And where is it going, in commercial space?
I have to say, I thought this was pretty funny:
Virgin Galactic has already been watching its back with the EADS suborbital space plane (pictured above), set to make its first flight by 2012. But now there’s cash across the pond. “We have invested substantial money into this project,” Auque said without citing exact figures. “The problem is that we need to create this market.”
I doubt very much that Virgin Galactic is worried that EADS Astrium is going to raise a billion dollars to build a suborbital tourist vehicle. There’s a reason that Auque didn’t cite “exact” (or even approximate) figures. He expects to do it mostly with someone else’s money, if he can find a sucker (like ESA?).
I wish there was a bit more meat to this. An interesting aspect (part of observation #1) is that a key source of funding for global (not just US) space activities is the US government. Several of the observations were interpretations of the US Department of Defense and NASA actions and future plans. It’ll be interesting to see if US government funding continues to dominate the space industry in a decade.
I doubt ESA will fund this. Does not fit their mission statement. It may happen that some of the national space agencies will fund it (CNES, DLR) however I find this most unlikely.