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If you think America's space effort is in a state of flux now, you ain't seen nothing yet: Just wait until billionaires Richard Branson and Robert Bigelow are vying to offer orbital hotels, or until there are as many brands of spaceships built in the United States as commercial jets.
Or not.
That's the curious thing about Space Race 2.0: It's definitely a marathon, not a sprint, and the field of contestants have had dropouts (like the bankrupt Rocketplane Kistler) as well as drop-ins (like the Boeing Co.).
If any of the racers make it to the finish line, NASA will once again be able to send U.S. astronauts to the International Space Station on U.S.-built spacecraft, ending the post-shuttle spaceship gap. There may also be opportunities for businesses and foreign governments to purchase their own presence in space, in the form of private-sector space stations. Regular folks may be able to buy vacation packages that include a quick up-and-down on a suborbital spacecraft, or even a stay on one of those space stations.
There'll be new opportunities for space research and manufacturing as well. Alan Stern, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institution as well as an adviser to the Blue Origin space venture, has called low-cost space research the "killer app" for the space travel industry — right up there with space tourism and space station resupply.
But what steps lie ahead for private space ventures, and what's the time frame for taking those steps?
A crucial year
For the companies seeking NASA's business, the next six months to a year will be crucial: Four companies — Blue Origin, Boeing, Sierra Nevada Corp. and SpaceX — are receiving hundreds of millions of dollars from NASA to develop spaceships capable of ferrying astronauts to the space station and back. SpaceX and yet another company, Orbital Sciences Corp., have already been receiving NASA funding to support the development of unmanned cargo spaceships.
In February, SpaceX is due to launch a test cargo shipment to the space station and bring the capsule back to Earth. Orbital Sciences, meanwhile, is gearing up for its first test flight of its Taurus 2 launch vehicle in the same time frame. By 2013, both companies should be cleared for orbital cargo deliveries as part of a $3.5 billion combined deal with NASA.
The development effort for crew vehicles is more complex, due to the higher safety requirements. Last month, Congress settled on an allocation of $406 million for the next phase of the commercial crew development program, or CCDev. That's less than half of the $850 million requested by the Obama administration, and NASA hasn't yet laid out a revised plan for the next development round.
Alan Boyle gets behind the flight controls of Sierra Nevada Corp.'s Dream Chaser simulator and lands the spaceship on a virtual runway (with help from Sierra Nevada's Stokes McMillan).
Based on the space agency's previously announced plans, the money for the next phase would be given out starting next July, for the development of an integrated system that includes a space-taxi capsule as well as the rocket it rides on. SpaceX can already offer the full package, which combines its Falcon 9 rocket with its Dragon capsule. The other contenders will have to buddy up with rocket builders — either United Launch Alliance, which offers the Atlas 5; or ATK and EADS Astrium, which have proposed creating a hybrid rocket called Liberty. Right now, the Atlas 5 is the favored vehicle in the rocket race, but the next phase of CCDev provides an opportunity for dark horses like ATK to get back in the race.
As long as no one crosses the finish line, NASA is stuck in the position of paying the Russians $50 million or more for each seat filled by a U.S. astronaut heading to the space station. So the space agency has a powerful interest in making sure that at least one space-taxi operator succeeds. NASA expects that it'll be using U.S.-built space taxis in the 2017 time frame, but warns that reduced funding levels will slow down the timeline.
Suborbital space race
Meanwhile, additional companies are aiming for suborbital space business, either for research or tourism purposes. Among the major players in this particular race are Armadillo Aerospace, Virgin Galactic and XCOR Aerospace,
Virgin Galactic says it's on track to begin powered test flights of its SpaceShipTwo craft early next year, with an eye toward offering suborbital trips at $200,000 a seat in 2013. Branson, the company's founder, is aiming even higher: "We're starting by suborbital trips, we'll then go to orbital trips, we're then going to look at space hotels. We're going to look at intercontinental travel at a speed much quicker than you can currently travel," he told me during an interview in October.
At the christening of Virgin Galactic's spaceflight terminal in New Mexico, Richard Branson talks about the future of space tourism — and predicts that he will eventually open space hotels.
XCOR Aerospace plans to start testing its Lynx rocket plane in the air within a year, and wants to take on tourists starting in the 2013-2014 time frame.
Armadillo has partnered up with Space Adventures, the company that has sent seven paying passengers to the space station, to develop a suborbital launch system capable of carrying passengers or scientific experiments. The New Mexico Spaceport Authority says Armadillo ran a successful test of a reusable sounding rocket known as STIG A on Dec. 4. The rocket rose to an altitude of 137,500 feet (41.91 kilometers), and carried a scientific package from Purdue.
Blue Origin, which was founded by Amazon.com billionaire Jeff Bezos, is also working on a suborbital spaceship project that's separate from the NASA-funded orbital effort. (The company is bouncing back from the crash of a suborbital test vehicle in August.)
Next giant leap
Of course, there's no guarantee that any of these companies will get off the ground on the timetable they expect. This space race is notorious for slowing down the pace: Spaceship builders have been predicting that the golden age of private spaceflight is just two years away for the past 15 years.
The interesting thing is that the different companies are coming together in combinations that make the space race look more like a square dance: Space Adventures is teaming with Armadillo on suborbital tourism, with Boeing on orbital tourism, and with the Russians on trips to the space station and even the moon. Sierra Nevada is relying on Virgin Galactic's help for atmospheric tests of its prototype orbital vehicle, while Virgin Galactic is relying on Sierra Nevada to provide the hybrid rocket engine for SpaceShipTwo. Boeing is a partner with Lockheed Martin in United Launch Alliance, which plans to provide rockets for Boeing as well as two of its CCDev competitors.
Bigelow Aerospace, which has already put two of its inflatable space modules into orbit on Russian rockets, could conceivably purchase launch services from SpaceX or United Launch Alliance to establish future private-sector space stations — and it's teaming up with Boeing and Space Adventures to make the arrangements for orbital trips by tourists and researchers.
Where could all this lead? Would you believe to Mars? At least that's what SpaceX founder Elon Musk expects. He's teaming up with NASA's Ames Research Center on a proposal for an unmanned Mars mission in the 2018 time frame, and he has said SpaceX's rockets could send humans to Mars in the next 10 to 15 years if that's what NASA wants to do.
"The reason to do space and to try to push the boundary of space is that it's one of the coolest things that humanity, or we as a country, can do," he told me. "We want there to be cool things. Life cannot just be about solving problems. If that's all it's about, why get up in the morning? There's got to be things that are inspiring and make life worth living — and I think pushing the boundaries of space and the outer frontier is one of those things."
SpaceX founder Elon Musk links the aims of his various companies together and explains why he'd rather be engineering than lobbying in Washington.
More on the future of spaceflight:
- SpaceX chief aims for Mars
- Boeing runs hard in the new space race
- Future spaceflight goes virtual at Sierra Nevada
- Blue Origin spruces up its rocket report
- Slideshow: The making of SpaceShipTwo
- Gallery: Ten players in the commercial space race
- Cosmic Log archive on the new space race
This report draws upon videos that are part of a Future of Technology package produced by msnbc.com's Matt Rivera. Stay tuned for a new twist in the saga of future spaceflight on Tuesday.
Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
Leave a Comment:
Nevermind orbital space hotels, the next era for the space program should be focused at cleaning up all the space debris (out of control space junk which will de-orbit on their own time table).
Before we start thinking again about new NEO human spaceflight we should clean it up and put proper design changes in the avoid added more space debris in the future.
Ad'M
That is a very good point and one we need to pay attention to now, if we don’t do as you suggest, then we maybe looking at a very bad disaster that could have been avoided in the very near future.
To make your point clear, we have had a few near misses over the past few months for the International Space Station form this problem, and that is not good at all.
One other point if I may, This is also going to take a very long time to clean up because there is a lot of space junk out there in low earth orbit.
Have a good day, Tom And Lyn
Much agreed. We have the constant risk now that space debris will lead to mission failure and ultimately a possible loss of life. This is an unacceptable amount of risk and we should do all we can to mitigate that risk. Each space faring country should have a program for space debris cleanup and all space faring countries and private companies should work together to clean up Earth orbital space.
And for goodness sake, let's stop launching satellites without some kind of de-orbiting technology. Letting our satellites de-orbit over time with orbital drag is a bad idea. At the rate we are launching new satellites orbital space will only become more and more cluttered. All new satellites should be designed to have a set lifetime on orbit and once that schedule is met the satellite should be mechanically de-orbited with use of thrusters or something that will de-orbit it in a short period of time - days or a few weeks at most.
The best way to make progress will be to stop adding to the problem. That will buy us some time to figure out best practices for on-orbit cleanup. Space debris is a major issue and it will just get worse unless we change our behavior. And there is a fair amount of diplomacy involved with this also, since new nations are looking to get into space with their own satellites and/or space programs. Cleaning up Earth's orbital space is going to be very difficult but it needs to happen and should be tackled sooner rather than later.
Perhaps aliens left no prints at all, all neat and tidy like...b.s. That junk is valuable salvage....it will eventually settle to earth, perhaps a small bit will bank on off to become the next big iceball to menace some others..cleaning it up will be a smart thing to do....we have the lead in commercial space for now, if we get too comfy others will jump in..meanwhile boeing is the 800 pound gorilla in the room....not like they don't have the tech, resources and people to do what we all want, but for them it is a matter of economics...for the rest of us, it is calling. We are not yet were the ancients were with the contiki...not even a little ole branch to hold onto to float to the next continent, naw, we watched a fellow swim to the little islet just downstream....we are stifiling the dream somehow with our whining and political posturing. We must encourage all to pull forward, not calling it space 2.0 would be a great start.
Aries 1 should be flying now. The change in course did not help human space flight yet.
The Constellation (CxP) program timeline (under the "VSE") had Ares-I launching by 2014, however it was known officially prior to the cancellation of CxP, that this milestone was at least 3 years behind schedule due to budget constraints and technical setbacks. So we were looking at more like 2017 or later for a manned Ares-I launch.
Note that even though CxP was cancelled (and ultimately replaced by CCDev and SLS), development of J-2x and the Orion MPCV never stopped, because they will be utilized by SLS, and as of today they are still in middle of their testing phases.
cjsks, to add to what you've said already, doesn't Liberty utilize some Ares-1 efforts?
Great article as always Alan, this time it looks like the "Golden Age" of private spaceflight really is just around the corner. If we stay on our current tragectory with the space program, there will be manned orbital spaceflight for the first time in history, and Orion will have flown it's first mission beyond Earth orbit by mid-decade. Exciting times for the space program.
btw - Taurus 2 was just recently renamed "Antares" by Orbital Sciences. Also, the article doesn't mention the Delta IV Heavy rocket, which spacecraft builders could also potentially "buddy up" with ULA to utilize.
I missed a key word there, "there will be commercial manned orbital spaceflight for the first time in history..."
And please don't forget 'Ad Astra' and their VASIMR rocket engine.
The possibilities of a SpaceX/Bigelow/Ad Astra joint venture are endless.
What is exciting is that with CERN being one step closer to discovering the Higgs-Boson we will be able to actually reduce the mass of material while retaining the materials molecular rigidity which in turn means lighter material that does not have mass in a gravitated environment which equals faster transit times.
lol
Is that Dwight Huth or Sleuth?
I like your posts for your show of energy and enthusiasm!
Don't ever lose it for that is the real definition of a successful life.
Elon Musk is just a cool guy. I couldn't agree more with his assertion that we need to do things for reasons other than just "solving problems" or "what's in it for the average joe".
These efforts will help people around the world in many ways. Space exploration will solve some of our problems. But it's also a very cool thing and that's reason enough for me.
New Project For the Spacer's
It's awesome seeing the next space race taking shape.
But a new problem has arisen. How do we get supplies to the Moon cost effectively where the waste of large cargo carrier's hulls and the fuel used to deliver cargo modules might impeded the process of colonizing the Moon?
Incoming Resupply - It's Hot Drop O-Clock!
My idea involves using the Sky Crane, Sky Crane1, in the same manner that it will deliver the Curiosity to the surface of Mars. The Sky Crane delivery vehicle would arrive first deploying three Sky Cranes in orbit around the Moon. The next mission would see the cargo carrier carrying the cargo modules. Each cargo module would weigh 2,000 lbs so that the original design of the Sky Crane could be used. The Sky Crane enters the cargo carrier vessel latches onto the cargo container and then begins its descent towards the Moons surface. Once the cargo container is close enough the Sky Crane releases the cargo container and heads back into space to rendevous with the cargo carrier to pick up another load. As the cargo container approaches the surface of Mars Airbags of the same type that were used on the Pathfinder Mission are deployed thus alloying the cargo container to achieve a soft landing. Another design would call for small sleds to be attached to the cargo container so that as the Sky Crane began its ascent and released the cargo container the cargo can would slide to its final ladning destination.
The reason that this idea for delivering cargo containers to the Moon would work is because of the Moons relatively low gravity. The low gravity means that more cargo can be delivered at one time with less fuel spent by using the Sky Crane. Not only would less fuel be used but less waste involving large vehicle frames used to land the same amount of cargo would also occur.
Less fuel and less material wasted equals more money spent on materials sent to the Moon at one time.
Second Project
Another project that could evolve from the Sky Crane is the Lunar Descent Platform. Basically a larger version of the Sky Crane the SKLDP would be attached to the Moon via its cables that it would normally use to deploy the cargo container with. The SKLDP would have thrusters that would keep in in sync with the rotation of the Moon so that the Moon was not 'pulling' it along. Lunar clevices bolted into the Lunar soil would complete the attachment method. The crew module arrives docks with the platform allowing for course correction via using the modules thrusters. The astronaughts then enter into the Joint Quest Airlock in their space suits where they then strap theirself into seats on the platform that then lowers them to the surface of the Moon. Just one more method of getting astronaughts to the surface of the Moon without running into the cost of fuel and the waste involved with using a lander that is then left to float in space after only one use.
Imagination and Innvoation is right there on your finger tip. It's just waiting for you to pull your finger away.
Alan, you should add another partnership or rather team, which was announced today: Stratolaunch Systems, Scaled Composites, and SpaceX.
What I am really most curious about is what is the US governement & NASA going to do when individuals start going into space for personal pleasure and they start seeing some of the strange things that NASA has seen and hidden for years. It's going to be very interesting! Maybe we will finally learn the truth!
Think it was 51 or 52 years ago and then we take a" Giant step back for American kind" The North American X-15 was a rocket-powered aircraft operated by the United States Air Force and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the X-plane series of experimental aircraft. The X-15 set speed and altitude records in the early 1960s, reaching the edge of outer space and returning with valuable data used in aircraft and spacecraft design. As of 2012[update], the X-15 holds the official world record for the fastest speed ever reached by a manned rocket-powered aircraft.