Option

Characteristics

Weight
Limits

Principal
Constraints

Approximate
Cost

Sources

Balloon Flights

Hours to days at ≈ 30 km altitude

Up to 70 kg for low-cost flights

Not in space, not 0-g,
weather concerns

$5K to $15K

U. of Wyoming, USAFA, NSBF

Drop Towers

1 to 10 sec of 0-g with immediate payload recovery

Up to
1,000 kg

Brief “flight,” 5 to 50 g landing acceleration, entire experiment package dropped

~ $10K per experiment

ZARM, JAMIC, NASA LeRC and MSFC, Vanderbilt U.

Drop Tubes

1 to 5 sec of 0-g with immediate sample retrieval

<0.01 kg

Brief “flight,” 20 to 50 g landing acceleration, instrumentation not dropped with sample

~ $0.02K per experiment

ZARM, JAMIC, NASA LeRC and MSFC, Vanderbilt U.

Aircraft Parabolic Flights

Fair 0-g environment, repeated 0-g cycles

Effectively unlimited

Low gravity is only 10–2 g

$6.5K to $9K
per hour

NASA LeRC and JSC, Novespace, Zero-g, ESA

Sounding Rockets

Good 0-g environment, altitude to 1,200 km, duration of 4 to 12 minutes

Up to
600 kg

Much less than orbital velocities

$1M to $2M

NASA GSFC, NRL, ESA/ Sweden, OSC, EER, Bristol Aerosp.

Secondary Payloads

Capacity that is available in excess of primary’s requirements

Up to
~ 1,000 kg

Subject to primary’s mission timeline and orbit

<$10M

Ariane, OSC, MDA, Russia

Shared Launches

Flights with other payloads having similar orbital requirements

Up to
~ 5,000 kg

Integration challenges launch timing and orbit must be compatible

Up to
~ $60M

Ariane, OSC, Russia