Jacob88

Tommy, you asked to show prototypes of space tug, and I find one. It's manufactured by https://www.skyrora.com/, a British space endeavor that's famous for manufacturing and using eco-fuel. They manufactured a space tug compatible with their rocket, Skyrora XL. It's used for deploying dead sats from orbit or correcting it, refueling spacecraft, etc.

In your opinion, will any young private company outrun the existing leaders? I mean SpaceX, Blue Origin, Astra, Lockheed Martin, etc. Or are they too advanced to give up so easily? Perhaps you know some good candidates, so share this information with us.

I think we can only dream about asteroid mining, and at most, describe it in sci-fi books and movies. Do you imagine how much money this technology needs? Moreover, we don't have the technology to get so close to asteroids and collect materials from them. It may sound good, but we need to investigate closer planets at first.

I noticed that they started to cooperate with private companies more than ever before. SpaceX got a contract from NASA to develop a spacecraft for the flight to the ISS, Blue Origin will test the technology that is supposed to bring Lunar gravity and conditions closer to Earth's. I mention only the well-known and recenе cases of cooperation. I suppose it's a good reason to say that NASA is likely to ask any private company to manufacture a rocket, and I don't think that it's wrong.

Judging by the fact that there's no effective technology that proved its effectiveness in practice, it's rather difficult to design such a device. All governments and agencies understand the importance of this problem, so I think they'd implement a device to clean up LEO a long ago. I know that the main function of a space tug is to carry payloads to different orbits, and I haven't heard that it can be used for removing space debris. If it really works, why not use it?

I'm deeply disappointed that some people consider themselves rulers of the destinies. Why can they decide what flight will occur and what will not, what technology will be implemented and what will not be? I simply can't believe that someone can hold back our progress in aerospace engineering. I understand that there's no hope for the government in the area of space exploration, and the future is for private enterprises.