@Captain Katsura: As you can see from the comments before mine, it's highly unlikely that there's any company whatsoever that can launch anything all on its lonesome. It's going to need government cooperation and government money. I'm pretty sure that all current private companies investing in this sort of thing right now are looking for or already have government contracts, because that's where the money is for this sort of thing, not public investors. It's going to be decades, at best, before anything like asteroid mining is going to be profitable for investors to look into with any seriousness.
The government can pay for this sort of thing more cheaply anyway, what with having the force of organization to keep prices competitive rather than exorbitant. And even then, various governments are sharing equipment in order to save on building costs. (Plus, NASA and I'm pretty sure the other space orgs share the information they gain from all this rather freely.)
edited 17th Jun '13 4:50:34 PM by AceofSpades
Gas mileage on spacecraft is the single largest cost right now, so improving gas mileage can be substantially better than single payload vehicles being split down. Alas, I have no cost tables so I'll have to leave it at that.
For private corporations, they'll likely always play a part in the space industry but it's up to the government to do the "pointless" stuff and exploring Mars and other locations is pretty pointless as of right now. There's only scientific knowledge to be gained, so the translation to corporate profit would only be in terms of decades (such as product spin-offs). I'm guessing the easiest way to make it palatable to democratic societies in the west is to split the cost between lots of countries and then spew the benefits across everyone.
We could start with, for instance, a long range unmanned ship with a test device that can produce fuel and/or air. Split the cost between the Americans, Europeans, Canadians and Russians (and hopefully Chinese as well, as well as Japan and India), so it cost much less.
If a charged particle moves at a velocity greater than the speed of light in the material it is passing through, you get something called Cherenkov radiation
. This sounds similar.
edited 18th Jun '13 5:34:12 AM by Elfive
Space.com article on the Alburcurie Drive
Universe Today
Touching on the draw back. Basically the bubble will possibly trap and accelerate particles it encounters and then they are all released all at once when the ship comes out of the warp bubble. Turning the ship into a giant particle gun.

These days one of the Contractors is United Space Alliance
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