Space Island Group (SIG) is a commercial organization based in

West Covina West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some R ...

, CA that is dedicated to the development of commerce, research, manufacturing and tourism in space. They plan to accomplish this by designing, building and operating commercial space transportation systems and destinations. Their flagship project is the Space Island Project. They plan to accomplish this through the use of technologies, vehicles and procedures developed by

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...

and aerospace companies over the last 25 years.

Space Island Project

The Space Island Project is a project whose goal is to create a stand-alone commercial

space infrastructure Human presence in space is about humanity in space, particularly about all anthropogenic presence in space and human activity in space, that is in outer space and in a broader sense also on any extraterrestrial astronomical body. Humans hav ...

supporting human business activities in

Low Earth orbit A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an orbit around Earth with a period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial objects in outer space are in LEO, with an altitude never mor ...

(LEO) 400 to 500 miles above earth. The centerpiece of this project is the Space Solar Energy Initiative which will collect energy with solar panel satellites and then beam this energy to receiving towers on Earth using "very weak microwave beams.

The goal was to have a massive space station in Low Earth Orbit with as many as 20,000 passengers to start and doubling the population every decade. This was intended to start by 2020 but this date was not accomplished.

Funding

One of the unique propositions outlined by the Space Island Group is their funding methodology. They argue that previous attempts at commercial space projects have had a dependency on revenue and subsidies from government agenci

but that they have a funding plan that would be viable through capitalizing on commercial markets such as solar power satellites.

External links

The Space Island Group web site
{{space tourism Defunct spaceflight companies Space tourism Proposed space stations Aerospace companies of the United States