should private industry/private business take a part in space exploration?

errr the people into green stuff are called... errr vegetarians, yeah real nasty work that lot.
outerspace is as nothing compared with inner space.
Infact they are very closely linked, in space you will also find Uranus.
God thats so juvenile please forgive me.

Originally posted by sardion2000

people sending a rover to mars will receive a prize of 20 miliion dolars and sending a object in to space can be something around 10.000 / 100000 dolars.

I think thats the idea for the X-Prize cup. Smaller prizes for a leapfrog type of competition. I guess they could also offer more big prizes, here is my idea on how they should do it. The first one would probably be Low Earth Orbit($ 1,000,000 prize), secord would be the Moon($ 10,000,000 prize) and third would be mars($ 20,000,000+++ prize). And they should continue until the whole solar system has been explored. Much cheaper and the taxpayers only have to foot part of the prize money. That way NASA can get on with tackling the big problems like how to send mankind to the stars and let private industry exploit the solar system.

sorry found it out what the name was of the Nasa program..

NASA Centennial Challenge Prize Program

www.centennialchallenges.nasa.gov...

Thanks for the link Mark! I think I'm going to submit my own challenge even though it will probably be very similar to alot of the other challenges. Members from ATS should collaborate or individually send challenges to NASA. It should be very interesting to see if NASA responds positively to some of the proposels or if they just shove them under the rug.

Samara about your previous comment about using anti-grav tech to eliminate intertia and generate gravity .... the jury is still out wether it is possible(at least in my mind). Lifter tech should be a very interesting field to watch over the next 10 years, that tech could provide at least some hint as to how artificial gravity fields could be generated but right now its still in the experimental phase.

Yea, I think that General Motors, Fords and Christlers should open up new facilities on their turf and begin creating new crafts. Sporty space crafts that could fit six to eight people easily. And I think all of them should pay their scientists and physicists more attention and more money. I think some of those big oil and gas corporations should give those inventors ideas that are sitting on their shelves to someone who is willing to create and experiment with them.

As for openening up car manufaturers to build rockets that unfeasable because it is not in the big 3's interest to do say since they have already begun to retrofit their plants for the next gen of cars. In order for them to make the switchover it would take billions of dollars(and gov't legislation) and possible more than a decade to complete. I think that is what Boeing and Lockheed should do because they have access to all that classified black tech US technology(since they probly invented/revese engineered it in the first place).

Originally posted by Smudge
in space you will also find Uranus.

No no. You're WRONG! Uranus is on the OUTSIDE...outer space!!! Close to whatchamacallit Pluto?

Hey pluto ( said with high pitched mickey voice )
If disney get their way the next planet will be called...

SHOULD private industry take part in space exporation?

It's already happening!

Oh history.... history holds the answer to this riddle.... There are two reasons companies will go into space; profit, and growth of industry. Lets take a gander back into the 1300's and 1500's when the world was still unexplored.... Columbus.... why did he explore...to find a route to india. Why? For money, and trade. They had resourses the europes wanted. So he went searching. lets go a bit farther in history... why did louis (sp) and clarke go across the continent? to find an all water route to the west coast me thinks. Why... easyer transport of people and tadegoods. Why did spain explore the south americas? Hrm... somthing tells me that question is gonna lead to profit. So here is MY humble summation: put the thoughts of a possible billion/trillion dollar industry to be made in space, and corps and companies (not to mention gov.) will come clawing their way out of their buildings and into shuttles or other means to get to it.

Untill the entire world can 'get along' I do not think there should be much for space exploration, public, private, or whatever. I wish there was a world wide orgination that dealt with space exploration and would have every country being a part of it. Private funds as in donations with compesation should be there though. If private money is used then they should be recognized in abundance for what they contibuted.

For how the world is right now, NASA is going at it the right way in having private companies work for government grants on projects. It would be nice to see a world wide project, with the gretest minds of the world all working on the same ideas. I think that we would have made FRIENDLY contact by now if this was the case.