Static firing: XCOR Aerospace conducts static firing tests of the rocket engine that will power its Lynx suborbital spacecraft. The tests were conducted in the Mojave Desert.
Mike Massee, XCOR
Firms look to provide automated landers and inflatable modules.
For many years the entrepreneurial space industry--collectively called "NewSpace"--has criticized NASA as slow, bureaucratic, and difficult to deal with. NASA, in turn, has devoted the bulk of its spending to major aerospace companies like Boeing and Lockheed Martin, not the entrepreneurs. However, as NASA and the White House redirect U.S. space exploration efforts, NewSpace companies are finding fresh opportunities to work with NASA.
A case in point is NASA's new emphasis on technology development. At a workshop last week in Galveston, TX, NASA officials outlined their "point of departure" plans for developing enabling technologies for human space exploration beyond Earth orbit. Key technologies of interest include automated landers for robotic missions to the surface of the moon, Mars, and asteroids, and inflatable modules that can be attached to the International Space Station (ISS).
Seeing an opportunity, Masten Space Systems and XCOR Aerospace, two NewSpace companies based in Mojave, CA, announced plans to partner in a bid to work on proposed lander projects. Masten, which won over $1 million from NASA last year in the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, will develop the vehicles under the partnership, while XCOR will provide engines powered by methane and liquid oxygen--the company has worked in the past with NASA to develop such engines.
"What triggered this," said XCOR president Jeff Greason at the International Space Development Conference (ISDC) in Chicago on Friday, "is that we received strong indications from a strategic customer that signaled to us that they would welcome the pairing of Masten's vehicle technology with our engine technology--that if we put those two competencies together, it would scratch an itch that they really had no way to scratch right now." The two companies, virtually next-door neighbors, already know each other well.
The work will be done in addition to, and not in place of, existing commercial work by both companies. XCOR is developing Lynx, a suborbital space plane that Greason anticipates will begin prototype flight tests in mid-2011. Masten, meanwhile, is developing suborbital vehicles using its own engine technology. By next year, said company founder Dave Masten in a separate ISDC presentation, the company will be developing Xogdor, a vehicle capable of carrying payloads (but not people) to altitudes greater than 100 kilometers.
The next few years will see at least two new commercial spacecraft put into orbit.
Bigelow Aerospace is developing inflatable modules, but needs vehicles to get them to space.
it is not clear that NASA, FAA, or anyone else is prepared to adequately specify the standards to which commercial vehicles will be held under President Obama's plan. there are existing commercial space standards, but those are largely directed at experimental efforts or the "space tourism" suborbital business, which is not the same thing at all. major changes to specs late in development will cause massive costs - this is largely what drives the high cost of "government" space systems (which are all commercially-developed, but to direct government order and spec). what is really going on here that is different than what was happening before, except that we no longer have a defined goal and timetable in which to achieve it. I think that Scott Pace is correct in most respects on his comments, and Neil Armstrong was dead right in his testimony. we have no reason to give up human spaceflight, but for all practical intents and purposes, we have.
Guest (DennisB)
I am not a big Obama fan, but in this case he is pushing to let small, mid and large sized companies outside of NASA make the technology.
In this respect he is doing exactly opposite of what he is trying to do with the rest of the economy, which is to centralize it with the Federal Government....
If NASA does not freak out the first time things go wrong (it is space flight after all, the shuttle had a 1:60 chance of not making it) and stay this course they may develop a bunch of company's that will push space flight forward, rapidly.
As opposed to what they had been doing for the last three decades with the shuttle.....
a very positive outlook, but I think perhaps a bit too optomistic. President Obama is not really doing the opposite he is doing elsewhere in government - he is doing the same. he states that he will "depend on the private sector," but what he is functionally doing is getting those companies to depend on Federal government funding, rather than following a true commercial path. he is looking to addict the "New Space" companies to the crack of Federal funding so that he can control them. if they continued trying to step out on their own in a free market, he would not have that control.
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
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GaryB
119 Comments
Risk-Reward
To get to commercial space flight, maybe we have to accept that some of the early pioneers are going to die in accidents. How would commercial flight have happened if we had been so risk adverse?
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smithsomian
182 Comments
Re: Risk-Reward
but aviation developed in a pre-FDR, pre-LBJ, pre-BHO America, which was much less of a nanny state then. now we have a Central Government that wants to run each and every little aspect of our lives. expect the regulatory environment surrounding commercial space to become more, not less, intense.
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