NSS WikiPublic Engagement in Space Wiki - PesWiki
ISS Missions of Opportunity
Fund Experiment
Support Experiment Development with Interaction with Discipline Area Experts
Facilitate Integration as Payloads of Opportunity on Multiple Vehicles bound for the Space Station
Fly Experiment on ISS
Follow on to the successful Space Shuttle Get-Away-Special & Hitchhiker Programs
Tailor Experiments to addressing fundamental barriers to space exploration and development
ISDC Presentation/Program Brief
Establish ties to the NASA Mission Directorates & NASA Centers
New Centennial Challenges
Tailor Experiments to addressing fundamental barriers to space exploration and development
Lack of Affordable Space Transportation to Space
Despite the dreams, plans, and claims of the past 30 years, launch vehicle developers have not found a way out of the launch vehicle "Catch 22" trap:
(1) individual launch costs can only be greatly reduced by spreading the huge cost of launch vehicle development over a large number of flights;
(2) the market to demand a large number of flights can only exist once individual launch costs are greatly reduced.
Launch Vehicle Reliability
Expendable launch vehicle reliability is averaging about 0.90 (one catastrophic failure every 10 flights);
reusable launch vehicle reliability will need to average about 0.99 (one catastrophic failure every 100 flights).
Space tourism, the greatest potential market for large numbers of launch vehicle flights, cannot exist until reliability is increased by at least a factor of 100 over today's average.
No Closed-loop Life Support System
Having to launch everything necessary for life support for any extended period of time, long duration space travel (such as missions to Mars), and space settlements will be cost prohibitive.
Budget cuts to the International Space Station program have severely delayed if not canceled research and experimentation of components of closed-loop life support systems that are necessary to reduce the dependency of space settlements on support launched from Earth.
Being able to reuse human wastes will also avoid space and planetary environmental pollution issues.