Start-Ups Are Poised For Latest Space Race
- From: Sefirot <kotyto@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 24 Aug 2009 05:36:48 -0700 (PDT)
Start-Ups Are Poised For Latest Space Race
WSJ
In America's latest space race, a new breed of scrappy entrepreneurs
could be facing off against some of the government's largest, long-
established aerospace contractors.
The Obama administration is leaning toward outsourcing major
components of its space program, such as ferrying cargo and astronauts
to the International Space Station. The scale and nature of sending
this type of work to private contractors, unheard of in the history of
the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, could help the
administration cope with an increasingly dire budget situation and
fill crucial gaps in its program.
Space Exploration Technologies Corp., a trailblazer in this commercial
space arena, hopes the initial launch of its Falcon 9 heavy-lift
rocket will happen by early 2010. It initially invested its own money
to develop a smaller cargo rocket and then received taxpayer money to
support that project.
Now, the company and its founder Elon Musk -- a former Internet
entrepreneur -- are lobbying Congress and urging the White House to
come up with similar financial support for the more-powerful rocket.
"At the end of the day," said Larry Williams, the company's point man
in Washington, "a commercial approach requires industry to share the
development investment risk" but also permits greater rewards by
selling the technology to other customers. "It's a much more free-
market approach."
SpaceX, as the company is known, has had two successful launches of
its smaller rocket after three straight failures.
Other smaller industry players and various start-up firms are also
bound to compete for the new business, which is slated to go into
operation around the middle of the next decade.
The contract winners would use corporate funds to build and test
rockets, provide compatible space capsules and then try to recoup
those investments by offering commercial-style transportation services
to the agency. Essentially, NASA would be paying a set fee for every
pound or person transported to orbit.
Also poised to jump into the commercial-services market is United
Launch Alliance, a Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp. joint venture
that already launches nearly all of the Pentagon's larger satellites.
The venture has proposed to enhance and modify its Delta IV or Atlas V
boosters for human launches, and then provide them to other
contractors seeking to develop crew capsules for NASA. Pentagon
officials support the concept because it could help defray some of the
Air Force's own escalating launch costs.
But such business for the joint venture also raises potential
antitrust issues, according to some industry critics, along with
substantial disagreements about the time and expense it would take to
make the military rockets safe to carry human cargo.
NASA came to its present dilemma partly because of an eroding budget
picture, leaving it some $50 billion short of the projected cost of
keeping the space station flying while also pursuing plans to return
astronauts to the moon around 2020.
In addition, NASA over the years lost a big portion of its in-house
expertise and became increasingly dependent on large contractors for
both technical and program-management support.
Today, many proponents of commercial space travel envision
transforming NASA, at least for the next two decades, into more of a
conduit for new technology developed largely outside government
research facilities and federal bureaucracy.
But before such a dramatic shift can occur, the Obama Administration
faces a series of hurdles ranging from federal budget constraints to
technical challenges to Congressional opposition.
Over the weekend, a White House press spokesman said President Barack
Obama "has confirmed his commitment to human space exploration," but
said Mr. Obama is weighing various options spelled out by a study
commission appointed by the president.
That group concluded NASA's existing plans to send astronauts to the
moon may be misguided and are "not executable," without a large boost
in funding. Commission members appear unanimous in advocating
commercial transportation contracts, and in forsaking a return to the
moon in favor of more ambitious, longer-term projects to explore the
solar system.
Shifting to commercial-style NASA transportation contracts most likely
would translate into many thousands of industry and NASA job losses.
Florida, Texas, Colorado and Alabama would be particularly hurt,
riling lawmakers from those states.
The new approach also would effectively scrap much of the roughly $3
billion NASA has spent so far developing the Ares 1 rocket under a
traditional federal development contract with another firm, Alliant
Techsystems Inc., and other prominent aerospace suppliers. Proposed
alternatives to Ares 1 are projected to be ready between 2015 and
2017, when Ares 1 is likely to be ready.
But the Ares design "maximizes better safety in the long run" with
fewer but more-powerful engines able to blast "the crew to orbit as
quickly as possible," according to Charlie Precourt, a former
astronaut and senior Alliant Techsystems official.
NASA's new chief, Charles Bolden, and his team have signaled they are
determined to revitalize the agency and make it more nimble by
focusing more on smaller, upstart suppliers and relying less on
mainstream contractors. Against this backdrop, Orbital Sciences Corp.,
Sierra Nevada Corp. and other lesser-known aerospace contractors are
preparing to compete for new business.
Some NASA officials have talked about revving up public and
congressional support by reorienting the agency toward environmental
and climate-change research initiatives. Others have even suggested
that ultimately, the strongest selling point NASA may have with voters
is to pursue programs intended to protect the Earth from asteroids.
Regardless of the White House decision, NASA will be betting the
country's space program, at least for next 10 or 15 years, on "paper
rockets" that haven't yet proved themselves over extended operations
and could result in formidable engineering and performance challenges.
Historically, a new rocket model suffers a catastrophic failure once
out of its first three launches.
Modifications to military rockets would introduce extra risks, until
those new versions could pass flight tests. Though Alliant Techsystems
bases much of its design on legacy hardware, at this point its new
rocket hasn't flown, either. And other companies such as Orbital
Sciences – which hasn't yet gone public with its hopes to snare
commercial contracts for crew transportation -- are doing early tests
or figuring out designs optimized for such tasks.
SpaceX, for its part, is still a long way from demonstrating
reliability of its technology, according to many industry officials,
particularly since its larger booster will depend on perfect
synchronization of nine separate rocket motors.
Former Lockheed Martin Corp. Chairman Norman Augustine, the head of
the commission making recommendations to President Obama, has stressed
that part of NASA's plans for new lunar landings, which were first
spelled out in 2004, amounted to "a wish list" of priorities and
funding profiles. "We're just about where we were then," Mr. Augustine
said at the commission's final public session.
In light of today's budget constraints, robust manned space
exploration "really doesn't look doable," concluded former astronaut
Sally Ride, another commission member. If NASA ends up pursuing a
"significantly different way of doing business," Ms. Ride said, the
costs of closing facilities, reducing employees and other disruptions
to industry and NASA could total somewhere between $3 billion and $11
billion. "We shouldn't underestimate the magnitude of the
repercussions," she said
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