XCOR: Making Private Spaceflight Real

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When you were a kid, what did you imagine spaceflights would look like in the future?

Did you imagine space missions in a big rocket, or your own personal spaceship? For me, I always was fond of the idea of building my own personal spaceship, and traveling from planet to planet. It may be far off into the future, but then again, it may be closer than we all thought. Companies like XCOR remind me of that dream, and they are making those dreams a reality, one step at a time. I will briefly cover who and what XCOR is, and dive a little deeper with Mark Street, an Engineer with the company who I had the privilege to interview via e-mail.

What is XCOR?

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Bring in the Competitor...

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-Image by Satoru Kikuchi-

Competition

We need competition in space! Yes, competition. We need companies who will be willing to go the extra mile for their customer, to provide them the safest ride to and from space. We need it done effectively, and we need the price to come down drastically. We need a new space market that would allow people to get excited about the future of space, and help regular people realize the possibilities of this grand solar system which they ignore everyday. 

Actually, all of this already exists.

We saw the beginnings of this space market through the work of MirCorp, the first private space business. We witnessed the Ansari X Prize, when Scaled Composites won the 10 Million prize for sending their vehicle into space. Quickly afterwards, Virgin Galactic was created, who will be sending thousands of people up to space very soon. Virgin Galactic has drastically brought down the flight of space travel. It is normal to see people getting rides into space for $50-$100 million, now it will be done for only $200,000 ( that is .4% of 50 million). That is insane.

Can the price of space travel get lower? check this out...

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