Old laws. It is now legal and government is helping several companies
like Orbital Sciences and Lockheed to develop launch systems that they
will own and operate. NASA is paying for the R&D expense. There are also
a number of companies without NASA backing that are actively developing
launch systems, namely Pioneer Rocketplane, Kistler Aerospace, and
others, while Motorola, Teledesic, and Hughes are all actively competing
in communications markets and/or development. There are companies that
are sending missions to the moon, and one sending a probe to a near
earth asteroid.
The only real difficulties are in the paperwork you need. It takes at
least 8 different permits from 6 different federal agencies to launch a
rocket into anything greater than a very short ballistic hop, and
Congress has passed a law that no foreign launch service can sell launch
services to an American company for less than 95% of the lowest cost US
launch system.
What is needed further from NASA is manned exploration to do in depth
surveying of asteroids, moons, and worlds for human colonization. While
the fantasy of independent nations on moons and asteroids going it alone
from the start is pretty, no revolution is going to happen until
authoritarian earth nations start exiling people, paying their way, and
then taxing the hell out of their productivity.
-- TANSTAAFL!!! Michael Lorrey ------------------------------------------------------------ mailto:retroman@together.net Inventor of the Lorrey Drive MikeySoft: Graphic Design/Animation/Publishing/Engineering ------------------------------------------------------------ How many fnords did you see before breakfast today?