NASA Will Award $1.6 Billion to Speed the Development of Commercial Space Taxis

Bubba Gumped it.

Anyways,
What ever happened to the space elevator?

This is exciting and positive news towards development of rountine launch from land to outerspace craft! Learn form the old and build better towards the future, yea baby! This is so cool!!!

Space taxis? So will they have a meter that charges $1 million per 1/8th of a mile? Will they be driven by people who can't speak English and don't believe in following any known traffic laws ;-)? Most importantly, will they be painted yellow and and have liquor advertisements on the side? If not then they will never be TRUE space TAXIS.

@readysetboom,
On a serious note, space elevators are still in the works, but they are one of those technologies that is always a decade or two away. There are more practical intermediaries, such as orbital space tethers. Things like Virgin Galactic's space planes could, in theory, be equipped to fly up and grab ahold of one of these tethers. As long as the tether system has a mass of around 20 times the mass of the ship then the whole thing can stay in orbit, even though the spaceship one planes are only moving at around 2000 mph. Those tethers, naturally, have to be quite strong too, but not as long and expensive as a space elevator.

I think that the technology with the greatest promise would be beamed power propulsion, perhaps using a laser based system on the ground to heat a gas or ablative metal that can then be vented through a rocket nozzle for thrust. However, those technologies are also still in the developmental stages. In the short term, we are stuck with rockets or rockets combined with air-breathing jets while in the lower atmosphere.

I've always wondered why NASA kept on with ground based rockets for so long. They're highly inefficient to what technology could have produced 15-20 years ago. They know that now after making the expense but, I'm sure they didn't know it then. Still, it's a mystery some of the choices they make with an essentially unlimited imagination and a fierce budgets to back them up.

Guess they had to start somewhere.

suborbital is good! very good !

its like cellphones and computers.. one day they will just merge together...

but speaking of the future: Space Elevator FTW! ^^

bored? lets go mine the stars... ^^

Elon Musk has this one in the bag.

@ Moon Born

LOL are you a Muskovite? Yes Space X is definitely making progress! But really we have an emerging Commercial Space Sector that as a whole is going to do great things in this new space race!!!! America to the future!!!! Its just how it is America is going to dominate this space race what can I say!!!!

I believe humanities survival depends upon establishing himself in out space, planets, and moons and beyond. We need to learn how to live as close as possible to a 100% human manufactured environment, before our local earth kills us with black plague. We need to learn as strong as possible to control our own destiny.

surprised they didn't mention spacex, maybe because they need more than one system for redundancy and competition? go spacex! if their mission in nov is successfull maybe they can start delivering astronauts next year?

Mister 'Clay Dillow' can you please explain to us how Europe`s ATV is supposedly not finished. Kind of a strange and wild accusation since it has already launched twice successfully and is slated for it`s 3d launch in march. You also ignored to mention the Japanese HTV in your article. The HTV has made two successful flights and is slated for a 3d launch as well.

Again, these Japanese and European vehicles are "ready-to-launch methods" for supplying the ISS. The ATV can even launch 3 times as much as a progress vehicle and can boost the ISS orbit more then any other vehicle. These European and Japanese vehicles are a crucial part now of ISS operations and should be mentioned for their capabilities and contributions.

Ya know the problem is that theres only one thing to deliver people and cargo to in Space. JUST ONE THATS IT!!!! The ISS! We need a bigger market for these guys!!! We need more than just one space station!!! I mean for the whole world all we have is the ISS!!! Just one thing for all these companies to fight over! We need need to provide a bigger market.

Ladies and Gentlemen. I give you Bigelow Aerospace!!!! Bigelow bought NASA's transhab technology over 10 years ago when congress canceled funding for it. Robert Bigelow bought and improved the technology so now his stations are far superior to the tin cans whcih make up the ISS. Offers much better protection against the micro meteorites (Can actually withstand one without bursting like the ISS modules would)and superior radiation protection as well.

Simply put. We need more space stations in orbit. Right now there are literally less than 10 people. A wapping 10 people living off our planet!!!!! A WAPPING 10 PEOPLE!!!
So yes we need more!!!! Set the commercial space sector free!!!

@Maxb500 I am pretty sure that when he is referring the ESA ATV as "still under development" he is referring to the need to be able to launch PEOPLE into space. It's pretty obvious that we could launch Progress resupply missions even with a high failure rate if there were supply difficulties.

Furthermore, there are many other options to launch supplies. Beyond the European and Japanese options, SpaceX will launch resupply missions in the very near term and there are other companies that could quickly make launches as well.

Where there is a critical deficiency is in man-rated space launchers. Soyuz is the only operational one and it was just thrown into doubt by the failure of Progress, which uses substantially the same launcher. Because of this, there is a high likelyhood that ISS will need to be evacuated in just over a month. So when he speaks of "supply" the critical supplies that we need to build redundant delivery systems for is the supply of bodies to run ISS :)

Airships are perfect to perform this task at a fraction of the cost. I'll get ready and make a call to NASA. They won't accept it though most likely because it doesn't have that "cool" factor they love. But we will make a proposal nonetheless.

Brady Soule
Director of Marketing
Helios Airships
heliosairships.com

It is possible to design a system that veritically levitate with eletro static force created between two charged plates one fixed in cylinder and other with similar charge down vibrating in cylinder sliding with some friction, like this two cylinder systems in which down plates vibrate at 180 degress phase difference to each can be used to avoid any horizontal movement or vibrations, as down plates are sliding they do not transmit all the electrostatic force on them to cylinder surface and as fixed plates on top does transmit all electrostatic force to cylinder surface which results in total upward force, which can be adjusted by amount of charge on plates,radius of cylinder and friction between plates and cylinder. This system can used for propulsion of space taxi.

I would like to add, while hydrogen only has about 8-10% higher buoyancy than helium, "In a practical dirigible design the difference is significant making a 50% difference in the fuel carrying capacity of the dirigible and hence increasing its range significantly."
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,786149-2,00.html

@bradley soule: I don't know why you think nasa would be against airships. Rockets launched from balloons (rockoons) have been around since the earliest days of the space program. It's just that they can't carry very big rockets. Even the biggest balloons that we make today