Space Enterprise: Beyond NASA

Front Cover
Bloomsbury Academic, 1990 - Science - 220 pages

This veteran analyst offers an appraisal of investment opportunities in a wide array of space-related activities. NASA will no longer be a major factor in the commercialization of space. . . . There are a few futuristic projections, such as mining asteroids by robots and collecting antimatter, but the author is more concerned with the application of current or near-future high technology, i.e., products like ELVs (inexpensive expendable launch vehicles), and services with demonstrably large market potential, such as a remote sensing satellite network that could be subsribed to by every personal computer owner on earth. Choice

The Challenger disaster, according to this provocative new book, signaled the end of NASA's domination of space--at least for commercial purposes. David P. Gump claims that after two decades of doldrums, the space industry is about to enter the new era of free enterprise. NASA's tediously slow pace, writes Gump, will be leapfrogged by dozens of private initiatives that will create a new orbital economy. Space Enterprise outlines the parameters for the development and growth of a new space industry fueled by the competitiveness of private enterprise. This historic shift from government to private leadership in space is evidenced in the many large and small companies already planning private space stations and battling to create their own launches at far lower costs than NASA's projects.

The book begins with an engrossing account of the causes of the Challenger failure. Gump goes on to demonstrate how NASA's failure opened the door to space as the next economic frontier. On-orbit research labs will create new medicines, electronic crystals, and superconducting alloys. Solar power satellites, built with materials mined on the Moon, will provide low-cost nonpolluting electricity to cities on Earth. Space Enterprise is a map to the opportunities of the new space age.

From inside the book

Contents

The Overdue Frontier
1
Pushed Beyond Its Limits
9
The Birth of a New Industry
27
Copyright

11 other sections not shown

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (1990)

DAVID P. GUMP has experience in space commerce from the vantage point of marketing and publishing. His credits include the creation in 1983 of Space Business News, the major newsletter serving the space commerce field. He has served as director of Geostar Messaging Corporation in Washington, DC, which is building a satellite-based mobile communications system. He founded the first professional newsletter on commercial space development, Space Business News.

Bibliographic information