Space For Sale: Private Space Bosses Are Leading A New Era

America’s space agency takes another step to privatize the final frontier. Things will never be the same.

Space for Sale: Private Space Bosses are Leading a New Era

Fans of the Alien movie franchise are familiar with the Hollywood trope of the evil mega-corporation. Space corporations may not yet operate interstellar commercial freighters like the Nostromo (yet), but on January 14 they got a boost that would delight even the Weyland-Yutani Corporation when America's space agency took another step in privatizing the final frontier. NASA announced the winners in a second round of private sector competition to resupply the International Space Station (ISS). The move furthers private access to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) — an altitude once literally beyond the grasp of corporate America. New as it may sound, we've travelled this road before. NASA's privitazation policy is reminicent of early 20th Century government contracts for airmail service, successfully building a private American aviation sector which to this day remains a world leader. Privatization has its critics, but the public policy and private personalities propelling it will forever change our relationship with space.

The Commercial Resupply Services 2 (CRS2) awards went to three companies — Orbital ATK, which in an earlier form supplied the Space Shuttle's solid rocket boosters, and two relative newcomers, Sierra Nevada and SpaceX. But all are greenhorns when compared to their competition, Boeing and Lockheed, both of which fell out of the CRS2 race some time ago. Each winner will provide a minimum of six launches to ISS between 2019 and 2024. SpaceX and Orbital have been sending cargo to the Station since 2012 and 2013 respectively under CRS1 contracts.

The cargo program doesn't get all the love. NASA also has a plan for rebuilding America's ability to lift people into space via private spacefaring firms, though the political commitment to it has been halting and uneven. Initially, the Shuttle fleet (retired in 2011) was to be replaced by the Ares series of rockets, paired with a new crewed spacecraft called Orion, in an effort put forth by George W. Bush in 2005. Under this plan, Orion would fly by 2014 and ferry astronauts and cargo to and from the Station. It would also be capable, in different configurations, of flying people back to the moon and ultimately on to Mars. A "sustained" human presence on the moon would begin by 2020 and the whole effort would promote international cooperation.

The program — the rockets, the spacecraft and the plan of exploration which they would enable— was called Constellation and for a time it seemed like Apollo 2.0. Constellation, however, had the misfortune of lacking John Kennedy and a Cold War to fuel its ambitions. Its lifespan was short, and after President Barack Obama pulled the plug in 2010, NASA announced the Commercial Crew Program (CCP), which would use private firms to develop and operate space taxis to ISS. As of this writing, two contenders remain — Boeing and SpaceX — both progressing toward the certification needed to fly astronauts to LEO. SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule will launch atop its own Falcon 9 rocket while Boeing plans to pair its Starliner with a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V booster (Boeing and Lockheed are partners in ULA). Neither of these vehicles or their boosters have yet been rated for human spaceflight, though with its successful cargo flights, Dragon has had the loudest roar to date. NASA has allocated $6.8 billion in the latest round of funding for private space taxis, roughly the cost of thirteen average Shuttle flights.

The 2010 US National Space Policy anticipated strong public/private collaboration in pursuit of new technologies, advanced propulsion and new spaceflight concepts. The quest for new space technologies was in fact a driver behind the Obama Administration's decision to cancel Constellation (since it did not want to pay for both Constellation, which it considered over budget and unworkable, and increased R&D on new technologies). But the drive toward commercialization that Obama's space policy highlights brings unknown risks as well. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty (OST), to which the United States and all other spacefaring nations are signatories, notes that celestial bodies cannot be appropriated by nations. Furthermore governments are obliged to authorize and supervise the space operations of non-government actors, such as space mining firms.

In the United States, the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004 was designed to promote a private human spaceflight industry. The act clarified the regulatory environment for suborbital flight, empowering the Federal Aviation Administration to oversee this industry, issuing permits and determining safety standards. International safety standards do not yet exist, which is one drag on the space tourism business. Then just before Thanksgiving 2015, President Obama altered the commercial space landscape yet again by signing the Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act. Most of the press attention around the act relates to the fact that it grants private firms the rights to own and sell any minerals or other matierials they may mine from asterioids or other space bodies (though not the rights to the bodies themselves). The Act says that these things must be done in a way that conforms with US law and US treaty obligations, in a nod to the OST. It remains to be seen how other OST signatories will react to the Act.

The Act takes a number of other steps as well. It formally extends the life of the International Space Station through 2024, which the president had previously announced. Canada and Russia have already agreed to the extenstion but Europe and Japan remain mum.

For commercial space, the Act contains even more benefits. Currently, the FAA is prohibited from enacting new regulations for the commercial human spaceflight business, but this prohibition would have ended in March 2016. The Act extends this no-new-regulations "learning period" for commercial human spaceflight through September 2023. It also extends third part indemnification for private launch services firms through September 2025.

Although the OST has always required governments to oversee private activity in space, this recent uptick in commercial interest and activity give the matter new urgency. The Act therefore directs the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to determine how the government will chaperone private space firms.

As these legal changes demonstrate, the increasing movement of commercial actors into areas previously only the purview of sovereign nations is changing the economic and technological landscapes too. The development of private spacecraft and the commercial availability of global satellite navigation are both examples of this trend. One reason is cost. At one time, only national governments could afford to develop the technologies needed to fly in space. Today, spacecraft can be built with more commonplace, commercially-available components. Moreover, because of the long development time of spacecraft and the need for components to be space-rated (meaning they can survive in the hostile environment of space) compared with the overall speed of technological advancement on the ground, space assets can often be fielded using technologies that are two to three generations behind the state-of-the-art.

But for all their government-funded access to a vast new market, the entrepreneurs driving the commercialization of space are schizophrenic when it comes to their public spacefaring partners. They are on the one hand only too happy to absorb massive public subsidies. On the other, they seem to think governments too indecisive, too timid or simply too unimaginative to confront our problems in space or to push human exploration back to the moon and on to Mars. They are therefore doing it themselves. "The way we're going, we'll never get started," Inspiration Mars founder Dennis Tito said at the May 2013 Humans 2 Mars Summit, in reference to the way national space agencies are pursuing human flights to Mars. "It's time for us to take the first step." Inspiration Mars still says it will take that step by 2018, sending a Mars fly-by mission, much as the Apollo 8 flight in 1968 orbited the moon in advance of an attempt to land. This timetable seems most unlikely for several reasons, including the fact that neither NASA's monstrous Space Launch System rocket nor the more robust version of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket could be available in time. It's possible a combination of launches could work, with, say, ULA's Atlas 5 lifting the fuel for a round-trip to Mars and a Delta 4 Heavy carrying the crew.

Nonetheless, this zealous timetable puts private companies actively pursuing plans for human Mars missions during roughly the same time frame that NASA only plans to send a second Mars Curiosity-type rover to the Red Planet.

Hard to believe, but an even more fanciful push for Mars is underway courtesy of a Dutch not-for-profit organization called Mars One, whose goal is a permanent human colony on the Red Planet beginning in 2026. More than 100,000 people have applied to Mars One to take the one-way trip, including 30,000 Americans. The group says they will cover that $6 billion tab for the first mission with commercial sponsors and media that will pay for the rights to broadcast anything and everything related to the mission, its crew and their life on the trip and then on the surface of Mars.

Despite these dreams, the habitat, radiation shielding, medical care and psychological challenges of such a long-term mission are years from being worked out. Even with the Space Launch System in development, no rocket booster built since the giant Saturn V last flew in the early 1970s has been powerful enough to break free from Earth orbit with people on board. Nonetheless, the private interests driving such ambitions are remarkable mostly because they outstrip the appetite of every sovereign nation on Earth.

In the nascent space tourism business, SpaceShipOne, the first manned private spacecraft, took to suborbital flight in 2004. Subsequently the VSS Enterprise (formerly known as SpaceShipTwo), operated by Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, broke up over the Mojave Desert in 2014, killing a pilot. Ultimately, Virgin expects that a ride into suborbital space will cost $200,000, but there's no need to line up at the gate just yet. While the space tourism business has generated significant press attention and made remarkable progress in a short time, not everyone is starry eyed by the prospect. Fictional space captain William Shatner whose USS Enterprise is the namesake of Sir Richard's new spaceship, famously declined Branson's offer to buy a ticket into space. "I'm interested in man's march into the unknown but to vomit in space is not my idea of a good time," Shatner said at the time. "Neither is a fiery crash with the vomit hovering over me."

The one percent may well aspire to suborbital tourism rather than yet another tedious jaunt to Aruba, but to confront the serious issues we face in space, others are leading the way. For the moment, the star of commercial space is the energetic Elon Musk. Musk made his fortune building, then selling, PayPal, a service that revolutionized commerce on the Internet. Now Musk is at the helm of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, pushing both electric cars and spaceflight forward. Depending on whom one talks to, Musk is either Tony Stark, Howard Hughes or any number of Bond villains. The best archetype is probably Hughes, not least of all because he was not fictional. Hughes' imagination, technical prowess, business acumen and riches were hugely influential in the development of air travel and aerospace. Musk may ultimately play a similar role in the development of space travel. He says he is driven by a desire to combat climate change and to colonize Mars, permanently and quickly. Musk believes that spaceflight and the human colonization of Mars are critical to humanity's survival and, in a sentiment that seems commonplace among the commercial titans of space, he thinks time is of the essence.

That impatience, a sense of urgency to make humanity a multi-planet civilization and to do it quickly separates the private space bosses from their government counterparts. But of course they need government money to make it all work. Saving humanity may work well for all the ages, but a for-profit enterprise needs to make the numbers work a bit sooner. Musk's SpaceX relies heavily on government subsidies, as did Howard Hughes' enterprises in his day. Unlike Hughes, who was an accomplished pilot, Musk won't be piloting a flight to Mars, but he does want to make the trip. "It would be pretty cool to die on Mars — just not on impact," Musk has said.

Perhaps the most significant contribution SpaceX has made to date was the successful Vertical Takeoff and Vertical Landing (VTVL) flight of its Falcon 9 rocket in December 2015. The opportunities created by reusable VTVL rocket boosters are monumental. Building a reliable VTVL booster would transform the economics of spaceflight. A month earlier, Jeff Besos' Blue Origin succeeded in a VTVL test with its New Shepard booster. The SpaceX test was a far greater technical achievement, but both are landmarks in spaceflight. Most importantly, private firms, not national space agencies, are leading the new VTVL era.

And the push of private firms developing new space technologies is not limited to America. Across the pond, British aerospace firm Reaction Engines says it is developing a Single Stage to Orbit (SSTO) spacecraft called Skylon. SSTO is system with, as the name suggests, no staging — that is, no booster stages that fall away after their fuel is exhausted. The same launch configuration that lifts off the ground returns to Earth when the mission is complete. Like the public largess its American cousins rely on, Reaction Engines is building its space ambitions with $100 million from UK Space and the European Space Agency. As envisioned, the fully-reusable Skylon will take off and land like a plane and carry twice as much cargo to ISS as Europe's robotic freighter, the single-use Automated Transfer Vehicle, does today. Key to the concept are Skylon's two Synergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engines (SABREs), which could be tested by 2020.

The hybrid SABRE technology is the key to an SSTO spacecraft. Jet engines intake air to create combustion, but rockets are designed to operate in an environment without air, so they have to carry all their fuel with them, including oxygen — this is one reason that rockets are so large and heavy. Like a jet, SABRE gets its oxygen through intakes while in the thicker lower atmosphere. But after reaching five times the speed of sound (almost 4,000 mph) and about 85,000 feet, Skylon transitions to liquid oxygen to power it into orbit.

Like VTVL rockets, the SSTO transition from air-breathing flight to rocket flight creates vast technical challenges. For the moment, the private sector — with significant public funding — is leading the way in these technological innovations.

Other private entities are ploughing new ground as well. Planetary Resources, the Bellevue, Washington-based, self-described asteroid mining company launched with great fanfare in 2012 to unlock the mineral resources of the solar system, a scheme made all the more possible by the 2015 Commercial Space Act. The company has received funding both from NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that is substantial, if not yet decisive in its plans. Another American company called Skycorp plans to save satellites in geosynchronous orbits from becoming more space junk once they have expended all the fuel which allows them to make the orbital corrections needed to hover above a fixed point on the ground. Skycorp's Space Life Extension System is essentially a jet pack for ailing satellites. The idea is that this system could fly to a sickly satellite, latch on and keep it in the proper orbit for as much as another decade, all for far less cost than orbiting a replacement. DARPA, which works to maintain America's military edge in technology, has similar plans. The ability to recycle satellites of all kinds has broad appeal in terms of cost and limiting the creation of new space junk. The interest of the US military in extending the life of commercial spacecraft as well as its own is also understandable — 80% of US military communications are carried on commercial satellites.

Another private actor, the B612 Foundation says that its mission to defend Earth against an asteroid impact can happen quicker and with more cost efficiency because it is a "private organization is that it is not bound by federal procurement regulations," as Dr. Edward T. Lu, Chairman and CEO of B612, told the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation in March 2013. His Foundation's ability to pursue the best approach and contractor for its Sentinel mission free from the cumbersome and lengthly federal process is a significant advantage, he says. The same is true, Lu says, of B612's plan to use "high-heritage" existing hardware such as that used for NASA's proven Kepler and Spitzer spacecraft for the Foundation's Sentinel mission.

Lu also says that the arrangement between B612 and the primary contractor for Sentinel is less onerous than the typical NASA large mission, but their system works because of a small, experienced teams on both sides and because they will use proven NASA hardware designs. All these elements in tandem will allow Sentinel to fly much sooner and for less cost than if it was a public space agency mission.

These are only a few examples of how the creativity of the commercial sector has been unleashed in space. The significance of the growth in commercial space can't be overstated as an element the new American space policy adopted under President Obama, even if the ultimate results of it remain unclear.

For better or worse, the commercialization of space is well underway. Private interests are fueling a new era in spaceflight with energy, innovation and money at a time when space activities (aside from military operations) remain a low priority for national governments. But commercial space has high-profile critics. Some argue that "commercial space" is both a misnomer and a misplacement of the public trust in private hands.

In Part 2 we will examine these critiques.