New vs. old space

Damon Monty, Westerly, RI — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 11:14:47 GMT

How many people will the rocket plane hold?

New vs. old space

Lee Catoe, Chapel Hill, NC — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 12:43:53 GMT

I'm sure a private company could make a usable space vehicle and lease it to NASA for a lot less money than NASA would spend developing their own. I'm not sure if this is correct, but it costs NASA around $500 million each time the shuttle launches. I'm no rocket scientist, but give me half a billion dollars to throw at the problem and I'll hire a few and we'll come up with something that works!

New vs. old space

Jim, Houston Texas — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 14:21:05 GMT

Wasn't that the NASA strategy behind X-33/Venturestar? Firms like Lockheed were suppose to use private capital to build the shuttle’s replacement and then NASA would purchase launch services. However when Lockheed couldn’t raise the money in capital markets, and faced having to invest additional money to solve a development problem with the new fuel tanks, the project was scrapped and NASA was left with the aging Shuttle as a result. How is COTS different? What’s to prevent a similar problem this time around?

America needs a Shuttle replacement and they need one now! And the only sure way to get one is if NASA builds it. Sure it will cost money, spaceflight isn’t cheap. But it’s a far surer strategy to have NASA build it directly, just as NASA did with Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and Shuttle, then keep experimenting with private providers like its has been doing for the last decade.

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” Ben Franklin

New vs. old space

Craig, Seattle — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 16:35:13 GMT

NASA is going to make bureaucracies out of all these promising start-ups. The seed money sounds good, but no 'start-ups' made it this far anyway. Everyone here was well on their way to space without this headache. If you want orbital expertise, hire it.

New vs. old space

Talldave — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 16:53:28 GMT

Let NASA work on interplanetary craft. Orbital stuff is commercial now, and the government is never able to compete with private enterprise on efficiency.

New vs. old space

Antonio Elias, McLean, VA — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 16:57:17 GMT

Wow! September 2, 1986 I walked into the 10-office suite that housed Orbital Sciences Corporation; I was the 20th employee, counting Dave Thompson and the receptionist. April 5, 1990 we flew a completely privately-funded space launcher (and made it to orbit on the first try, I may add) called Pegasus (no, DARPA did NOT pay for its development). A few short years later, we were the first company in the U.S. to launch on our rocket a satellite also built by us. To this date, we build dozens of small launchers and satellites a year with less than 3,000 employees... and we are "Old Space"???!!! Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites was more than twice our size in 1986!!!... is Burt "Old Aerospace"?

Let me see... where did I leave my bottle of "Grecian Formula"?...

New vs. old space

Alan Boyle — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 18:06:54 GMT

Heh, that's a point well taken, Antonio. Guess it goes to show that the line is even blurrier. I know the "new space" proponents will want to chime in with their distinctions (cost-plus basis vs. pay-for-services basis, radical reduction in launch costs, emphasis on wider space applications such as tourism, etc.), but there is definitely a spectrum of aerospace companies rather than a hard line between new and old. Some might even say "old space" companies are simply the companies that can support themselves the old-fashioned way, through traditional capital markets. Those gray hairs don't make you look old ... just distinguished. ;-)

New vs. old space

Monte Davis — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 21:13:28 GMT

Antonio: I've asked some of the most outspoken New Space advocates why *they* don't talk about OSC (or at any rate, not 1/10th as often as they extol the prospects of startups that have yet to launch anything.)

As I haven't received an answer that makes sense, I can only conclude that you're disqualified because you launch real hardware, not PowerPoints... in a real marketplace, not the far bigger, far lower-cost marketplace that's just about to appear (and has been since I started covering space 30+ years ago).

Get over that, and you too can be in the vanguard.

New vs. old space

Robin, Van Nuys, Calif. — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 05:16:51 GMT

Alan, I think you're correct to call OSC Old Space. From a 1990 book called Space Enterprise Beyond NASA by David Gump: "...several private rocket companies aren't promising low costs per pound. [...] The Pegasus project became public in 1988 when OSC won a DARPA contract for $6.3 million. The cost per pound was $10,000, triple the cost of a large Titan or Atlas booster. OSC hopes Pegasus can win customers on convenience rather than per-pound efficency."

New Space companies are the ones that bring down the cost of getting to orbit. Anyway, that's my definition.

New vs. old space

Monte Davis — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 09:39:30 GMT

Robin: Thanks for illustrating my point by citing a 16-year-old (!) prediction that cost to orbit would drop Real Soon Now. Similar expectations had been expressed over the decades before *that* by Truax, Kayser, Hudson et al.

I respect the expertise and ambition of many of those involved in the New Space startups. What I'm objecting to is the attitude (more common among "fans" than among those in the trenches) that big breakthroughs are just around the corner, blocked only by inefficient NASA or stodgy Big Aerospace.

In fact, the obstacles to cheaper access to space are a gnarly combination of engineering *and* economics *and* public policy. They're going to be overcome slowly, in small increments, not by any silver-bullet breakthrough.

New vs. old space

Thomas Ashby — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 06:23:07 GMT

Well Nancy, Bigalow's on the right course.