$75 Million Pledged For Commercial Suborbital Flights,
Payloads
The Commercial Spaceflight Federation enthusiastically
welcomed NASA's announcement Thursday that the agency will fund
dozens of science and education payloads to fly on commercial
suborbital vehicles built by companies including Armadillo
Aerospace, Blue Origin, Masten Space Systems, Virgin Galactic, and
XCOR Aerospace. At the first annual Next-Generation
Suborbital Researchers Conference, NASA Deputy Administrator Lori
Garver announced in her keynote speech today that President Obama's
Fiscal Year 2011 budget request for NASA commits $75 million in
funding over five years for the new Commercial Reusable Suborbital
Research program (CRuSR).
"We are thrilled to see NASA recognizing the enormous potential
of new commercial vehicles for science, research, and education,"
said Mark Sirangelo, Chairman of the Commercial Spaceflight
Federation. "NASA Deputy Administrator Garver's announcement
today means that hundreds of scientists, educators, and students
will be able to fly payloads on these new commercial vehicles."
"For the first time ever, NASA has put forward a commitment to
dramatically expand the number of research and education payloads
that fly into space," said Dr. S. Alan Stern, chair of the
Commercial Spaceflight Federation's Suborbital Applications
Researchers Group (SARG) and former NASA associate administrator
for science. "Since this new generation of commercial
vehicles are low cost, NASA's $75 million will open the floodgates
for everyone from astronomers to high school classrooms to conduct
real science in space. This will be one of the best
investments NASA has ever made."
"For everyone who has dreamed of participating in the grand
adventure of spaceflight, this $75 million commitment marks the
dawn of a new space age," added Stern. "As the commercial
space industry continues to grow, I expect that we will see
increasing numbers of payloads and people flying to space."
"I am pleased to see NASA's recognition of the transformative
potential of these new commercial vehicles," stated Dr. Fred
Tarantino, President and CEO of the Universities Space Research
Association. "The space science community is thrilled to see
such a commitment to low-cost, reusable, and frequent access to
space that will provide hands-on experience for students and change
the way many space scientists operate."
NASA is proposing to spend $15 million in each of five years
from 2011-2015 for the CRuSR program, funds that will both go to
universities and other research institutions to build science and
education payloads, as well as being used to purchase flights on
commercial suborbital vehicles. The CRuSR program is based at
NASA's Ames Research Center in the heart of Silicon Valley.
The Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference, a
first-of-its-kind forum for bringing together scientists,
educators, and vehicle developers to discuss potential research and
education uses for commercial spacecraft, is being held in Boulder,
Colorado and is co-organized by the Southwest Research Institute
(SwRI), the Universities Space Research Association (USRA), and the
Commercial Spaceflight Federation (CSF).