The Space Boom

There are now more types of rockets and space crafts flying and soon to be flying than at any other time since the early days of the space race. The first American spacecraft designed for private spaceflight was SpacShipOne, which won the Ansari X prize in 2004 by making two suborbital flights above Earth's atmosphere. Two new rockets that can launch spacecraft & satellites into orbit are being developed by Orbital Sciences (second from left) & space X (far left). They represent competing engineering approaches. Orbital has tried to use as much off-the-shelf technology as possible to reduce risk, while space X has tried to build as many systems in house as possible including a mew Merlin rocket engine--to reduce costs.