The Late Summer of 2006

STATE OF THE ART Space Deals The Coming of the New Space Industry he late summer of 2006 pro- ly accidents and disasters, like those vided many exciting devel- that befell the Challenger and Columbia Topments for those interested shuttles, can be minimized. in the high frontier—including both The choice of contractor was a sur- supporters of NASA’s human space- prise to many in the space community, flight program, and enthusiasts of the and a blow to the Boeing Corporation new, entrepreneurial space passenger in particular. The conventional wisdom activities of the private sector. was that the team led by Northrop In late August, NASA achieved a Grumman, along with Boeing (des- major milestone in its plans to return to ignated NGB), was favored to win, the moon, over a third of a century after because those companies (particularly the last men left it, when it awarded a with Boeing’s acquisition in the 1990s multi-billion-dollar contract for the of Rockwell International’s space divi- Orion spacecraft to a team of contrac- sions and the McDonnell Douglas cor- tors led by Lockheed Martin. Orion, poration) had most of the historical formerly called the Crew Exploration experience with manned space pro- Vehicle (CEV), is the modern version grams. Though it builds the external of the Apollo command module/ser- tank for the space shuttle, and is a co- vice module (CSM) that represents owner with Boeing of the United Space part of NASA Administrator Mike Alliance, which operates the shuttle and Griffin’s so-called “Apollo on steroids” the International Space Station (ISS) for approach to fulfilling the Vision for NASA, observers considered Lockheed Space Exploration announced in early Martin to have little experience with 2004 by President Bush. Like the orig- the development of systems designed inal CSM, after being launched on an for human spaceflight. In addition, expendable vehicle, it will carry crew some thought that the company’s per- to lunar orbit (though with at least one formance on the ill-fated X-33 program more crewperson than the three-man in the 1990s, in which a billion taxpayer Apollo missions), remain there while dollars were wasted on an experimental some or all of them descend to the prototype of a potential shuttle replace- surface in another vehicle, and return ment that never flew, would weigh them to Earth, reentering the atmo- heavily in NASA’s decision. sphere in a blunt capsule and landing Perhaps these expectations led to by parachute, either on land or water. complacency on the part of the NGB The idea is that by going back to the team (on which I played a part as a methods used safely and successfully consultant in systems engineering). in the Sixties, the chances of dead- NASA indicated that one of the factors 130 ~ THE NEW ATLANTIS Copyright 2006. All rights reserved. See www.TheNewAtlantis.com for more information. A CONTINUING SURVEY OF TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY in its decision was the performance tract in which the contractor is reim- of the two teams in the first phase of bursed for actual costs as reported, plus the program, with Lockheed Martin a fixed percentage for profit, regardless reportedly outdoing NGB and show- of whether or not the hardware ever ing more innovation in its proposed works up to specification (the shuttle solutions. Politically, Lockheed seemed and ISS being examples, though there more aggressive in promising to move are many military ones as well), COTS the work to favored NASA locations, will provide incremental payment only such as Houston, Texas; Huntsville, upon the successful satisfaction of pre- Alabama; and the Space Coast of defined program milestones. NASA Florida, rather than California, where micromanaging will be limited, and NGB reportedly proposed to do much the hope is that the “bang for the buck” of the work. will be much greater. Another much smaller NASA Rocketplane Kistler, one of the two award, announced in mid-August, is COTS awardees, is a recent merger of of more interest to those who follow two companies that had been around “NewSpace”—a term used to describe since the early 1990s—Rocketplane the emerging industry of startup LLC, and Kistler Aerospace. The for- ventures aimed at developing new, mer was originally formed to build low-cost systems that can satisfy the a two-stage partially reusable vehicle expected demand for private space for orbital delivery, with a first stage travel. From a field of contenders supplied with liquid oxygen in mid-air that had already been winnowed down from a tanker to minimize its takeoff to six, NASA selected two compa- weight. It never got funding for this nies, Rocketplane Kistler and Space project, but recently has gotten fund- Exploration Technologies, for a new ing (helped with transferable tax cred- program called Commercial Orbital its from the state of Oklahoma) to build Transportation Services (COTS). The a suborbital passenger system that will goal of this program is to nurture compete with the services Richard potential providers of commercial ser- Branson plans for his Virgin Galactic vices to resupply and possibly help space tourism company. Kistler has carry crews to and from the ISS after been planning a vertical-takeoff two- the space shuttle is retired in 2010. A stage reusable vehicle type since its half-billion dollars will be provided inception, and raised (and spent) sever- to the two firms, split roughly in half al hundred million dollars toward that between them, to develop the systems end, but ran out of funding when the they will need to provide such ser- projected low-earth-orbit communica- vices. tions satellite market collapsed in the This is a new way of doing business late 1990s. The companies’ merger ear- for NASA. While the Orion program lier this year resulted in a more diversi- is a traditional cost-plus-fixed-fee con- fied entity, with potential for both hori- FALL 2006 ~ 131 Copyright 2006. All rights reserved. See www.TheNewAtlantis.com for more information. STATE OF THE ART zontal and vertical takeoff, and both “Transhab” that NASA never actu- suborbital and orbital markets. ally used, Bigelow built an inflatable By contrast, the other COTS award- module carrying hundreds of personal ee, Space Exploration Technologies items that people paid to have sent on (SpaceX), is a new kid on the block, it; they are floating around in a kalei- only formed four years ago. Founded doscopic whirl in weightlessness, with and funded by Elon Musk—one of a camera watching and beaming the the founders of the Internet money images down to Earth. Bigelow offers firm PayPal—it has not had to raise a money-back guarantee that every any outside capital to date. It had a individual’s memento will be viewed failed first launch attempt in March at some time as it tumbles around 2006, but plans another for later this in space. (You can see this online at year, and continues to build hardware BigelowAerospace.com.) intended to grow to both heavy-lift While Bigelow was prepared for the capability and human transport capa- failure of this first attempt, the Genesis bility, with expected low costs. 1 mission was successful beyond his NASA’s innovative COTS program, wildest expectations—so successful and its selection of these two provid- that in September he announced his ers, indicates a seriousness in creat- intention to fund and fly a three-per- ing a competitive commercial launch son habitat to low Earth orbit by the industry far beyond anything it has end of the decade. It would be expand- attempted in the past, even if the funded to a capacity of nine people by 2012. ing level remains a tiny fraction of the He was, he said, not going to wait for total budget it plans to spend on the the rocket industry or passenger mar- development of its own vehicles. ket to catch up. But progress is rapid among However, it turned out that Bigelow NewSpace companies unblessed by was hedging his bets. Later the same NASA contracts as well. In July 2006, day, he held a joint press conference the Bigelow Aerospace company— with George Sowers of Lockheed started by billionaire Bob Bigelow, Martin, in which they announced an owner of the Budget Suites chain of agreement to explore the possibilities hotels—launched a prototype space of “human rating” Lockheed’s Atlas hotel, called Genesis 1, on a Russian V launch vehicle to allow it to carry Dnieper rocket. (Bigelow had origi- a passenger module for transporting nally hoped, and even contracted, to customers to and from Bigelow’s new use a SpaceX vehicle, but it wasn’t hotel. ready on time.) Genesis 1 is an inflat- Following on the heels of Lockheed able module, littered with instrumen- Martin’s surprise win of NASA’s Orion tation to determine how it performs contract, this was yet another shock to in orbit. Based on NASA technology most of the space industry, for at least from a taxpayer-funded program called two reasons. First, it was extremely 132 ~ THE NEW ATLANTIS Copyright 2006. All rights reserved. See www.TheNewAtlantis.com for more information. A CONTINUING SURVEY OF TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY out of character. Lockheed is primarily commercial satellite and government a government contractor; the company business. That market reduction is had done nothing remotely commer- partly the result of NASA’s insistence cial for decades. Second, and even more on developing the Ares I, rather than surprising, were the timing and politi- using existing vehicles like the Atlas. cal implications. Only three weeks ear- One way out of this chicken-and-egg lier Lockheed had been selected as problem would be to find a new mar- NASA’s partner for the Orion project, ket, which Bigelow is obviously seri- which will involve two new launch ous about.

Load more