How Private Companies are Entering the Final Frontier

The space race between the Soviet Union and the United States in the 1960s sparked a revolution in aerospace design. Engineers pushed the limits of modern technology and built rockets that could travel higher and faster than ever before. At the same time, military and civilian aircraft shattered speed and altitude records. The United States became the world leader in aerospace, and its engineers introduced new and exciting aircraft on a fairly regular basis.

Today, things look very different. This year, NASA’s space shuttle program celebrated its 36th birthday, but will end in 2010. In the four years following the space shuttle retirements, there will be no manned spaceflight missions launched on U.S. aircraft: the Russian-built Soyuz spacecraft will instead ferry passengers to and from the International Space Station (1). Russia will continue to dominate the space travel field until NASA’s next rocket and capsule endeavor, “the Constellation Program,” is complete. For the first time since Yuri Gagarin beat Alan Shepard into space in 1961, the United States will not be the leader in space exploration.

In 2004, policymakers decided to cut down on the $600 million investment needed for each shuttle mission to free up funds for NASA’s new project: the Constellation Program. Launched under President George Bush’s new “Vision of Space Exploration,” Constellation’s purpose is to enable the United States to return to the moon. The project itself is comprised of the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), the Ares rocket, and a new lunar lander, all of which are still under development. The Orion CEV will first shuttle passengers to the ISS, but in 2020 the project will achieve its real purpose of returning astronauts to the moon. Finally, according to NASA officials, a modified Orion CEV may send astronauts on a long voyage to Mars (2).

Despite these lofty goals, the project has come under fire due to many apparently unforeseen difficulties. Sen. John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth, criticized the Bush Vision after the funds promised to NASA were never delivered (3). The lack of money, coupled with difficulties in designing the Ares rocket, have already forced NASA to push back the expected completion of Constellation to no earlier than March of 2015, adding a full year to the time when the U.S. can ferry astronauts to the space station on its own (4). To make matters worse, tensions between the United States and Russia escalated drastically last summer over the Russia-Georgia conflict. This tension may prevent the United States from accessing the $100 billion space station. NASA needs to negotiate a contract with Russia this year if it wants Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft to ferry its astronauts into orbit.

Any such agreement depends on Congressional action. Congress must first pass a waiver to the 2000 law that bars contracts with nations, like Russia, who support nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea. The contract faced strong opposition in Congress even before the conflict; now, cooperation between the two nations looks very distant. As of 2011, NASA will have no way of getting to the space station that for so long symbolized global teamwork.

Meanwhile, while NASA is losing its grasp on space, other nations are grabbing for a slice of the pie. In 2003, China became the third nation to send a man into space when Yang Liwei orbited the Earth for 21 hours. In September 2008, a Chinese astronaut performed a 13 minute spacewalk outside the capsule. Experts agree that China has the ability to land a man on the moon in the next decade, beating NASA to its return trip (5).

This end of an era resulted from the steady regression in U.S. spaceflight innovation since NASA’s last voyage to the moon in 1972. In a passionate speech in February 2006 in Monterey, Cali., famed aerospace engineer Burt Rutan criticized this decline.

“We’re entering a second generation of no progress in terms of human flight in space. In fact, we’ve regressed,” Rutan said (6).

This regression is due to a number of factors, most prominently the deteriorating safety record of the space shuttle, along with the tremendous costs associated with manned missions. NASA has scaled back on its manned missions and instead placed more emphasis on robotic explorations to new worlds. Rutan pointed out that during the world’s first year in space in 1961, five government-sponsored manned flights were launched. In 2004, there were only two government-sponsored manned missions, and both of them were aboard Russian Soyuz capsules (6).

Rutan also criticized the lack of diversity among new spacecraft designs.

“The current plan right now is not even allowing the most creative people of this country – the Boeing and Lockheed space engineers – to go out and take risks and try new stuff” (6).

This perceived lack of creativity refers to NASA’s Constellation Program: every component of this project is nearly identical to the Apollo program, just on a larger scale.

As NASA’s influence on manned spaceflight is waning, others are taking its place. New competitors are throwing their hats into the ring, and the game is turning into a new space race. This second space race is not between ideologically-opposed countries. Instead, the revolution will begin in the hands of private enterprises.

The story began in October 2004, when Rutan and his team won the $10 million Ansari X-Prize, a prize that was founded to help spur the private exploration of space. Such a prize is not uncommon in the world of aviation. In fact, many of the greatest achievements in aviation were accomplished in order to win a prize. The most famous example, the Raymond Orteig-$25,000 prize, motivated Charles Lindbergh to make his record-breaking 36 hour flight across the Atlantic (7).

The 2004 X-Prize, however, was slightly more complicated. To win the $10 million, a privately-funded team of engineers would have to build a spacecraft that could breach the internationally-recognized boundary of space (62 miles above sea level) twice in one week.

Scaled Composites, a private aircraft company owned by Rutan, answered this challenge by building SpaceShipOne. It broke the military X-15’s 1962 record for a suborbital flight by reaching 71.5 miles in altitude (8). The fantastic performance of SpaceShipOne attracted the attention of Sir Richard Branson, CEO of Virgin Atlantic. Branson subsequently invested $25 million in a new company, now called Virgin Galactic. Currently, Rutan is designing SpaceShipTwo. Modeled after its predecessor, this next generation spaceship will offer customers five minutes of zero gravity and a breathtaking view of the Earth from space for $200,000 a ticket (9).

SpaceShipTwo will be noticeably larger than SpaceShipOne and comfortably seat two pilots and six passengers. However, neither craft can reach the fringes of space on its own. The custom-built airplanes, called the White Knight and WhiteKnightTwo, respectively, must bring the spacecraft to an altitude of about 60,000 feet and then release the craft into freefall before the engine ignites. This altitude boost helps the spacecraft fly higher and faster while using less rocket fuel (10). Branson and Rutan proudly unveiled their first completed WhiteKnightTwo aircraft this summer in Mohave Desert, Cali., and stated that SpaceShipTwo is about seventy percent complete.

Both Branson and Rutan said they believe that the fledgling space tourism industry will quickly become both high-volume and profitable. According to current estimates, they expect 100,000 people will fly by 2020, the same year NASA is scheduled to return the moon (6).
The race began to heat up shortly after Rutan unveiled SpaceShipTwo. Just two months later, the California aerospace company XCOR disclosed their plans to build suborbital spacecraft called the Lynx. Like Scaled Composites, XCOR plans to manufacture the Lynx, while another company sets the fares and runs the business (10).

Unlike SpaceShipTwo, the Lynx will not require a carrier aircraft to gain altitude. It will take off directly from the runway and carry passengers over 38 miles into the air, letting passengers experience almost four and a half minutes of weightlessness. The Lynx is designed to be sustainable and reusable; XCOR expects the Lynx to fly several flights a day. However, the Lynx is a very small aircraft and only seats one pilot and one passenger.

“XCOR’s mission is to radically lower the cost of spaceflight, because affordable access to space for everyone means far more than breathtaking views and the freedom of weightlessness,” said XCOR CEO Jeff Greason. “It means unlocking the material and energy resources and economic opportunities of our solar system for our children” (11).

But new businesses involved in space are not limited to just tourism. On September 28, 2008, Hawthorne, Cali. based SpaceX made history after it successfully launched its Falcon 1 rocket into orbit.

“This is a great day for SpaceX and the culmination of an enormous amount of work by a great team,” stated Elon Musk, CEO and CTO of SpaceX, in a press release just after launch. “The data shows we achieved a super precise orbit insertion — middle of the bull’s-eye — and then went on to coast and restart the second stage, which was icing on the cake” (12).

The rocket was the preceded by three rockets that failed to reach orbit, including one that launched on August 2, 2008 carrying three satellites. While this is clearly not the first time a commercial rocket has reached orbit, SpaceX plans to sell these rockets for a mere $7 million apiece, which is many times cheaper than other rockets of its size available today. This sharp drop in launch costs could change the market dynamics for satellites completely.

More importantly, SpaceX also has plans to test its larger Falcon 9 rocket later this year. And next year, the young company plans to lest its Dragon space capsule, with the ultimate goal of docking it to the ISS. If SpaceX can keep this schedule, it will once again allow NASA to ferry supplies, and eventually astronauts, back to the space station. This is the clearest evidence that control over access to space is shifting into the hands of privately-owned companies.

“There is no growth. There is no activity. There is no – nothing,” Rutan said about today’s government-sponsored spaceflight programs (6). However, with so many investors throwing money into the fledgling space tourism industry, the private sector is poised to give manned spaceflight a new face in the coming decade and once again push the limits of modern technology.

References
1. T. Malik, Shuttle’s Retirement May Affect ISS Construction, NASA Chief Say (2005). Available at http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/050512_rtf_shuttle.html (26 April 2008).
2. Constellation (2008). Available at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/constellation/main/index.html (26 April 2008).
3. L. Page, John Glenn blasts Moonbase-to-Mars NASA roadmap (2008). Available at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/01/john_glenn_says_moonbase_ploy_questionable (20 August 2008).
4. P. Rincon, China ‘could reach moon by 2020’ (2008). Available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7506715.stm (1 October 2008).
5. NASA moonship flight target slips (2008). Available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7555927.stm (15 August 2008).
6. B. Rutan, “Entrepreneurs are the future of spaceflight” (2006). Speech delivered during TED2006 in Monterey, CA, 24 February 2006.
7. Raymond Orteig-$25,000 prize (2007). Available at http://www.charleslindbergh.com/plane/orteig.asp (26 April 2008).
8. T. Malik, Virgin Galactic Unveils SpaceShipTwo Interior Concept (2006). Available at http://www.space.com/news/060828_spaceshiptwo_next.html (28 April 2008).
9. M. Coren, SpaceShipOne captures X-Prize (2004). Available at http://edition.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/10/04/spaceshipone.attempt.cnn/index.html (20 April 2008).
10. Space-tourism race starts to heat up (2008). Available at http://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/03/26/space.tourism.ap/index.html (26 April 2008.
11. D. Graham, XCOR Aerospace Suborbital Vehicle to Fly Within Two Years (2006).