Survey of Private Space Ventures

As you know, space access/exploration by private companies is a hot topic on the space news sites and blogs. Quite frankly, I had a hard time keeping up. So I decided to scour the web and compile a list of projects. I started with the ones I was most familiar with: SS1, SS2, Falcon-1, EZ-Rocket and went from there. I put the data into an Excel spreadsheet covering some of the parameters I thought were most interesting. I ended up with 91 entries from 46 companies/organizations. Here is a list of the companies. If you know of more, please leave a comment. If you know one to be defunct, please also let me know. If this list already exists, PLEASE point me to it.

Please refer to this newer post.

Scaled Composites, Scaled Composites/Virgin Galactic, Space-X, XCOR Aerospace, Bigelow Aerospace, Armadillo Aerospace, TGV, Canadian Arrow Partners, GoldenPalace.com/da Vinci Project, RocketPlane, Ltd., Garvey Aerospace, Starchaser, Lone Star Space Access, Pablo De Leon & Associates, Acceleration Engineering, Space Transport Corporation, Vanguard Spacecraft, t/Space, JP Aerospace, Blue Origin, ARCA, Beyond Earth Enterprises, Lunar Rocket and Rover Co, Masten Space Systems, Andrews Space, SpaceDev, Air Launch, Advent Launch Services, Inc, Kistler Aerospace Corp., Bristol Spaceplane, Ltd., E' Prime Aerospace, HARC, Interorbital Systems (IOS), Microcosm, Orbital Sciences Corp., SeaLaunch, Space Launch Corp., Sprague Astronautics, Starcraft Boosters, Transorbital, UP Aerospace, Vela Technology, Zig Aerospace, 1000 Planets, Inc., AeroAstro, Orbital Recovery Group

Some of the issues with my list include:

• I don't know what I don't know, so there must be omissions
  
• Much info isn't available and much is out of date, so it's hard to see if the projects are active.
  
• I included mostly private launch vehicles, but I included some items like Bigelow's space station projects and SpaceDev's hybrid motors - technologies which may play a big role in private access to space.
  
• On the other hand, many of the companies have other ongoing projects. I didn't try to list all space related items.
  
• I also included some projects which aren't really getting to the edge of space, but which are may lead to loftier ones (i.e. Garvey, Lunar Rocket and Rover Co)
  
• A few are working off of government contracts, but they share in the goal of low cost access to space