Private Spaceflight a boon to Scientists

History is happening around us.. Despite the problems in our world, we can see great progress in the frontiers that will eventually free humanity from this lonely single rock.

Scientists go suborbital - Cosmic Log - msnbc.com:
"The killer app for private spaceflight, at least once the millionaires and celebrities have had their turn, may well be scientific research.

'You spark this industry with tourists, but I predict in the next decade the research market is going to be bigger than the tourist market,' says Alan Stern, a planetary scientist at the Colorado-based Southwest Research Institute who is heading up a committee to link up researchers with future suborbital spaceflights.

Until recently, suborbital space trips were marketed primarily as the penultimate high for well-heeled thrill-seekers.
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Virtually all the major players in the still-gestating suborbital industry now realize that research flights could make the difference in their drive to profitability.

One of the clearest signs of that came last month, when an Arab investment group bought a $280 million stake in British billionaire Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic venture, putting special emphasis on the capability to fly scientific experiments and deploy small satellites.

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There are other options for space research, of course, ranging from zero-G airplane flights to suborbital sounding rockets to unmanned orbital and deep-space flights to space station experiments. So why would researchers, and even NASA, opt for rides on private spaceships that have yet to be built?

Cost is just one reason, Stern told me. A $200,000 ticket for a space ride may sound expensive for a tourist, but it's peanuts compared to the $2 million or more charged for the launch of a NASA sounding rocket, he said.

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"If you could go at [an experiment] every day of the year and see the atmosphere changing, how powerful would that be?" Stern said. "This becomes a laboratory-like experience."

Piloted spaceships are also likely to provide a more robust environment for research. Scientists would be more likely to get their experiment back and less likely to lose it in a hard landing.

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Experimenters could also fly along with their experiments - not just once, but multiple times. "Graduate students will be doing their own Ph.D.s in these vehicles," Stern predicted.

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"This is so cheap, and the applications are so good, that I expect NIH, NSF, DOD, DOE, a whole slew of federal agencies will have space efforts, just like federal agencies have boats and airplanes that they use," he said. "Literally, Aruba could afford to have a spaceflight program. ... Every country that wants to have their own space program with astronauts can go.""