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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
prizes
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
I'm guessing that wasn't on their radar screen...
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
Rutan already has that support. He is a regular participant in many military conferences and design studies.
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
shoot. and here I thought Adobe was going to give out little cheap plastic toys with Photoshop to encourage all the pirates to buy a legitimate copy.
On a side note, I used to use Painter a lot several years ago and was surprised to see it's still around.
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. . . .
Don't worry. You'd probably just wind up in the Land of the Giants if you went...
-- *My* journal is more interesting than *yours*...
Still, it was probably inevitable, and I certainly still wish them all the best luck possible.
expandfairuse.org
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
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
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"
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.
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 spent 5 years in Missouri for college, 3 in a rural town (population 20,000 something) the explanation I got for the difference in pronunciation was that those who were born and raised in Missouri pronounced it "Mizz-ooo-ruh" to differentiate themselves from "city-slickers" and those who were just residents of the State of Missouri.
I'm still not sure why its the "Show Me State" though.
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?
Cut him some slack, this is like his third language! He's from the midwest ore something
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
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