Artist's concept of Venture Star.  Image Credit: NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center.

Once the demonstration flights by the X-33 are completed and evaluated, Lockheed Martin and its civilian partners will decide whether to develop and build Venture Star.

They will have to ask themselves: "Have the flights by the X-33 demonstrated that Venture Star is technically possible?" "Will Venture Star be able to meet the goal of cheap, low-risk, and routine access to space?" "Will it be profitable?"

If the answers are "yes," the companies will have to raise the capital needed to carry out the project. They must convince potential investors, including the upper management of their own companies, that the risk of developing Venture Star is acceptable. The federal government will not be involved. It will be strictly a commercial undertaking.

If Venture Star is built and proves successful, the cost of launching a pound of payload into low Earth orbit will be reduced from the $10,000 it costs today with the space shuttle to $1,000 (the cost is about $5,000 per pound of payload with the Atlas and Delta launch vehicles). This cost reduction is likely to dramatically increase the space business: Communications satellites, scientific satellites, servicing the International Space Station, exotic manufacturing laboratories exploiting the near zero-gravity conditions of space, and other novel uses of space yet to be invented by twenty-first century entrepreneurs. One such invention could be the sale of leisure excursions into space to adventuresome private citizens.