SpaeCor News

Imagine one day you look up at the full moon, and instead of seeing a bright surface, you see tiny dark spots. What are these dark spots? Moon settlements. This is all because of the new reality painted by private space business, also known as the newspace movement. Private enterprise just got a new push in the right direction, the retirement of the space shuttle created a problem and COTS may be the answer.

COTS also known as Commercial Orbital Transportation Services is a program created by NASA to spur competition and development in the commercial space program. Orbital Sciences and SpaceX are two companies that have received money from COTS and are well on their way to supplying the international space station after the shuttles retirement.

SpaceX has planned missions to ISS all the way up to the year 2015, and will be doing a COT’s demonstration in 2010. SpaceX has already proved that they can launch their falcon into orbit without problems. However they have they have yet to test their Dragon model, that will ferry passengers to the space station. They were given the COTS’ money in order to speed up their research and development to ensure that they can take the space shuttles place.

COTS has caught on not only as a way of decreasing NASA costs, but also is beginning to act as a stimulus plan for the US economy. The Obama administration believes if they can help push a new industry along, it may in just one decade ensure that we are brought out of this recession. It looks like a great idea but will it actually work?

The idea behind COTS as a stimulus plan is that it will create competition in the market place. The competition will create innovation leading to more jobs. Much like the World Wars brought us out of the depression, the newspace proposals will bring us from this recession, through innovation. These Jobs will be created because as more idea’s and technologies are developed, more segments of the industry will be developed. The Solar System is a vast place, and if we can begin to just tap a small portion of it there will be no shortage of jobs as mankind expands to the cosmos.