Slashdot Mirror
NASA Buying Private Companies' Suborbital Rocket Flights
FleaPlus writes "NASA is spending a total of $475,000, split between Masten Space Systems and John Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace, for a series of seven test flights of the companies' reusable suborbital rockets over the next several months, going to altitudes as high as 25 miles. NASA's goal is to foster a more cost-effective and flexible way to conduct microgravity and upper-atmosphere research. Jeff Bezos's suborbital spaceflight company Blue Origin has also been making steady progress this year on their $3.7M contract to test pusher-escape system and composite pressure vessel technologies, which NASA is interested in for orbital spaceflight."
What makes this more interesting is that NASA won't actually be paying for the flights until they have flown successfully, and although Armadillo and Masten have been working towards the kind of capability NASA wants, they've mostly been plotting their own course, which means NASA has actually bought something here without specifying the requirements in infinite detail - like they usually do.
How we know is more important than what we know.
You know, it's kind of funny. Lately with all the hub-ub regarding the closure of the shuttle program, the small launch companies have been getting a ton of publicity. We have companies like SpaceX and Orbital working their way into the medium and heavy lift rocket arenas. We have Blue Origin, Masten, Armadillo, and a half-dozen other small rocket/sounding rocket/propulsion companies developing launch platforms for low gravity environments (moon, Mars) and suborbital flights. One thing that I can't seem to find a lot of, however, is small, commercial payload companies. There are definitely a few. Companies like Clyde Space for instance are starting to offer available payloads on cubesat buses. There are also companies like Interorbital Sciences that are trying to push the small payload/tubesat architecture. And, of course, there are dozens of startups competing for the rover portion of the GLXP. Nonetheless, I would like to see more small satellite companies start cropping up. It seems like there would be a market for a company that could develop a common, reliable, small payload bus (about 250 - 500 kg) that could guarantee a mission life of XX many years and a power base of XX many kW that customers could mount scientific payloads on to test technologies, gather a bit of data, whatever.
I guess that I am surprised to see commercial launch companies getting so much publicity, while the market for commercial satellite buses remains so small. It would be cool to see a company do to satellites what SpaceX is trying to do the launch market. Surely some science communities out there would pay to gather 0 g data for some field or another...
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
It's great to hear that both of these companies are getting some needed funding! Armadillo has said outright that they have a goal of putting tourists into space and Masten has hinted at it. I for one look forward to lighting a rocket under my butt and launching myself out of the atmosphere.
Help me fix my brother's injured butt!
This is good news. This is capitalism in action, it's all thanks to capitalism. Free market, thank you free market.
$475,000
Not even a bump on a decimal point on a rounding error in NASA's budget. Signifies nothing.
I didn't know Jeff Bezos had a spaceflight company. Can we expect a flood of new patent applications where the idea ends with "in space"?
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
the pusher system is designed to push astronauts out of the way of danger.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Hopefully this will actually be cost effective. The space shuttle was a boondoggle "reusable" space ship that had to be rebuilt nearly from scratch every launch. I care not a whit about reusable, but I do care greatly about cost.
Take a look at Surrey Satellite Technology http://www.sstl.co.uk./ They have a selection of standard platforms and payloads (or BYO payload). Their standard platforms/payloads focus is EO and Comm/Nav, but not limited to those.
However, if you go to any of the majors, they'll also start with a standard bus; they just don't market that part heavily because the value/money is elsewhere. I doubt there are very many commercial sats/payloads built on a one-off/custom bus these days. Those that are most likely are relatively high volume (e.g., GPS, Iridium, etc.). (Hughes started doing that long ago for comm sats).
Before we know it these advanced pioneers of space flight might even get to 50 miles like the X-15 managed .... 40 years ago.
Sorry , this whole nasa using private contractors launchers thing just makes me weep. Its like someone is rolling the clock backwards. What next - they proudly announce they're using private contactors to get them to 30,000 feet?
This is the next step to the stars, folks.
Not by government-funded scientists and dreamers, but by entrepreneurs.
Government funding is still driving the process; what we're seeing here is the handoff.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
40 years ago men had gone to the moon, the X-15 was already flying 50 years ago.
However, the X-15 needed the infrastructure of the USAF. It was launched from the wing of a B-52 bomber and landed on the dry lake bed at Edwards AFB. Probably, adjusted for inflation, $475,000 would be the cost of a single flight of the X-15.
Progressives will love this because it's populist, and they hate traditional NASA programs because they "take" funds that could be used for social programs. But it puts money in the pockets of capitalists, and adds "carbon" to the atmosphere. What to do!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
"The first X-15 flight was an unpowered test flight by Scott Crossfield, on 8 June 1959", which was 51 years ago.
Free Martian Whores!
Yes , 50 , typo.
With NASAs supposed 60 years experience building something like the X15 should be a no brainer now so it would probably
cost a lot less than 475K a flight.
This is nothing to do with furthering space technology and everything to do with the accountants being in charge.
Since Clementine was launched from Vandenberg AFB on a Titan II, I'm going to speculate that the USAF launched it.
....like the X-15 managed .... 40 years ago.
The fatal flaw of the X-15 design was that it was a government funded prototype. If Congressional budget hearings have taught me anything during my short time on this planet, it's that the federal government cannot be trusted to properly fund high-risk, high-gain ventures. The X-15 was a great vehicle, like many military and NASA vehicles before it. Nonetheless, it failed spectacularly because Congress controlled it's budget.
That said, the sooner space access can be liberated from the choke-hold of congressional funding, the sooner you and I will be able to take a vacation to Mars.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
If you can design, build, fuel, fly, and safely land an X-15 for under a half million dollars, I would be incredibly impressed too. I don't think the price of an X-15 flight, even in the 1960's, was a half million dollars, much less trying to build one of those vehicles.
It is the cost here, not the bleeding edge achievement that is the big deal. Go ahead and spend the $100-$200 billion that has been projected merely to get a vehicle built that could go to Mars (the current projected cost of completing the Constellation vehicles). Far too long NASA has been about trying to get the best performance and setting records. They certainly haven't been about getting up into space on the cheap.
For myself, I say NASA should be doing more stuff like this.