NASA Picks Suborbital Providers
NASA Selects U.S. Firms to Provide Commercial Suborbital Flight Services
“NASA has selected four companies to integrate and fly technology payloads on commercial suborbital reusable platforms that carry payloads near the boundary of space. The selection is part of NASA’s continuing effort to foster a viable market for American commercial reusable suborbital platforms that allow testing of new space technologies within Earth’s atmosphere.”
What is Paragon Space Development Corp. providing?
Is it their Worldview® manned cabin on a balloon?
Paragon is launching balloons for NASA.
http://www.paragonsdc.com/i…
What is the benefit of a few minutes’ time at apogee, I wonder?
There are two huge benefits here – “near space environment” and longer microgravity (minutes instead of seconds on the ‘weightless wonder’ aircraft).
The near space environment provides for things like instrument validations being basically vacuum, space-like radiation environments, views of the earth similar to being on-orbit, and views of space unobstructed by (most of) the atmosphere.
Minutes of microgravity can be hugely beneficial to testing devices intended to only operate in space.
I’m kind of surprised that XCOR isn’t on the list.