I suggest that all this is now about to change. The Cold War excuse for a government monopoly on space development is no longer valid. Obviously any dramatic reduction in travel costs would open up new economic possibilities in space. This would be to everyone's advantage. It would turn overly costly or marginal civil sector ventures that until now have been dreams or paper studies into practical free enterprise projects. While governments will no doubt still have to pay for multi billion dollar high risk programs, such as large power complexes like SPS, asteroid mining, or Lunar Bases, many less costly activities such as manufacturing in space, new communications systems, and even tourism should attract venture capital and result in industry initiatives. In 1986 the U.S. National Commission on Space [1] recommended "a U.S. commitment to create and operate systems and institutions to provide low cost access to the space frontier." To achieve this goal they also recommended aggressive development of the technologies for reusable, Single Stage To Orbit (SSTO) rocket launch vehicles. Last year a Committee appointed by the Vice President's Space Council to review the NASA space program also called for a new family of launch vehicles [2]. Unfortunately, the development of economical launch vehicles has not been a matter of priority for either NASA or the USAF. This is no doubt partly due to the fact that neither organization has been specifically charged with helping free enterprise exploit space, and partly to a normal desire to protect their investments in the expensive older Shuttle and Expendable Rocket (ELV) systems they now use. Fortunately, however, several of America's best known rocket engineers, The Citizen's Advisory Council on Space Policy and High Frontier, a National Interest Advocacy Group in Washington, came together in 1989 to change this situation. Recognizing both the importance and feasibility of building cost effective SSTO rockets they insisted that the government take a more active role in developing these and this is now being done. Possibilities For Cheap Lift Ever since Space became accessible in 1958, the cost of transporting goods and people from Earth to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) has been very high. It still is. Conservative calculations in 1988 U.S. dollars for each flight to LEO are now approximately $484.00 million on a Shuttle and $145.00 million on a Titan ELV. This works out to 10,803 $/lb. on the shuttle and $3718 $/lb. on Titans [2]. At these prices the United States spends between one half and one third of its space dollars simply to get to space. These prices have also been the principal barrier to the exploitation of space for many potentially profitable commercial activities. There is no insurmountable reason why travel to LEO need be so costly. By adopting a "new approach" to vehicle design, utilizing materials and engine technologies recently developed under the U.S. National Aero Space Plane program (NASP) and designing our space transportation systems to be comparable in
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