Welcome to NASA-York-Challenge Pages.
Business and NASA
NASA contributes to the business world in various ways, which in turn impacts on the economy. A relatively small NASA budget often magnifies to a much bigger economic outcome. In 2005, for example, the budget of $15,602M has spun-off $180,000M worth of economic contribution, that is 1 dollar spent resulting in 11.5 dollar of outcome! Within those $180,000M, 60% of it is created by goods and services created by companies which is related from space technology. This shows the importance of businesses contribution towards the economy because of NASA.
In this session we will look intotwo aspects: Business Co-operation and the Launch Industry.
Business Co-operation
Google Lunar X Prize
Google Lunar X Prize is the first of the kind space competition calling for privately-funded spaceflight teams to launch a robotic spacecraft and land on the surface of the moon, and do various goals such as taking photos of the Apollo landing site, survive a lunar night etc. Google has funded Prizes totalling $30M, $20M is for the winning team, £5M for the runner up, as well as prizes for technical bonuses and diversity award. It was announced in 2007, Registration of teams ended in 2010, and the deadline to send the robot to the moon is 2015. Currently there’s 23 teams competing from all over the world, and it is the biggest attempt to encourage knowledge development in the private sector since the US national effort in the moon landing in 2007.
GM Robonaut 2
General Motor has had a long history in co-operating with NASA, and currently they are research into making robots that are dextrous enough to work side by side with astronauts in space missions.
While it is deployed for space, the technology spin-off can be used in the auto industry as well, which improves the efficiency and manufacturing technology of GM.
Launch Industry
In 2011, requesting some $19 billion for NASA in fiscal Year 2011, the Obama administration announced plans to pump an additional $6 billion into NASA's budget over the next five years to kick-start development of a new commercial manned spaceflight capability. The era of commercialised launch industry has come, where increasingly technologies and plannings of space launch will be done by private industry instead of NASA. Analysis by Commercial Space Flight Federation, an industry group, estimates that an average of 11,800 direct jobs would exist each year from FY 2011 to FY 2015 as a result of investment in commercial crew and cargo services with the amount of funding in NASA’s budget request.
James Webb Space Telescope
The JWST will be the scientific successor of the Hubble Telescope, equipped with long wave length sensors, in order to investigate the birth and evolutions of galaxies, suns and planets. NASA has collaborated with the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, totalling 17 countries, and it will be launched in 2018. With an estimated cost of $8.8 billion, it will involve hundreds of companies around the world. See the interactive map below: (go to page 16 of this document:
Commercial Crew Development
NASA's Commercial Crew and Cargo Program is investing financial and technical resources to stimulate efforts within the private sector to develop and demonstrate safe, reliable, and cost-effective space transportation capabilities. The Program manages Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) partnership agreements with U.S. industry totaling $800M for commercial cargo transportation demonstrations.