch vehicle fully developed by a private company to reach orbit In the early 2000s several publicprivate corporate partnerships were established in the United States to privately develop spaceflight technology Several purely private initiatives have shown interest in private endeavors to the inner Solar System In 2006 NASA initiated a program to purchase commercial space transport to carry cargo to the International Space Station while funding a portion of the development of new technology in a publicprivate partnership In May 2015 the Japanese legislature considered legislation to allow private company spaceflight initiatives in Japan In 2016 the United States granted its first clearance for a private flight to the moon from the FAAs Office of Commercial Space Transportation On 30 May 2020 Crew Dragon Demo2 operated by Space X became the first crewed mission to the International Space Station in the Commercial Crew Program After 2015 Europeanbased private smalllift launch vehicle development got underway particularly in Germany Italy and the United Kingdom but France has largely been left out of this new commercial launch industry In 2021 the Government of France announced a plan to fund the Francebased rocket firm ArianeGroup to develop a new smalllift rocket called Maïa by the year 2026 which would be a governmentfunded but commerciallydeveloped rocket 商業航天實體 Today many commercial space transportation companies offer launch services to satellite companies and government space organizations around the world In 2005 there were 18 total commercial launches and 37 noncommercial launches Russia flew 44 of commercial orbital launches while Europe had 28 and the United States had 6 Chinas first private launch a suborbital flight by OneSpace took place in May 2018 Funding In recent years the funding to support private spaceflight has begun to be raised from a larger pool of sources than the comparatively limited pool of the 1990s For example and in the United States alone ten billionaires had made serious investments in private spaceflight activities at six companies including Stratolaunch Systems Planetary Resources Blue Origin Virgin Galactic SpaceX and Bigelow Aerospace The ten investors were Paul Allen Larry Page Eric Schmidt Ram Shriram Charles Simonyi Ross Perot Jr Jeff Bezos Richard Branson Elon Musk and Robert Bigelow At the start of the private space era it was not yet clear to what extent these entrepreneurs see legitimate business opportunity for example space tourism and other commercial activities in space or are wealthy men seeking the exclusivity that space offers innovators and investors There has been speculation as to whether these investments are a gamble and whether they will prove lucrative As of the early 2020s some of these investments have paid off with Musks SpaceX coming to dominate the launch market in mass to orbit and with a 100 billion dollar valuation Other companies such as Bigelow Aerospace have though collapsed and left the market Many startup space companies such as Rocket Lab and Axiom Space have launched on the stock market for funding as Specialpurpose acquisition company but their SPAC values have been affected by market volatility Venture capital investment Some investors see the traditional spaceflight industry as ripe for disruption with a 100fold improvement relatively straightforward andorigis actually a piece of cake and making a thousandfold improvement possible Between 2005 and 2015 there was of private capital invested in the space sector most of it in the United States This liberalized private space sector investments beginning in the 1980s with additional legislative reforms in the 1990s2000s From 2000 through the end of 2015 a total of of investment finance was invested in the space sector with of that being venture capital In 2015 venture capital firms invested in private spaceflight companies more than they had in the previous 15 years combined the largest and most active investors in space were Lux Capital Bessemer Venture Partners Khosla Ventures Founders Fund RRE Ventures and Draper Fisher Jurvetson Increasing interest by investors in economically driven spaceflight had begun to appear by 2016 and some space ventures had to turn away investor funding CBInsights in August 2016 published that funding to space startups was in a slump although the number of space investment deals per quarter had gone from 2 or 3 in 2012 to 14 by 2015 In 2017 CB Insights ranked the most active space tech investors ranked from highest to lowest were Space Angels Networks Founders Fund RRE Ventures Data Collective Bessemer Lux Capital Alphabet Tencent Holdings and Rothenberg Ventures In June 2019 Miriam Kramer of Axios wrote that private spaceflight companies and investors were poised to capitalize on NASAs plan to open up the International Space Station to commercial space ventures Commercial launchers The space transport business has historically had its primary customers in national governments and large commercial segments Launches of government payloads including military civilian and scientific satellites was the largest market segment in 2007 at nearly 100 billion a year This segment is dominated by domestic favorites such as the United Launch Alliance for US government payloads and Arianespace for European satellites The commercial payload segment valued at under 3 billion a year was dominated by Arianespace in 2007 with over 50 of the market segment followed by Russian launchers See a complete list of launch systems Spaceflight Inc operates as a launch broker matching smallpayload customers with launch providers in a ridesharing service US government commercial cargo services The US government determined to begin a process to purchase orbital launch services for cargo deliveries to the International Space Station ISS beginning in the mid2000s rather than operate the launch and delivery services as they had with the Space Shuttle which was to retire in less than half a decade and ultimately did retire in 2011 On 18 January 2006 NASA announced an opportunity for US commercial providers to demonstrate orbital transportation services As of 2008 NASA planned to spend 500 million through 2010 to finance development of private sector capability to transport payloads to the International Space Station ISS This was considered more challenging than thenavailable commercial space transportation because it would require precision orbit insertion rendezvous and possibly docking with another spacecraft The commercial vendors competed in specific service areas In August 2006 NASA announced that two relatively young aerospace companies SpaceX and Rocketplane Kistler had been awarded 278 million and 207 million respectively under the COTS program In 2008 NASA anticipated that commercial cargo delivery services to and return services from the ISS would be necessary through at least 2015 The NASA Administrator suggested that space transportation services procurement may be expanded to orbital fuel depots and lunar surface deliveries should the first phase of COTS prove successful After it transpired that Rocketplane Kistler was failing to meet its contractual deadlines NASA terminated its contract with the company in August 2008 after only 32 million had been spent Several months later in December 2008 NASA awarded the remaining 170 million in that contract to Orbital Sciences Corporation to develop resupply services to the ISS Emerging personal spaceflight Before 2004 the year it was legalized in the US no privately operated crewed spaceflight had ever occurred The only private individuals to journey to space went as space tourists in the Space Shuttle or on Russian Soyuz flights to Mir or the International Space Station All private individuals who flew to space before Dennis Titos selffinanced International Space Station visit in 2001 had been sponsored by their home governments or by private corporations Those trips include US Congressman Bill Nelsons January 1986 flight on the Space Shuttle Columbia and Japanese television reporter Toyohiro Akiyamas 1990 flight to the Mir Space Station The Ansari X PRIZE was intended to stimulate private investment in the development of spaceflight technologies 21 June 2004 test flight of SpaceShipOne a contender for the X PRIZE was the first human spaceflight in a privately developed and operated vehicle On 27 September 2004 following the success of SpaceShipOne Richard Branson owner of Virgin and Burt Rutan SpaceShipOnes designer announced that Virgin Galactic had licensed the crafts technology and were planning commercial space flights in 25 to 3 years A fleet of five craft SpaceShipTwo launched from the WhiteKnightTwo carrier airplane were to be constructed and flights would be offered at around 200000 each although Branson said he planned to use this money to make flights more affordable in the long term A test flight of SpaceShipTwo in October 2014 resulted in a crash during one of the two pilots died In December 2004 United States President George W Bush signed into law the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act The Act resolved the regulatory ambiguity surrounding private spaceflights and is designed to promote the development of the emerging US commercial human space flight industry On 12 July 2006 Bigelow Aerospace launched the Genesis I a subscale pathfinder of an orbital space station module Genesis II was launched on 28 June 2007 and there are plans for additional prototypes to be launched in preparation for the production model BA 330 spacecraft Zero2infinity a Spanish aerospace company is developing a highaltitude balloonbased launch vehicle termed a bloostar to launch small satellites to orbit for customers as well as platform for nearspace tourism World View a stratospheric balloon exploration company based in Tucson Ariz is similarly leveraging its stratospheric balloon technology to launch its remote sensing services for government and commercial customers as well as developing its own space tourism offering that would lift passengers up to 100000 feet for a 68 journey Similar projects of stratospheric balloon tourism are being developed by multiple other companies around the world Zephalto Space Perspective though none has yet made a high altitude crewed flight as of Feb 2021 On July 11 2021 Richard Branson and Virgin Galactic made the first successful flight to space On July 20 2021 Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin also made a successful flight to space On September 16 2021 Crew Dragon Resilience Inspiration4 mission operated by Space X became the first orbital spaceflight with only private citizens aboard Private foundations The B612 Foundation was designing and building an asteroidfinding space telescope named Sentinel It would have launched in 2016 The Planetary Society a nonprofit space research and advocacy organization has sponsored a series of small satellites to test the feasibility of solar sailing Their first such project Cosmos 1 was launched in 2005 but failed to reach space and was succeeded by the Lightsail series the first of which launched on 20 May 2015 A second spacecraft is expected to launch in 2016 on a more complex mission Copenhagen Suborbitals is a crowd funded amateur crewed space programme it has flown four homebuilt rockets and two mockup space capsules 發展計劃 Many have speculated on where private spaceflight may go in the near future Numerous projects of orbital and suborbital launch systems for satellites and crewed flights exist Some orbital crewed missions would be statesponsored like most COTS participants that develop their own launch systems Another possibility is for paid suborbital tourism on craft like those from Virgin Galactic Space Adventures XCOR Aerospace RocketShip Tours ARCASPACE PlanetSpaceCanadian Arrow British Starchaser Industries or noncommercial like Copenhagen Suborbitals Additionally suborbital spacecraft have applications for faster intercontinental package delivery and passenger flight Private orbital spaceflight space stations SpaceXs Falcon 9 rocket first launched in 2010 with no passengers was designed to be subsequently humanrated The Atlas V launch vehicle is also a contender for humanrating Plans and a fullscale prototype for the SpaceX Dragon a capsule capable of carrying up to seven passengers were announced in March 2006 and Dragon version 2 flight hardware was unveiled in May 2014 both SpaceX and Boeing have received contracts from NASA to complete building testing and flying up to six flights of humanrated space capsules to the International Space Station beginning in 2017 In December 2010 SpaceX launched the second Falcon 9 and the first operational Dragon spacecraft The mission was deemed fully successful marking the first launch to space atmospheric reentry and recovery of a capsule by a private company Subsequent COTS missions included increasingly complex orbital tasks culminating in Dragon first docking to the ISS in 2012 Bigelow Aerospace develops BA 330 module based on the former NASA TransHab design intended to be used for activities like microgravity research space manufacturing and space tourism with modules serving as orbital hotels To promote private crewed launch efforts Bigelow offered the US50 million Americas Space Prize for the first USbased privately funded team to launch a crewed reusable spacecraft to orbit on or before 10 January 2010 such feat is yet to be achieved The British Government partnered in 2015 with the ESA to promote a possibly commercial singlestage to orbit spaceplane concept called Skylon This design was pioneered by the privately held Reaction Engines Limited a company founded by Alan Bond after HOTOL was canceled As of 2012 private company NanoRacks provides commercial access to the US National Laboratory space on the International Space Station ISS Science experiments can be conducted on a variety of standard racksized experimental platforms with standard interfaces for power and data acquisition SpaceX announced that Japanese entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa will launch with the dearMoon crew in 2023 to become to first civilian on a lunar Starship mission Onorbit propellant depots In a presentation given 15 November 2005 to the 52nd Annual Conference of the American Astronautical Society NASA Administrator Michael D Griffin suggested that establishing an onorbit propellant depot is Exactly the type of enterprise which should be left to industry and to the marketplace At the Space Technology and Applications International Forum in 2007 Dallas Bienhoff of Boeing made a presentation detailing the benefits of propellant depots Shackleton Energy Company has established operational plans an extensive teaming and industrial consortium for developing LEO Propellant Depots supplied by Lunar polar sourced water iceShackleton Energys cislunar economic development plans David Livingston interview with James Keravala The Space Show 14 December 2012 accessed 3 January 2013 Asteroid mining Some have speculated on the profitability of mining metal from asteroids According to some estimates a one kilometerdiameter asteroid would contain 30 million tons of nickel 15 million tons of metal cobalt and 7500tons of platinum the platinum alone would have a value of more than 150 billion at 2008 terrestrial prices Space elevators A space elevator system is a possible launch system currently under investigation by at least one private venture There are concerns over cost general feasibility and some political issues On the plus side the potential to scale the system to accommodate traffic would in theory be greater than some other alternatives Some factions contend that a space elevator if successful would not supplant existing launch solutions but complement them Nonlaunched efforts Failed spaceflight ventures After earlier first effort of OTRAG in the 1990s the projection of a significant demand for communications satellite launches attracted the development of a number of commercial space launch providers The launch demand largely vanished when some of the largest satellite constellations such as 288 satellite Teledesic network were never built In 1996 NASA selected Lockheed Martin Skunk Works to build the X33 VentureStar prototype for a single stage to orbit SSTO reusable launch vehicle In 1999 the subscale X33 prototypes composite liquid hydrogen fuel tank failed during testing At project termination on 31 March 2001 NASA had funded US912 million of this wedge shaped spacecraft while Lockheed Martin financed US357 million of it The VentureStar was to have been a fullscale commercial space transport operated by Lockheed Martin In 1997 Beal Aerospace proposed the BA2 a lowcost heavylift commercial launch vehicle On 4 March 2000 the BA2 project tested the largest liquid rocket engine built since the Saturn V In October 2000 Beal Aerospace ceased operations citing a decision by NASA and the Department of Defense to commit themselves to the development of the competing governmentfinanced EELV program In 1998 Rotary Rocket proposed the Roton a Single Stage to Orbit SSTO piloted Vertical Takeoff and Landing VTOL space transport A full scale Roton Atmospheric Test Vehicle flew three times in 1999 After spending tens of millions of dollars in development the Roton failed to secure launch contracts and Rotary Rocket ceased operations in 2001 On 28 September 2006 Jim Benson SpaceDev founder announced he was founding Benson Space Company with the intention of being first to market with the safest and lowest cost suborbital personal spaceflight launches using the vertical takeoff and horizontal landing Dream Chaser vehicle based on the NASA HL20 Personnel Launch System vehicle Excalibur Almaz had plans in 2007 to launch a modernized TKS Spacecraft for Almaz space station for tourism and other uses It was to feature the largest window ever on a spacecraft Their equipment was never launched and their hangar facility closed in 2016 It is to be converted into an educational exhibit Escape Dynamics operated from 2010 to 2015 with the goal of making singlestage to orbit spaceplanes In December 2012 the Golden Spike Company announced plans to privately transport space exploration participants to the surface of the Moon and return beginning as early as 2020 for US750 million per passenger XCOR Aerospace planned to initiate a suborbital commercial spaceflight service with the Lynx rocketplane in 2016 or 2017 at 95000 The first test flights were to be conducted by 23 pilots from the Axe Apollo Space Academy were planned for 2015Norris Guy 8 October 2014 XCOR Lynx Moves Into Final Assembly Aviation Week Retrieved 20 January 2015Hindman Nate C 23 October 2012 XCOR Lynx Supersonic Plane To Fly Between NYC And Tokyo In 90 Minutes The Huffington Post Retrieved 19 February 2013Chow Denise 8 June 2012 Space tourists can hop on a flight in 2014 XCOR says NBC news Retrieved 19 February 2013 Private space stations By 2010 Bigelow Aerospace was developing the NextGeneration Commercial Space Station a private orbital space complex The space station was to have been constructed of both Sundancer and B330 expandable modules as well as a central docking node propulsion solar arrays and attached crew capsules Initial launch of space station components was planned for 2014 with portions of the station projected to be available for leased use as early as 2015 no launches have taken place Lunar private ventures Robotic Lunarsurface missions The following companies and organizations had made initial funded launch commitments for Google Lunar X Prizerelated Lunar launches in 2016 Moon Express SpaceILBBC accessed 7 October 2015 Synergy MoonXPrize website retrieved 9 February 2017 Team Indus Hakuto ispace The Verge website retrieved 9 February 2017 Private Lunarsurface crewed expeditions Shackleton Energy CompanyMining the Moon How the extraction of lunar hydrogen or ice could fuel humanitys expansion into space IEEE Spectrum June 2009 accessed 5 January 2011 intends to undertake human tended lunar prospecting for water ice If significant reserves of ice are located they plan to establish a network of refueling service stations in low Earth orbit and on the Moon to process and provide fuel and consumables for commercial and government customers If the prospecting is successfulice deposits are located the appropriate legal regime is in place to support commercial development and the ice can be extracted Shackleton proposes to establish a fuelprocessing operation on the lunar surface and in propellant depots in Low Earth Orbit Equipment would melt the ice and purify the water electrolyze the water into gaseous hydrogen and oxygen and then condense the gases into liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen and also process them into hydrogen peroxide all of which could be used as rocket fuels Mars exploration In June 2012 private Dutch nonprofit Mars One announced a private oneway no return human mission to Mars with the aim to establish a permanent human colony on Mars The plan was to send a communication satellite and pathfinder lander to the planet by 2016 and after several stages land four humans on the Martian surface for permanent settlement in 2023 A new set of four astronauts would then arrive every two years Mars One has received a variety of criticism mostly relating to medical technical and financial feasibility There are also unverified claims that Mars One is a scam designed to take as much money as possible from donors including reality show contestants Many have criticized the projects US6 billion budget as being too low to successfully transport humans to Mars to the point of being delusional A similar project study by NASA estimated the cost of such a feat at US100 billion although that included transporting the astronauts back to Earth Objections have also been raised regarding the reality TV project associated with the expedition Given the transient nature of most reality TV ventures many believe that as viewership declines funding could significantly decrease thereby harming the entire expedition Further contestants have reported that they were ranked based on their donations and funds raised In February 2013 the US nonprofit Inspiration Mars Foundation announced a plan to send a married couple on a 2018 mission to travel to Mars and back to Earth on a 501day round trip with no landing planned on Mars The mission would have taken advantage of an infrequently occurring free return trajectorya unique orbit opportunity which occurs only once every fifteen yearsand will allow the space capsule to use the smallest possible amount of fuel to get it to Mars and back to Earth The twoperson American crew a man and a woman will orbit around Mars at a distance of of the surface If anything goes wrong the spacecraft should make its own way back to Earth but with no possibility of any shortcuts home On September 27 2016 at the 67th annual meeting of the International Astronautical Congress Elon Musk unveiled substantial details of the Interplanetary Transport System ITS design for the transport vehiclesincluding size construction material number and type of engines thrust cargo and passenger payload capabilities onorbit propellanttanker refills representative transit times etcas well as a few details of portions of the Marsside and Earthside infrastructure that SpaceX intends to build to support the flight vehicles In addition Musk championed a larger systemic vision a vision for a bottomup emergent order of other interested partieswhether companies individuals or governmentsto utilize the new and radically lowercost transport infrastructure to build up a sustainable human civilization on Mars potentially on numerous other locations around the Solar System by innovating and meeting the demand that such a growing venture would occasion In July 2017 SpaceX made public plans for ITS based on a smaller launch vehicle and spacecraft The new system architecture has evolved quite a bit since the November 2016 articulation of the very large Interplanetary Transport System A key driver of the new architecture is to make the new system useful for substantial Earthorbit and cislunar launches so that the new system might pay for itself in part through economic spaceflight activities in the nearEarth space zone The Super Heavy is designed to fulfill the Mars transportation goals while also launching satellites servicing the ISS flying humans and cargo to the Moon and enabling ballistic transport of passengers on Earth as a substitute to longhaul airline flights Since March 2020 SpaceX conducted several test flights of their Starship spacecraft The Starship is a fully reusable twostage vehicle designed to take passengers and cargo to the Moon Mars and beyond SpaceX had initially planned to have an orbitalflight in 2021 On Wednesday May 5 2021 the twelfth Starship prototype SN15 made a 10 km suborbital flight and achieved soft landing SpaceX is currently in the process of improving and understanding the Starship spacecraft 參見 List of commercial space stations 載人航天 X 獎基金會 參考文獻 Belfiore Michael Rocketeers How a Visionary Band of Business Leaders Engineers and Pilots is Boldly Privatizing Space Harper Paperbacks 2008 Bizony Piers How to Build Your Own Spaceship The Science of Personal Space Travel Plume 2009 外部連結 Climbing a Commercial Stairway to Space A Plausible Timeline RLV News 2 February 2006 An Introduction to Private Spaceflight Space Liberates Us 20 March 2007 Study defining personal spaceflight industry Space Fellowship 29 May 2008 政府 Suborbital Reusable Launch Vehicles and Applicable Markets DOC OSC 2002 企業風投 CSPACE Starchaser Industries Space Services Inc Commercial Space Companies at the Space Frontier Foundation Astrobotic 媒體報道 A Word from the KnowNothing Bureaucrats NASA union viewpoint on private spaceflight Private Industry Can Help NASA Open the Space Frontier Space Frontier Foundation 14 February 2005 Category 私人航天 Category 私人航天公司 Category 空間應用