April 19, 2011
Science Department
It's a Convoy!
Yesterday NASA awarded development grants to four corporations for development of human-rated space transportation systems (spaceships). Here are the big winners:
$22 million went to Blue Origin, best known for its intricately detailed corporate logo (as well as its founder, Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com fame) which has a creative vertical take-off and landing system which is very science-fictiony, called New Shepard, which they plan on ramping up from a sub-orbital launch vehicle into a full-scale orbital system.
$80 million goes to Sierra Nevada Corporation for their Dream Chaser vehicle, which is kind of a small space shuttle that doesn't need a custom launch system.
$92.3 million is slated for Boeing, the company that a few short years ago was claiming that space transportation systems could never be privatized and could only work when on a cost-plus government contract. (To be fair, they blew a lot of money a decade or so ago when they did R&D on a system that never got off the ground, so management was understandable gun-shy.) They changed their mind when they found out they could get grants for developing a new system and saw that other companies were already taking the lead. They have an impressive 7-man crew capsule based on the concept of scaling up older, proven designs.
$75 million for SpaceX, which has been in the news a lot lately for their very cool and successful launches of their Falcon series of vehicles. Unlike the other firms, SpaceX is keeping their efforts very much in the public view, which is kid of gutsy. Brand new rocket systems fail on their debut launch 40% of the time, but the Falcon 9 had two successful launches in a row. That's pretty exciting in itself. They plan on mating that to their Dragon 7-man capsule for a complete system. The other designs mentioned here will rely upon an existing launch system (such as a human-flight certified verson of the Atlas booster), but SpaceX is counting on having a totally new system which is engineered with efficiency and safety in mind from the start.
In September they plan on launching another Falcon 9 with
test satellites which will approach the International Space Station, followed quickly
a month later with their first actual cargo delivery to the station.
Notable in its absence is any money for the joint Liberty project from ATK (which makes the Space Shuttle solid rocket boosters) and Arianespace which would have placed the European Ariane 5 booster on top of an extended Shuttle SRB. The basic idea there was to take two very proven technologies and marry them into a vehicle that could launch humans into orbit. I had been figuring them as a shoe-in for some of this second round of financing from NASA because of that. Maybe they can still get some private financing to keep this interesting project going. They plan on proceeding with development even without NASA money.
Overall I'm please that this part of the Augustine Commission's plan is coming along. When the Shuttle Transportation System was conceived it was pitched as a "space truck" idea. The Shuttle was meant to have a fast turn-around, and be cheap to operate. In reality it was just too complex to accomplish such goals. The reason NASA had to try was that no one else in the world was capable of attempting such a system. Much has been learned operating the system, and the knowledge has been passed into the marketplace.
The comparison used to support privatization of launch-to-orbit systems is that of the early days of aviation. To help spur the commercial aircraft industry, the US government guaranteed contracts in the form of air mail so that companies knew they would have a customer. In the same way, NASA is now guaranteeing future contracts to deliver supplies and crews to low Earth orbit.
I honestly think that private companies can now take up the reigns of operating a space trucking company. NASA can get back to focusing on what it is best at, which is doing things that have never been done before, like figuring out how to make CB radios work across interplanetary distances.
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