The Top 10 Private Spaceship Companies

From Space.com:

Virgin Galactic's private SpaceShipTwo spacecraft and its mothership WhiteKnightTwo 

flies over the Golden Gate Bridge with the Virgin America plane "My Other Ride is a 

Spaceship" on April 6, 2011 en route to open Terminal 2 at San Francisco International Airport.
Credit: Mark Greenberg/Virgin America

Introduction

NASA retired its iconic space shuttle fleet in 2011, leaving the United States without a homegrown way to get its astronauts and cargo to space. But that should change soon.

A new generation of American private spaceships is on the horizon, with their sights set on both orbital and suborbital space. Here's a look at 10 of the most promising crew-carrying commercial craft in development today.

FIRST STOP: XCOR's Lynx Space Plane

 

 

An artist's rendition of XCOR Aerospace's Lynx space plane high above the Earth.

 Roughly the size of a small private airplane, the craft is designed to make several 

flights a day into a zero-gravity environment. Credit: Mike Massee/XCOR

Lynx

XCOR Aerospace's Lynx is a two-person suborbital space plane designed to take off and land on a conventional airport runway. In addition to flights with paying passengers, the rocket-powered vehicle is being designed to carry scientific experiments on brief research flights.

XCOR has already signed a deal with the Southwest Research Institute, a nonprofit organization based in Boulder, Colo., to fly some of its scientists and experiments to suborbital space.

The Lynx could be in flight-test operations by the end of 2012, accoring to XCOR officials. The company plans to charge $95,000 per seat when the space plane is up and running.

NEXT STOP: Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo 

 

Suborbital SpaceShipTwo glides over Mojave Air and Space 

Port in California. Credit: TSC

SpaceShipTwo

The six-passenger SpaceShipTwo is Virgin Galactic's entry into the suborbital spaceflight field. Like Lynx, SpaceShipTwo is designed to ferry tourists, researchers and their experiments. And like XCOR, Virgin also holds a contract with the Southwest Research Institute for scientific flights.

SpaceShipTwo will be carried to an altitude of about 50,000 feet (15,000 meters) by a mothership known as WhiteKnightTwo. At that point, the spacecraft's rocket will kick on, boosting SpaceShipTwo up to 62 miles (100 kilometers) or so above Earth's surface.

Virgin Galactic has already collected deposits from more than 500 customers willing to pay $200,000 for a seat aboard SpaceShipTwo. Virgin officials say they hope to begin rocket-powered flight tests of SpaceShipTwo later this year, with commercial operations perhaps starting in 2013 or 2014.

NEXT STOP: Armadillo Aerospace's Vertical Lander 

 

  

Proposed design of Space Adventures' suborbital vehicle in ascent.
Credit: Background Photo: Richard Garriott/Design: Matt Ross

 

Armadillo Aerospace's Suborbital Vehicle

Armadillo Aerospace, a Texas-based company founded by computer game entrepreneur John Carmack, is developing a vertically launched spaceship for suborbital flights.

Armadillo's spacecraft will have room for two passengers. The space tourism firm Space Adventures is booking seats on the craft for $110,000 each. An Arizona man recently won a free flight on the vehicle in a contest sponsored by Space Adventures and Seattle's Space Needle, though the date of his trip has yet to be set.

NEXT STOP: Bigelow Aerospace's Private Space Labs 

 

 

Hang Time: in Earth orbit courtesy of Bigelow Aerospace expandable modules. The company

 unveiled a business plan to populate space with habitable complexes for international space 

agencies and multinational corporations. Credit: Bigelow Aerospace

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