Word: orbit
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...cheap. In 1989, during the 20th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, President Bush challenged NASA to figure out how to put human beings on Mars. The space agency came back with an elephantine 30-year plan that involved construction bays and fuel depots in low-Earth orbit and carried a jaw-dropping price tag of $450 billion...
...save money, but when it comes time to fly, they often fall short. At the Johnson Space Center, engineers are thus looking at other Mars scenarios that still include frugal, on-site fuel manufacturing but also call for six-person crews, bigger vehicles and Apollo-style motherships in Martian orbit. "We're trying to take the best ideas and fold them into a reasonable approach," says Drake...
When Mike Kelly first set out to build his own private space-ferry service, he figured his bread-and-butter business would be lofting satellites into high-Earth orbit. Now he thinks he may have figured wrong. "People were always asking me when they could go," says Kelly, who runs Kelly Space & Technology out of San Bernardino, Calif. "I realized the real market is in space tourism...
This may all sound great, but there are a few hurdles. Putting a simple satellite into orbit--with no oxygen, life support or return trip necessary--already costs an astronomical $10,000 per lb. And that doesn't include the cost of insuring rich and possibly litigious passengers. John Pike of the Federation of American Scientists acerbically suggests the entire group of entrepreneurs trying to corner the space-tourism market have between them "just enough money to blow up one rocket...
...impossible to use a synthesizer to turn classical music into.... really cool classical music. But since Orbit entered the public ear as the Material Girl's producer, it shouldn't be a great surprise that he gets a payoff only when he uses his synthesizer to turn classical into chill...