Space Commerce

July 22, 2010 by J Paul Douglas · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Commercial Space Flight

For nearly half a century now we’ve heard from the futurists what our lives will be like just around the corner. The picture they paint is one with human settlements circling the earth and sprawling across the surface of the moon; of space hotels spinning like pinwheels through black skies; of rocket flights as common as airplane flights are today; and most importantly of a swelling population of off-world settlers pursuing the limitless prosperity that this new frontier of space has to offer. It’s a picture that can be transmuted from the water color and canvas of our imagination to those more vibrant colors of real life.

The technology exists with which to make the dream a reality, so why does it still seem so far away? A naive over reliance on government.

The headline in this week’s print version of Space News reads Effective Cost-Control Strategies Remain Elusive, NASA Officials Say. Space travel — particularly on a large scale — requires the kind of financial agility not found in any bureaucracy. Only the private sector can deliver cost-effective space technology, and then only if there exists a sustaining market. For space commerce to emerge as a self-sustaining enterprise, it cannot be reliant upon the government for its survival. We find ourselves at a nexus in history where, like the time leading up to the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad, a market is logically assumed to exist but, it has yet to be proven, leaving many holding the really big purse strings with some angst. There is certainly plentiful capital with which to launch space commerce into its own, but most investors remain diffident, choosing to wait and see how investors like Elon Musk of SpaceX, Sir Richard Branson of Virgin Galactic and Robert Bigelow of Bigelow Aerospace fair. These men have put up their own fortunes to prove that the final frontier is a place of opportunity for all brave enough to go there. When their risks prove successful, others will follow. In the mean time, what is required is a few more like Durant and the Union Pacific Railroad.

More than 100 years have not dampened American pioneering spirit. Upper image: Engineers and workman of the Union and Central Pacific Railroads join their tracks into the new Transcontinental Railroad on May 10, 1869. Bottom image: engineers, pilots and support personnel join together after winning the X Prize, October 5, 2004, courtesy Scaled Composites.

At the opening of the week-long Farnborough Air Show in England yesterday, Robert Bigelow in partnership with Boeing announced the intent to build and launch into earth orbit a commercial space station by 2014 — an imminently achievable goal based on Bigelow’s flight-proven, inflatable space habitat design. Should this enterprise come to fruition, it would represent a huge boost to commercial, human space flight by offering a destination open to a throng of paying customers. It would serve as both hub and incubator for orbiting commerce and a place from which that traffic could spread to the moon and beyond. Speaking for Boeing’s space exploration division, former astronaut, Vice President and General Manager Brewster Shaw said, “We need the funding. The money that NASA has proposed closes the business case. Without that, we would have a difficult time.” That was yesterday. Today it was reported in Space News that the newly-passed House of Representatives version of the NASA Authorization Act of 2010 cuts in half the $500M CCDev contract funds, a share of which they had hoped to capture for the venture.

: Bigelow Space Station Design courtesy Bigelow Aerospace

This is typical of government wrangling over money, all the more limited by unchecked growth in entitlement spending, which will never boost productivity in any area of the country one iota. Obama wanted to kill the Constellation moon program, outright. Congress, however, has passed a measure that would keep but restructure Constellation, retaining only the heavy lift rocket used to get into earth orbit and the crew transportation vehicle for transport out of orbit. The moon as a destination and the systems needed to land and establish a base there are sadly, but for the moment, set aside. And the money private companies were hoping to gain for human space flight would now seem much harder to obtain, but there is another way.

The private sector knows only too well the blind spot that exists 2 feet beyond the end of the bureaucrat’s nose. And the changes in course that come with every administration only further exacerbate the problem of getting a coherent, manageable and affordable civil space program. They know that the only hope of getting humans into space en masse rests with a sustained strategy carried out over a decade or more. And this will never come out of Washington.

Two modern-day pioneers, Sir Richard Branson and Burt Rutan next to VMS Eve, the world's first spaceliner currently in flight testing.

What is required is more investment from the private sector. More investors ready to face a big risk for an even bigger payoff will need to step up. Burt Rutan has shown the way. He’s demonstrated that commercial, human space flight can be profitable when he designed and built SpaceShipOne. Within the space of a couple of years he transformed his SpaceShip from a concept into a paying contract. Virgin Galactic has purchased a fleet of 5 vehicles, which are set to become the world’s first spaceline when the flight test program is complete some time over the next 18 months. And if you’re one of the naysayers who contend that Rutan’s design is not proven, consider this: VMS Eve, the first production model of SpaceShipTwo, is a scaled up version of SpaceShipOne that won the X Prize.

The emergence of space commerce will foster even more growth of investment and technology and set the stage for off-world settlement. And such a tenuous and fragile construct can only be born near earth where it can be nurtured into health. This is why so many have argued in favor of going back to the moon and establishing a permanent presence there before going on to Mars. The latter requires massive government research and development programs, which have proven time and again to evaporate into a mist of apathy and bureaucratic self interest. If government has not been able to go back to the moon in 40 years then why should we believe that have the ability will suddenly appear now?

Set aside for the moment the government’s demonstrative inability to focus or to formulate a coherent strategy for getting humans into space on any meaningful scale. There is another term to this equation that, in and of itself, is reason enough for them to work against the settlement of space. Our government believes that space travel is just too dangerous for the public. Yes, there are those among us too fragile for the venture, but America was settled by a hearty breed of human, both physically and mentally, and we still have that pioneering spirit in our blood. When it at last lights upon our collective consciousness that space travel is no longer science fiction but science fact, and that all that stands between us and adventure beyond our wildest dreams is the decision to go, what a spectacle it will be.

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