By being designed for ease of maintenance, efficient vehicle ground service systems, automated mission planning, and containerized payloads the new space transports can be regularly turned around in a few hours or days depending on mission needs and fleet sizes. These vehicles can now be built by taking advantage of new, lightweight proven structural material design. This should result in vehicles able to deliver payloads (as a ratio to their empty weight), comparable to today' aircraft. By keeping down empty weight and operations and maintenance costs and personnel requirements, and emphasizing reusability these transports will greatly decrease travel costs to and from space. There is no reason why the new family of SSTO vehicles cannot be operational by the late 1990's. Their availability should open up space not only to the private sector for commercial ventures but also to the public by making activities such as tourism economically feasible. They will also obviously change government attitudes toward appropriating moneys for obtaining new sources of vital resources from space such as solar energy or rare metals on asteroids. This will create new opportunities for adventure and open up new industries and new opportunities for creating wealth. REFERENCES [1] U.S. National Commission on Space, 1986 Report, Dr. Thomas Payne, Chairman, Washington, D.C. [2] Report of Advisory Committee on the Future of the U.S. Space Program, (1990) December, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. 20402. [3] HOESER, Steve, "The Cost Impact of True Spaceships," Journal of Practical Applications in Space, Vol. 1, No. 4.
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