Located on a massive concrete pad in the middle of the Columbus Municipal Airport , SpacePort Indiana expects to complete more than 130 rocket and high-altitude balloon launches during 2009, according to SPI CEO Brian Tanner.
The southeast Indiana company is presently finalizing an ozone measurement and testing contract with the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) where Tanner expects to begin lofting ozonesonde payloads up to 115,000 feet.
“We take theoretical approaches or a scientist’s or engineer’s hypothesis and test it in a real-time environment in space or near space,” Tanner said. He opened SPI in March 2008. The space company also is working with Raytheon to develop a 3-D infrastructure to track high-altitude aircraft and spacecraft for the FAA in preparation for what Tanner calls “the new era of commercialization in space”.
Citing the fact that Virgin Galactic will begin offering commercial manned suborbital flights (a mere $200,000 per person) out of New Mexico in a few years, Tanner believes that commercial space activity will “dramatically increase” over the next decade. He told MidwestBusiness.com: “Kids who are in high school right now can fully expect to have a personal space experience during their lifetimes.”
“It’s clear that NASA has already begun the privatization of space travel and space exploration with private companies expected to begin resupplying and maintaining the International Space Station once it’s completed,” Tanner said.
The growing testing facility at Columbus and other commercial SpacePorts springing up around the country will likely be sites where NASA will test and validate numerous subsystems for the new Constellation program vehicles. These vehicles will configure and define the next generation of American space exploration.
The Columbus facility is fully equipped with safety and security processes to accommodate space and near-space ground activities. The Hoosier space company, which has plans on the drawing board for a new 25,000-square-foot building, also has a rocket-engine testing platform that can test engines with up to 3,000 pounds of thrust.
Tanner firmly believes that an entirely new industry based on space access is already in development and will expand exponentially over the next decade. He added: “I’m here to tell you that space travel and space exploration for you and me is just around the corner.”
http://www.midwestbusiness.com/news/viewnews.asp?newsletterID=19684
Last edited on Tue Jun 30th, 2009 08:38 am by cythrust
|
