{"id":697,"date":"2021-10-10T10:12:41","date_gmt":"2021-10-10T10:12:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/?p=697"},"modified":"2021-10-10T15:57:49","modified_gmt":"2021-10-10T15:57:49","slug":"out-now-the-space-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/2021\/10\/out-now-the-space-business\/","title":{"rendered":"Out now: The Space Business"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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This is my fourth contribution to the Hot Science series from Icon Books<\/a>, and the first since Astrobiology<\/a> just over two years ago. The full title is The Space Business: From Hotels in Orbit to Mining the Moon, How Private Enterprise is Transforming Space<\/em>. That\u2019s quite a mouthful, but at least it\u2019s descriptive of the book\u2019s contents. <\/p>\n\n\n

My original idea was just to cover space tourism, but when I started writing the book a year ago this was quite a thin subject, so the scope was expanded to cover other commercial uses of space as well. But with the first crewed flight of Blue Origin\u2019s suborbital rocket and the first all-tourist flight of SpaceX\u2019s Crew Dragon both happening earlier this year, space tourism now looks like its time has finally come. Just in time for the publication of my book!<\/p>\n

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Needless to say, it\u2019s available from all the usual book retailers and online sellers (ISBN 9781785787454, RRP \u00a38.99). Here\u2019s the publisher\u2019s blurb from the back cover:<\/p>\n

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Twentieth-century space exploration may have belonged to state-funded giants such as NASA, but the future is shaping up a little differently. Now the biggest dreams and most ambitious schemes belong to private companies and individuals. Dreams like suborbital rocket flights for paying customers, holidays in an inflatable hotel in Earth orbit, or, eventually, passenger trips to Mars. Schemes like fulfilling all Earth\u2019s energy needs through solar power harvested in space, or nuclear fusion using helium-3 mined on the Moon. It sounds like science fiction, but with entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos transforming the economics of space through their profit-oriented outlook and technology like reusable rockets, some or all of these endeavours could well become reality.<\/p>\n

Science writer Andrew May takes an entertaining look at the biggest, brightest and in some cases the most hare-brained ideas emerging from the private space sector, assessing which stand a chance of making it off the launch pad and explaining how we can all benefit.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is my fourth contribution to the Hot Science series from Icon Books, and the first since Astrobiology just over two years ago. The full title is The Space Business: From Hotels in Orbit to Mining the Moon, How Private Enterprise is Transforming Space. That\u2019s quite a mouthful, but at least it\u2019s descriptive of the … <\/p>\n

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