Word: nasa
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Some experts are skeptical as to just how much corporations can get out of space. Costs are literally astronomical. Rental of work space on a space platform in the next decade could run to $50 million a year. NASA's own proposed pricing schedule, which has not yet been approved by the Government, calls for a fee of $71 million for renting the shuttle's full payload for each flight up to 1988, and perhaps $100 million after that. NASA is mindful of competition from launch vehicles like the European Space Agency's Ariane series (see following...
Europe's Arianespace is giving NASA a run for the money...
...international communications agency. The other satellite, however, was Spacenet 2, the second device that Ariane has carried into orbit for a U.S. customer, in this case General Telephone and Electronics Corp. With a combination of technological prowess and shrewd marketing, Arianespace had won the Spacenet 2 contract away from NASA in the latest round of what promises to be a fierce competition for profits in the cosmos...
...commercial operations for the ESA. The company's first moneymaking launch came in May, almost 2½ years after the ESA began with a series of noncommercial flights. Most of Arianespace's customers are firms and government agencies from within the European Community. Nonetheless, both Arianespace and NASA are competing for the proliferating satellite market outside Western Europe. So far, Arianespace has won contracts for six American, two Brazilian, one Arab, one Australian and several other international payloads. Altogether, the European company has about $750 million worth of contracts for launching 30 satellites. By comparison, NASA has booked...
...selling point for Ariane is its reliability. The Europeans have a string of six successful launches since June 1983. NASA, by contrast, has had some problems on all of its 14 space-shuttle missions. That discrepancy, say Arianespace executives, has done more than, enhance the European rocket's reputation: it has caused insurance companies to lower their rates for Ariane flights and raise them for space-shuttle missions. Insurers have good reason for valuing reliability. The industry paid Indonesia and the Western Union Co., original owners of the two errant satellites recovered last week by Discovery, a total...