Slashdot Mirror
Northrop Grumman to own Scaled Composites
Dolphinzilla writes "According to Space.com, Northrop Grumman Corporation agreed on July 5 to increase its stake in Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites (designers of Space Ship One, Proteus) from 40 percent to 100 percent. They have purchased the company outright, marking a new future for the space pioneering firm. 'Scaled Composites currently is working with Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic venture on a vehicle designated for now as SpaceShipTwo, which would carry two pilots and six paying passengers into suborbital space for a few minutes of weightlessness. The company also is building a new carrier aircraft, dubbed WhiteKnight2, that will carry SpaceShipTwo to an altitude of 15 kilometers before releasing it to soar to suborbital space. The two companies last year formed a joint venture called the Spaceship Company to build the new vehicles.'"
guess this means Bert Rutan has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams, and The Establishment has come around to his way of thinking.
this also has the faint smell of "NASA can't cut it any more, their memoes all blow up."
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I'd seriously want at least 15 minutes. Granted, I will never have the money for something like this until I'm very old(if it becomes cheap).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaled_Composites_Spa ceShipTwo
While this is probably great for Scaled from a cash perspective - it is truly saddening for the space industry. Scaled has been for nearly the last decade pushing into areas where private firms have not been able to go in the past. They innovated and created a workable solution for "mass" sub orbital flights. Ultimately the next steps are going to be push to LEO - and beyond. I fear however that the innovation and creative problem solving that has defined Scaled to date is no longer going to continue. Despite the company's best wishes - they will no longer have the ability to take the risks and make the decisions necessary to continue innovating.
We will most likley see Scaled develop into a robust provider for Sub Orbital flights but I doubt that they will attempt to push further.
Best of luck to Rutan with establishing another aero company if he wants to...
-b.
I applaud attempts to create a tourism of space, but so far there is nothing especially interesting in the presented solutions. They are just building smaller and cheaper rockets. These "space ships" don't even achieve stable orbits. They're basically only throwing a large object high enough that it needs a few minutes to fall back. So besides the nice view and the temporary weightlessness (which can be achieved by an airplane), there's nothing special about it.
What I would like to see is some truly innovative solutions. Things that bring us closer to a conquest of space. Contests such as the X Prize should focus on that instead of giving money away for stuff that's been done 50 years ago.
..under contract through the USPS; he works with mainframes.
:)
But of course, anytime he has a problem with his PC, he comes to me
the lack of creativity is astounding.
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. -- George Carlin
If Northrop Grumman puts its resources behind him, he will have the backing of one of the three largest defense contractors in the United States. This could be a very big coup for him, as it would allow him to dip into not only their resources, but ability to get support from the US military and intelligence services, both of which have many good reasons to support his work.
The Slashdot story needs translation. Probably something like this, in my opinion:
"Northrop Grumman Corporation top managers decided they were bored with their regular business. They decided to buy a business they can talk about at parties. Of course, they have nothing creative to contribute. They are contributing only money. So, they will degrade Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites with their company politics, their need to be seen as important, and their general disinterest in doing the real work."
In any case, keep at it, Burt.
"... one of the three largest defense contractors in the United States."
That means, "one of the three largest organizations that make tools for killing other people".
Organizations that support killing other people are never creative. They survive in the murky secret world of government contracts, where it is corruption that wins, never idealism.
Combining a highly creative company with a company whose purpose is largely to make violence more efficient will only destroy the creativity.
"If Northrop Grumman puts its resources behind him..."
They are not putting resources behind him. They bought the company. Burt Rutan is now just one of the resources. If he is like other executives of bought companies, he will leave within two years.
Well, Scaled specialized in suborbital, and suborbital is a bit of a dead end without any clear relationship to orbital flight. Suborbital is all about launching as straight up as possible, and achieving maximum altitude with minimum expenditure of energy. You don't particularly care how fast you're going, so long as you reach your altitude.
But getting to orbit is defined by achieving orbital velocity, not any particular altitude. (You can achieve orbital velocity at ground level if you want to, if you have the thermal protection to survive the subsequent scorching transit of the atmosphere.) My impression is that Rutan and Scaled used their natural strengths -- designs that are very efficient at staying up in the air with minimum energy -- in the race for suborbital. But those natural strengths don't really apply to orbital flight, where the issues revolve around achieving economical hypersonic velocities and finding good but sturdy and cheap thermal protection systems.
So perhaps Rutan and the senior leadership concluded that they'd done all the innovating they could see their way clear to, in suborbital flight, and it was time to sell and move on, leaving behind a capable but fairly boring suborbital company. That might be a wise move. A man who doesn't know his limits can easily take his company, very successful in limited area X, and pilot it straight into the ground pursuing quixotic goal Y.
quixotic??? wow. kudos. haven't seen that word in a while.
Rutan has done a lot of work for Northrop before, he built scaled RCS models of the B2 bomber, for example.
Given that is *highly* classified work there must have been close ties, and high levels of trust involved between both parties for some time. This could be good news, to open up space proper the bigger aerospace companies need to get in on the act - just hope they don't stifle Rutan's creativity in the process.
I work for one of the other mega-aerospace companies, and it's a wonder that anything we build ever flies after it's been through the cogs of the bureaucracy (to say nothing of the added blanket of the government customer). It's a shame that an outfit as innovative and down to earth (if you'll forgive the analogy) as Scaled Composites will inevitably be larded down with all the little empires and big nonsense of aero-bureaucracy.
Possibilities like, Space Ship 3 is stealthy and doesn't carry passengers... I think my NOC stock just went up.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Having worked at Scaled Composites in Montrose, CO I must say that the writing is probably on the wall for the Mojave Company. You probably haven't heard of a Montrose branch. That's because after having trouble with our bottom line being in cahoots with Burt Rutan we found a large company to buy us out and when our bottom line failed to improve we were bought out by another larger company. When the bottom line failed to satisfy the larger company we closed our doors and a fine r&d company with a lot of talented engineers and fabricators ceased to exist. Burt Rutan and many other people including some of our engineers are cutting edge innovators and people like them are the reason our country is so great but they are finding it harder and harder to develop new technologies and to be inventive because the big money companies that now own almost everything squeeze them out of their budgets. I think the solution is for the small companies to resist selling out to large corporations and continue their cutting edge work while taking on enough boring jobs to keep their bills and workforce paid. Too often today, companies are formed with the idea that if they show promise and profitability, they can sell out for a profit. I hope that Burt Rutan can continue to do what he does best and I'm fairly confident that, given his drive, talent, and inteligence he'll do whatever he needs to go on innovating and exploring new things.
They might as well have been purchased by the US Government. I guess we'll never see private space flight.
Probably at the county jail, being anonymous and all.
Infuriate left and right
Spacedev is still out there. They first came to my attention a few months ago when they agreed to house Bussard's electrostatic fusion experimental rig. No idea if they still have it, but it's an interesting little space company in the same general niche that SC is/was
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
You hear a lot about Lockheed Martin's "Skunk Works", but Northrop Grumman keeps a lower profile in the "Crazy Ideas That Just Might Work" department. Perhaps they're looking to change that.
YAY! My Employer bought them!
Now to get a transfer!!!
Ah yes, because nothing improves news more than pointless conjecture and outright fiction.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Rutan is a great "proof of concept" guy, but given personal experiences with some of his products, he really does need to hand off development of finished systems to someone else. Not to say northrop is the answer, just that doing your drawings on the back of a cocktail napkin only gets you so far.. even 80% of the way, but that last 20% has to have a lot more rigor.
Rutan has been doing work for Northrop for many years. I believe as far back as the 80s. This deal is no surprise.
Didn't Lockheed win the contract to build the Space Shuttle replacement vehicle? If so, this could be Northrop's bid to compete by pursuing the commercial sector...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Still, it was probably inevitable, and I certainly still wish them all the best luck possible.
expandfairuse.org
FWIW, I'm from the midwest and that is the way we were taught to spell potatoe and tomatoe. I don't know if it is a rural thing, a midwest thing or what, but I never understood why folks got into such a tizzy over the spelling. And the reason is exactly as you state, it is the proper way to make the preceding vowel a long sound.
Of course, in the US electronic media, we get our "culture" (that the rest of the planet judges us by, most unfortunately) from only two places, Los Angeles/Hollywood and New York City, so that might explain it, megaurban speak -> "tuh-mate-uhh" or "puh-ta-tuh" is how they apparently pronounce them, so I guess they can throw any sort of spelling out there and it wouldn't matter a whole lot.
Heh, now in the rural south where I live now it is "materz" and "taterz", and if I had to spell them-well, I just did!
More regional linguistic *weirdness*, consider the state of Missouri (I lived there once, I found this quite funny after I moved there). Rural areas pronounce it "Mizz-urr-uhh", whereas the urban areas there pronounce it "Mizz-urr-ee", and NO where do they pronounce it "Mizz-urr-aye" which is what you would think it would be just looking at the spelling if you had never seen it or heard the name before.
So, basically, what you're saying is that a new, fresh company sold out to and older behemoth. Does this mean the end of new, fresh ideas from Burt Rutan?
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
But now he has to deal with 6-Sigma. Innovation is discarded.
You know, I really was wondering what Northrop Grumman was doing buying this company. Because by any measure the number of people able or wanting to go to LEO has to be very limited. And I question the viability (or ROI) of using scaled composites as an advertising platform.
The only other thing I can think of was the developement of future military air/spacecraft, where this technology would have obvious applications.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Rutan himself said a while back the aerospace industry is going to hell, particularly in the commercial passenger aircraft category. While air taxi services may survive, the big airlines are doomed. The reason he says this is his profound belief in the future of VR/AR for business purposes. Once the bandwidth, protocols, and horsepower exist then business air travel will evaporate, and those big airlines are then screwed with little revenue and huge pension plans. Big aerospace will follow suit as the design groups necessary for large aircraft cease to be neccessary. The only things left then are airfreight, and giant IT/ERP/knowledgebase/CADCAM efforts to computerize the work of humans so they can lay them off and still have the engineering prowess necssary to make complex systems. Most of those efforts will go belly up though, since it's still a hard problem.
Now, Scaled was involved with some interesting work regarding short production run aircraft and single use manufacturing tools. Very interesting if you have a few dozen million dollars, and need to make something with very little paper trail.
I'm curious as to where exactly did Rutan's VR investment money went...
What I'm wondering is how related this full buyout is for defense related projects. USAF's B3 budget went black several years ago (YF03?) and this year USMC called for sub orbital troop transports (most be a few fans of "Aliens" in USMC think tanks;) means a defense contractor looking for contract would eye Scaled as critical to their proposal. OTOH, having such contracts paying for multi use technology would put NG into a prime position for civilian space transportation manufacturing. I'd say it's a huge win for NG, I'm not too sure on how well it goes for Burt, if he remains.
The militarization of space.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
... I don't know his motives, exactly, but I'm sure his age factors into it.
Anyone else thinking Scaled Composites is now fuxx0red?
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Northrop Grumman has been heavily involved in the Proteus program for several years now, and was looking at using an unmanned Proteus in production as their response for some DoD RFQ a short while back . And as previously noted, they did have 40% ownership prior to this announcement, and that would buy a fair amount of influence if that's what they were going for.
My guess is that NG wanted Scaled so they could wrap up Proteus whole cloth, and who knows, maybe even resurrect some older programs like ARES or ATTT, that Scaled had trouble getting DoD attention for back in the day. And with the cash infusion, Scaled will get the capital it probably needs to keep the SS2 program moving along and into low volume production, something you don't typicallly have to worry about with one-off prototypes that are their bread and butter.
One of the few companies likely to have the knowledge and balls to make cheap space flight possible is now owned by a company that has a real bottom-line incentive to keep spaceflight from getting too cheap.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Yes, owning only 40% of the company previously didn't give the executives enough to talk about at cocktail parties. NG does tons of real work.
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
I thought that Bert really hit the nail on the head. While he won the X-Prize with SS1, I think that White Knight represented the real innovation. Unfortunately, in the US if you want to make the big bucks you need to invent a more expensive weapon so it looks like his work will be turned to the detriment of Man. Ah well, maybe the Chinese will do some good with the idea.
In the meantime, Bert, thank you for letting us dream for a while.
This kind of thing has happened hundreds of times. My understanding is that historically in the last 20 years, when the buying company becomes an owner, and not just an investor:
1) The original executives of the bought company eventually leave, usually within 2 years.
2) The bought company declines rapidly.
If 1 happens, my understanding is that 2 will certainly happen. Hard to imagine Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites without Burt Rutan. His is a highly technical business that depends on accurate day-to-day management. Or can NG find a replacement for Burt Rutan? If they did find a replacement, would NG give enough power to that person?
This air/space craft first flew 48 years ago.
I don't know what the minimum turnaround time for flights actually was, but it should be noted that this was a research and development project. Things were constantly being changed to gather new data, try new parts, and push the flight envelope to new levels, and Space Ship One owes a lot to the research the X-15 conducted. The first man to enter space twice was flying an X-15 both times. By the way, the X-15 flew twice as fast as SS1 and was built in a time of much less mature rocket technology and without the benefit of advances in materials the space program has produced over the last 45 years. It accrued 199 flights on three aircraft.
And by the way, it would take a huge amount of modification to get Space Ship One into orbit, and it would never survive re-entry. It's maximum speed is about 2200 mph. Orbital velocity is about 17500 mph. That means SS1 has 1.6% of the kinetic energy required to reach orbit. Neglecting the fact that it must also lift the fuel part of the way there, it would need a minimum of 64 times as much fuel (about 40 times the plane's total mass) to reach orbit. This is extremely conservative, because SS1's engine is not very mass efficient (Rutan chose a safe design over a high performance one), and it would need to expend most of its fuel just lifting its own fuel. And ask any rocket engineer (or Elon Musk, for that matter) how "simple" of a design change going from a hybrid motor to a liquid fueled motor is.
You'd do well to educate yourself before calling people morons.