Launch Vehicle
Due to the added size and mass of Sundancer over previous modules, the craft will require a medium lift launch vehicle to take it into orbit. SpaceX has been contracted to provide a Falcon 9 vehicle for a launch in 2014. Bigelow has also entered discussion with Lockheed Martin regarding the possible use of the Atlas V as a launch vehicle for manned space capsules, which would be required to deliver crew, tourists and materiel to the new habitat.
As of 2010, no commercial spacecraft exists to deliver humans into orbit, effectively leaving Sundancer as "a destination waiting for a means to get there". SpaceX is in the process of human-rating the Falcon 9 vehicle and its Dragon crew capsule for carrying privately contracted and NASA passengers into earth orbit, and Boeing is working with Bigelow Aerospace to develop the CST-100 crew capsule for NASA's Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program.
Read more about this topic: Sundancer
Famous quotes containing the words launch and/or vehicle:
“I had often stood on the banks of the Concord, watching the lapse of the current, an emblem of all progress, following the same law with the system, with time, and all that is made ... and at last I resolved to launch myself on its bosom and float whither it would bear me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The woman may serve as a vehicle for the rapist expressing his rage against a world that gives him pain—because he is poor, or oppressed, or mad, or simply human. Then what of her? We have waded in the swamp of compassion for him long enough.”
—Robin Morgan (b. 1941)