| | Orbital's website is interesting and informative.
Orbital's "SpacePortal" is your cyberspace connection to the world of the commercial and civil space industry. Included are numerous links to NASA, national and university laboratories, non-U.S. space agencies, space-related media outlets, and even other companies in the space industry.
We encourage you to bookmark this page to use as an easy reference tool. Come back and visit Orbital's site often!
(Please note that Orbital is not responsible for the content displayed on the linked sites.)
They offer an impressive catalog of pdfs about their products and services. Note that the "Space Portal" page does list nearly 50 other private companies. Somehow they overlooked SpaceX.
SpaceX has gained worldwide attention for a series of historic milestones. It is the only private company ever to return a spacecraft from low-Earth orbit, which it first accomplished in December 2010. The company made history again in May 2012 when its Dragon spacecraft attached to the International Space Station, exchanged cargo payloads, and returned safely to Earth -- a technically challenging feat previously accomplished only by governments. In October 2012, Dragon again successfully delivered cargo to and from the space station, in the first official cargo resupply mission for NASA. SpaceX website here.
The first privately owned launch of a satellite occured in 1989 when "McDonnell Douglas Space Systems Company of Huntington Beach, Calif., roared off a launching pad at Cape Canaveral, Fla., at 6:59 P.M., carrying a television broadcasting satellite for a British company into space."
(New York Times archives here.) However, privately-owned satellites go back to the early 60s.
AT&T's Testar communication satellite was launched on July 10, 1962. That was six months after OSCAR - Orbital Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio - was built by the Amateur Radio Relay League and launched by NASA December 12, 1961.
Like much else that is eclipsed by the public sector, private efforts in space exploration have a long, deep, and broad history. If you want to learn the history of this the Wikipedia article on "Private Spaceflight" is good beginning. Tucked away in Wikipedia (not cited in the article above) is this summary list of Private Spaceflight Companies. Currently, an X-Prize competition is running to put a package on the moon.
Texas Republcan senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson (1993-2013) was a vocal opponent of private space exploration and development, and a strong supporter of tax-funded initiatives. This is from her biography on Wikipedia. (SLS stand for Space Launch System, waggishly called the "Senate Launch System" as the largest earmarked expenditure in US history.)
Ironically, the SLS earmark primarily benefits the Marshall Space Flight Center, which is not located in Hutchison's home state. To fund SLS development, Hutchison supports cutting funds for NASA's Commercial Crew and Cargo Program, which would rely on private companies such as Space Exploration Technologies and Blue Origin (both of which have significant operations in Texas). Critics contend that building SLS would increase the cost of access to space and result in long-term cutbacks in NASA's human spaceflight program, based in Houston, Texas.
Immediately after the first successful test flight of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, Hutchison issued a statement dismissing the value of SpaceX, which has approximately 10% of its workforce in Texas and is one of the fastest growing employers in the state. "This first successful test flight of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket is a belated sign that efforts to develop modest commercial space cargo capabilities are showing some promising signs," Hutchison said. "While this test flight was important, the program to demonstrate commercial cargo and crew transport capabilities, which I support, was intended to enhance not replace NASA's own proven abilities to deliver critical cargo and humans to low Earth orbit. Make no mistake, even this modest success is more than a year behind schedule, and the project deadlines of other private space companies continue to slip as well. This test does not change the fact that commercial space programs are not ready to close the gap in human spaceflight if the space shuttle is retired this year with no proven replacement capability and the Constellation program is simultaneously canceled as the president proposes."
(Sourced from Alan, Boyle. "SpaceX fans and foes speak out". Cosmic Log. MSNBC.)
Just sayin'.... Columbus, Cortez, ... Cartier, Hudson, ... the Dutch East India Company, the British East India Company... It was long, long voyage to Ellis Island....
(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 4/24, 9:52am)
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