Modularity and Crew Exploration Vehicle

All private spacecrafts in construction now seem to be once for all configured - SpaceShipOne has three seats and that it is. If there were more than two passengers the others have to wait for the next launch or a second Wight Knight/SpaceShipOne with there own motors etc. have to be provided

If there were a possibility to reconfigure a spacecraft according to the number of passengers then up to ten or twenty passengers only a single motor etc. is needed and only as much passenger-modules have to be added as additional passengers there are. Instead of passenger-modules freight-modules may be used too.

This way the capacity would be variable - today it is fixed once for all the spacecraft being built.

What about this way? May that be the way to go to win the XPRIZE CUP competition for the maximum number of passengers at one launch? May it be worth to be part of a future XPRIZE?

The NASA will be going this way as the german newspaper "Die Welt" is reporting today. May be private space travel firms should claim the possibility and the chance to launch their own modules as part of the Crew Exploration Vehicle too as well as a part of private spacecrafts. It will be right, if they have to pay NASA a price for using the possibility - butonly according to weight, volume or number of modules at one launch.

What do you think about all this? It's a question of competition at the market.



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

It seems that regarding the orbit something like this is going to be developed - since SpaceX's Dragon can be either a freighter or a taxi.

Of course this doesn't mean yet that the passenger capacity could be turned variable.

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Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)