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.'"

Comments

Re:This is unfortunate

[cyclone96]

I fear however that the innovation and creative problem solving that has defined Scaled to date is no longer going to continue.

I'm not sure it's quite as bad as you fear, it's possible that Northrup-Grumman will continue in that tradition.

The challenge with these very small, innovative space companies is that their model (which is a small group of really smart guys working very hard without a lot of support overhead) can only scale up so far. At some point the products they are creating get complex enough where you hit critical mass and start needing groups to specialize in things like analysis, integration, customer support, systems integration, etc.

This is what large aerospace companies are good at. You might call this a bloated support structure, but it's the only way that the industry has found to develop really big, complex, and profitable aircraft and spacecraft (which is what a passenger ship to LEO would be). They haven't yet found a way to build a high complexity, profitable product like a Boeing 777 airliner or a Boeing 702 satellite with a small shop.

Orbital Sciences, for example, has evolved from a small company with a few neat ideas back in the 80's (in particular, the air launched Pegasus) into a major player in the aerospace world, and it is structured like Boeing, Northrup, and LockMart today.

I consider this a positive evolution of the great ideas Scaled Composites has demonstrated into something that can be built and be a commercial success.

Compete with Lockheed?

[fahrbot-bot]

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...