Private, commercial space race: Bigelow and SpaceX

Private, commercial space race: Bigelow and SpaceX - SmartPlanet

With the launch of SpaceX’s much-delayed but successful Falcon 9 rocket last week, there’s been renewed attention given to private space efforts.

SpaceX and Bigelow are two of the most prominent private companies working in the field, and given the Obama administration’s encouragement of private space efforts, you might hear those two names as often as NASA.

The idea here is that private, commercial companies can be run more efficiently than NASA, which is a massive and expensive governmental organization. The Obama administration is banking on this, and is investing in companies like SpaceX.

SpaceX was founded in 2002, and is run by Elon Musk, probably best known for co-creating PayPal and Tesla Motors. SpaceX is perhaps the most prominent private, commercial aerospace company out there; the company has been contracted by NASA to provide lift to the International Space Station.

The launch of the Falcon 9 rocket on Friday is singularly impressive, despite several delays and a few hiccups. Says Kit Eaton of Fast Company:

Despite several technical glitches (an uncommanded roll of the rocket’s second stage, and incomplete parachute deployment and resulting impact damage to the first stage) the dummy payload was pushed into almost precisely the required orbit–demonstrating that a small private corporation can now successfully rival the industrial-military complex in being able to loft satellites into space.

The Falcon 9 rocket might actually be used by Bigelow Aerospace for that company’s inflatable space stations (yes, you read that right).