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Blue Origin
This computational fluid dynamics simulation shows Blue Origin's orbital Space Vehicle with a body flap placed toward the spacecraft's aft end. More than 180 wind-tunnel tests were used to analyze design alternatives.
Executives at Blue Origin, the rocket venture founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, have traditionally been reticent about discussing where they're going — but now that they're focusing in on development work for NASA, they're speaking out about their progress and their ambitions. And it turns out that those ambitions are ... well, pretty ambitious.
Like Armadillo Aerospace, Blue is developing a vertical-takeoff suborbital space vehicle for tourists and researchers. Like Sierra Nevada Corp., it's working on an aerodynamic spacecraft to carry NASA astronauts and other spacefliers into orbit. And like SpaceX, it's working on its own launch vehicles as well. The company may not provide many specifics about its timeline, but that doesn't mean the pace is lackadaisical.
"It's not a question of, 'Are we on some timeline,'" Brett Alexander, Blue Origin's director of strategy and business development, told me last week. "We've always said 'later in this decade' is when we're going to do it. Working with NASA will just accelerate us."
Alexander, who has worked on aerospace issues for more than two decades in government and industry circles, discussed Blue Origin's blue-sky ambitions as a follow-up to last week's news about a successful round of wind-tunnel tests for its orbital Space Vehicle, or SV. He said more than 180 runs were conducted at Lockheed Martin's wind-tunnel facility in Dallas to work out the right placement of aerodynamic body flaps on the aft end of the spacecraft.
The idea is that the flaps will enhance SV's biconic shape to give the capsule an extra bit of cross-range maneuverability "without the weight penalty and the complexity of wheels and wings," Alexander said. That could allow for a quicker return to orbit in the event of an emergency, since the SV could more easily be guided to a parachute-slowed descent over a designated land range.
May is a big month for Blue
Alexander said the resulting spacecraft design "will be officially blessed" at a system requirements review in May. Also during May, Blue Origin expects to begin testing of the thrust chamber assembly for its BE-3 rocket engine at NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, Alexander said.
The company, based in Kent, Wash., is receiving $22 million from NASA during the current phase of the space agency's program to help commercial ventures develop space taxis for the post-shuttle era. The SV isn't nearly as big as the space shuttle, of course, but it should be capable of transporting up to seven passengers to and from the International Space Station.
Alexander declined to say definitively whether Blue Origin would apply for further NASA funding during the next phase of the effort, known as Commercial Crew Integrated Capability or CCiCap. But with or without the money from NASA, Bezos and his team intend to create its their very own space transportation system.
"We started this design before NASA had the commercial crew program," Alexander said. "It was always our intention — and still is — to develop this."
He said that the plan calls for the "first few flights" to be launched on United Launch Alliance's Atlas 5 rocket, and that Blue Origin will eventually switch to its own launch vehicle with a reusable first stage.
Suborbital craft as 'pathfinder'
In parallel with its orbital development effort for NASA, Blue Origin is working on a separate crew capsule and propulsion vehicle that would blast off vertically for suborbital space trips. That part of the space program came into the spotlight last August, when Blue's unmanned test rocket went awry and crashed at the end of a supersonic test flight at Bezos' private spaceport in Texas. At the time, Bezos said that his team was "already working on our next development vehicle." Last week, Alexander said the development effort was "still under way."
In February, Alexander told Flightglobal that the suborbital crew capsule was undergoing testing, and that a pad-abort test would be conducted "in the summer sometime."
A prototype rocket ship, built by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin venture, lifts off from its West Texas test pad on Nov. 13, 2006.
Although the funding arrangements for the privately backed suborbital program and the NASA-supported orbital program may be different, the two programs support each other technologically.
"Suborbital is definitely a pathfinder for our orbital system," Alexander said. The implication is that Blue Origin's rockets will be taking tourists and researchers to the edge of space significantly earlier than they'll be taking astronauts to orbit.
Bezos, whose net worth is currently estimated at more than $20 billion, doesn't strictly need NASA's money to pursue his long-held space ambitions. But Alexander said government backing will quicken Blue Origin's pace, and he argued against the sentiment in Congress that NASA should select just one company as the "leader" to go forward with spaceship development. Right now, NASA is supporting development efforts at four companies — the Boeing Co., Sierra Nevada Corp. and SpaceX as well as Blue Origin — and observers expect the field to shrink for the next round of funding. It's just a question of how much shrinkage there'll be.
"Competition is definitely better — better for the program, better for the country, better for the future of human spaceflight," Alexander told me. "If they down-select to one, it's no longer a commercial space program."
What do you think about Blue Origin's ambitions and the prospects for commercial spaceships? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below.
More about Blue Origin and Jeff Bezos:
- Blue Origin spruces up its rocket report
- How tycoons will fuel future spaceflight
- Bezos aims to bring up Apollo 11's sunken engines
- Cosmic Log archive on the commercial space race
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:
It never was a commercial space program. They're all captive contractors of their single customer.
That just isn't the case. These folks are paying more then lip service to their talk of space tourists and the like.
There's no believable business case for an orbital tourist trade without the vast majority of funding being covered by government. That brings us right back to these "commercial" outfits being captive contractors of their government customer.
Ok, so the government is kicking in money to get these companies going... your point?
"They're all captive contractors of their single customer."
Bigelow Aerospace (and their waiting customers, who are about more than tourism) would beg to differ. They're waiting for at least Boeing, and preferably others to get vehicles operational.
To call them captive is just ridiculous. Even if it were true, which it's not, but even if it were that would denote some kind of disagreeable situation for these contractors. They are certainly not "captive". They are merely marketers of a product or service that has an extremely limited market.
Yes, the market is extremely limited. This is exactly the same market that Rockwell served when it built the Shuttles. Last I looked, Rockwell was a commercial company, Boeing and Lockheed too. We didn't call it "commercial space" then, no reason to call it that now. Government is still the sole significant customer.
John - Ok, since you seem to be too busy to go look at Space X's web page, let me break it down for you: Space X currently has 35 launches listed on their manifest, between now and 2017 (note that I'm not counting test missions such as COTS and Falcon Heavy tests). Of those 35 launches, only 12 are NASA. The other 23 launches are all commercial companies or other countries. So please, anytime you want to pull your head out of the sand and acknowledge the facts....
Good to see the private sector making process and collaborating with NASA and each other!
Great to see it. Private sector is the only way to go, and congress should keep as many horses in the race as possible. It isn't the job of government to choose the winner.
It isn't the government's job to keep all of these contractors on indefinite subsidy. Cut them loose. Let them sink or swim without government funding.
First cut loose the oil companies from their billions upon billions of dollars in government subsidy. I'm pretty sure the most profitable industry on earth needs subsidies less than legitimately new industries.
JohnCarter - Um, seeing as these companies are still in their start up phases, I'd say the government "subsidies" as you call them are still a perfectly reasonable thing. Once they have their launch technology down they won't need any help from the government. Prime example: Go to spacex.com and look at their launch manifest. The majority of launches are NOT going to NASA.
"Cut them loose. Let them sink or swim without government funding."
If you believe that, then convince Congress to view ATK and a few others in the same way...
Government funding isn't as simple as JohnCarter makes it out to be. And it's clear that John doesn't understand how this system works. He sounds like the folks who think that America would be just peachy if government funding were cut from all private and/or corporate entities. If you follow that logic to it's natural conclusion you will realize that capitalism needs government funding to a certain degree. If you just do away with all of it our economy would collapse. And I'm not talking about the 10 to 20 % unemployment of a recession or depression. I'm talking about a true collapse where everything grinds to a stand still. Our economy has an astounding amount of interconnectivity in it and once you pull the plug on all that government funding then you will see others fail.
You want to see private companies sink or swim?? well, I have news for ya... there are a good many that will sink and in doing so they would tank our economy. I don't like it any more than you do, but that's the reality of our economy.
Wow this is interesting.
I guess we are going to find out how good of a venture the private sector can bring to fruition Vs government.
Try as I might, I just can't seem to get excited about the privatization of the space race...
We need an equivalent of the Apollo missions from NASA, something big we can shoot for and take pride in as a nation, not sitting on the sidelines waiting to see which billionaire can make a successful business model out of low orbit flights....
It is coming in steps. The current plan is for private American space companies to offer access to low Earth orbit. This will remove our reliance on the Russians, and it will generate billions of dollars in our economy and provide many jobs. For example, SpaceX has hired many of the skills folks who worked as part of the shuttle program.
NASA, for it's part, does a lot more than just manned spaceflight. They have dozens of unmanned mission underway and in the planning stages. That part of the space race is unlikely to be privatized (at least, not entirely). And NASA's plan is to let private contractors work at opening up LEO while they focus their efforts on the Moon and beyond.
So, what does all this mean? NASA will buy seats aboard private spacecraft when it's economical to do so, like when they want to get astronauts to the ISS for example. Having multiple ways to get to space (in the form of multiple private space companies) should drive the cost of getting to space down.
And for the "something we can take pride in as a nation".. Well, there are different ideas on that. Some folks want to return to the moon. Some want to go to Mars. The president has said it is our stated goal of sending Americans to an asteroid by 2025 (but as of yet there is no mission fleshed out). So, you can bet that whoever comes after Obama will put their own spin on space. But the fact remains that NASA is transitioning towards the goals of sending human beings to do major exploration once again.
After 30 years in Earth orbit we human beings are looking for something to inspire us. The space shuttle inspired me. The moon landings inspired me (although I'm not old enough to have witnessed them). In the next 2 decades we are going to be taking some very large steps and it will seriously inspire generations to come. I, for one, can not wait.
Mob is, once again, the voice of reason......:) --S--
Having multiple companies in the commercial space race is a good thing - the competition will bring out the best in all of them.
Woohoo, more info on private space travel!!
And for those worried about the funding, perhaps we can sell seats to China and Korea or just trade for our Walmart merchandise.
And, John, once there is a Hilton or Best Western or Motel 6 on Luna or in orbit, there will be demand that is not government funded.
It's a tough question whether the higher efficiency of a competitive process outweighs the duplicate spending (assuming the market will only support one in the end).
Government funding of a sole private source is the worst of both worlds. If the decision is made to go with a single program, NASA should "manage" (I use that term loosely) it in-house like it has for all past programs.
One of the problems with this will be having them bid, and we will be riding to orbit on the lowest bidder.
I suppose we've been doing that anyway, but this time at least the vehicles will be in place and we won't have contractors running over budget.
Almost all of these companies, that NASA is investing in through COTS and CCDev, they all have other potential to utilize the spacecraft they are designing even if NASA doesn't use them. For example, if there is a space craft ready to use and NASA doesn't have a mission to LEO, then the company can offer there services to anyone else who can afford it. I have read reports about nations that do not have their own space program perhaps buying the services of these companies.
David (assuming the market can only support on in the end) is one hell of an assumption!! and wrong I.M.H.O. :)--S--
The Motel 6 in Death Valley closed, and that's a nicer place than the Moon. Heck, the Motel 6 in Wilmington NC closed, and that isn't even the back of nowhere. People need to make a business case for going to a particular place and thus providing customers for businesses which wish to locate there.
The government can do things simply because it decides to do them. It isn't as if it is spending its own money. So it has no need to make a business case that it can turn a profit. But the private economy does have to show a return for its investments, and darn quick too or the stockholders will revolt. Other than acting as a government contractor, there's little that private industry can do in space that will return significant profit. That may not always be true, but except for a couple of niche businesses (comsats and Earth resources satellites), there is no significant profit to be made outside of government contracts.
People who want a space program, and I count myself among them, need to realize that other than working for the government, there is little in the way of profit to be made in space. It has been thus since the beginning of the space age. It will continue to be that way for the foreseeable future. The "let private industry do it" crowd doesn't seem to understand that private industry has always done it. From the beginning, private contractors have built the vehicles NASA has launched. Nothing has really changed except that NASA has decided to spread the pork by funding a group of start ups who lack the experience of their existing contractor base. This lack of focus is detrimental to our national space effort.
You are operating under an "attitude of scarcity". You need to adopt an "attitude of abundance."
And as you sit there pondering how best to respond to the comment I have just made, I ask you, please just give it a try. You can change the way you approach a given problem, in this case, your assertion that there is no money to be made from space (unless that money comes from a government contract).
First of all, lets just agree that the government is the big dog in this one pony show. But that doesn't mean they are the only source of income. What that means is that someone just needs to create a new business model. And considering that human beings are currently taking the first steps into a much larger cosmos it should surprise no one that no such business model has surfaced as of yet.
What is happening in this industry is what has happened in other industries. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But the American economy stands to reap massive rewards if we can overcome this initial hurdle of "what is a successful business plan in space?" And even though everything we have done to date could not have happened without private enterprise it's important to realize that those business' (boeing, lockheed,...) have other business that is their bread and butter. The military, for example, is another government program that these companies suckle from and that in turn helps our economy. It's just a sad reality that war is good for business and that's why Eisenhower warned the American people about the military industrial complex in his outgoing address. But I digress..
Making money off of space hasn't even begun yet. We've seen tremendous advances and return on investment from our space program, but that isn't even scratching the surface. Think about the ROI we'd see if we had a functioning manufacturing platform in low Earth orbit or a robotic mining outpost on the Moon. These are surely expensive endeavor, perhaps even prohibitively expensive, but if we do them the rewards would be more than we could imagine. It really is a business unlike any other on Earth, precisely because it's NOT on Earth. So, you can't approach it from the same standpoint as you would drilling for crude, or manufacturing cars. The business model for space will require MUCH more investment on the front end and that scares the pants off of all investors. But I can see the writing on the wall. This is much bigger than silicon valley and it's more important than the Allies winning WW2. To the victor go the spoils and once you open up access to space you open up lines of revenue unlike any anyone has ever seen.
John, there wasn't much profit in building a boat, either, at first, but eventually they allowed trading all over the world.
We are still building rafts with logs tied together to get across a river or to a nearby island. All we've done is cross a river to an island called Luna. The private companies will build the fleet of clippers and frigates that will bring back raw materials and take settlers to new worlds.
Harsh reality is that 1kg to place in LEO cost 5000$ even for SpaceX. About 23 lauches on SpaceX manifest - they dont begin to deliver those at the moment, they have real issues with Merlin engines and have COTS only flights(2 delivered). OK, where is Falcon 1? No customers, even when Planetary Resouces could use some of it's flights. They say *Current plans are for payloads that would fly on Falcon 1 to be served by flights on the Falcon 9, utilizing excess capacity. This is a very cost-effective solution for small satellite launch needs. No it isn't. Just they don't want to support 2 rockets even with the same engine, and their main goal is not small satellite market, but real customer like Nasa paying even for their "Mars exploration development". Will you see 2000$ for 1kg on Falcon9 or less on Heavy? Who knows, estimations before real activities cost just paper.
It bothers me that on all forums Americans like to mention SpaceX and a couple of companies like xcor and virgin galactic(etc). But those companies doesn't provide any innovation in propulsion, nor any substantial decrease in prices on development or operation. The difference between Falcon 9/Dragon and R7/SouzTMA is a 3rd stage cause SpaceX use more unproven modern composite/alloy materials. Same propellant, same prices for a lauch and per seat.
Real differences in propulsion provided by REL's Skylon, ISPS's NoFBX, S-engine by JAXA or NERVA-like nuclear rockets. Real development decrease is in activities of Copenhagen suborbitals with V2-class T-65 (65kN) engine on the test stand now(20 may) - began in 2008 at a cost 60000$/year, and romanian ARCA Executor (24ton) for 200k$. Strangely(?) Non profit organizations make so fast progress for so small money, that "commercial" companies can only hire 1 big fat executive. Imho real space race begin now not inside multimillion ventures like SpaceX but inside dirty HABs and garages of DIY-communities. Those can innovate really, use opensource approach, off-the-shelf low cost hardware, incremental skunkswork-like development, and will progress to the launch of casual people not the millionaires. They have a real push to innovate, not to take NASA/DOD-sponsored dev plans/launch sites.
Or even you can do it, especially if you aim for different than usual chemical rocketry, and for inspace application (it needs much lower thrust and smaller engine) first. Any strange things like radical fuel/superconductors/microwaves or anything to store/generate/transmit more energy than stupid solids(9MJ/kg)-LH/LOX(12MJ/kg) - any breakthrough up to 800-3000sec ISP will physically decrease the cost of earth-to-orbit/interplanetary. And BigDumbBooster approach as well, cause most "commercial" companies doesn't do it either way, they just can't try anything new and fail - only proven not so good technologies and approaches. Not radiacal one like space loop+SpaceShaft.
And I don't get why they do it in America, they can do it much cheaply anywhere else - labor cost eats their investment (as well as taxes, parts cost, etc) and what is the reason to hire more and more for enourmous prices like 45000-120000/year? They do it, cause they wanna NASA, Boeing, and US millionaires be their customers. (ITAR, and most prohibitive US laws push them to that direction). Or I forgot - they have surplus of NASA engineers/managers fired just after Shuttle era end, maybe the end of Shuttle is because of it? HAHAHA (bye,bye United Space Alliiance)