2 firms picked for private spaceship job http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060818/ap_on_sc/nasa_contracts
By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer Fri Aug 18, 7:59 PM ET WASHINGTON - With the hope of private spaceflight in the future, NASA on Friday chose two companies — both recovering from different failures — to develop a new commercial spaceship. The two companies would get a total of almost $500 million in "seed money" from NASA over the next five years to develop and test launch new spacecraft with the idea they would one day deliver cargo to the international space station. One company, Rocketplane Kistler of Oklahoma City, has formed a partnership with big-name companies, including Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin, with long aerospace histories. But Rocketplane emerged from bankruptcy last year. The other company, SpaceX of El Segundo, Calif., is funded by the Internet tycoon behind PayPal but had a flaming failure in its initial rocket launch earlier this year. The NASA deal would not only make the nation's space agency a regular customer, it would also give the companies a big start in getting their rocket businesses off the ground for private uses, including space tourism. Rocketplane Kistler already announced it would launch a couple into suborbit in 2008 for the first marriage in space. SpaceX has already sold a rocket launch to Bigelow Aerospace's planned private space station. Scott Horowitz, NASA's exploration chief who chose the two from a field of six competitors, said the two companies' recent setbacks weren't a problem because failure and high risk is part of the rocket business and the key is how you recover. "In some cases, failure is a good thing to have on your record because that learning is behind you," Horowitz said at a late Friday press conference. Rocketplane Kistler's beer bottle-shaped K-1 would launch and land over land, with Australia as the initial location of both, and the company's president is Randy Brinkley, who formerly oversaw space station operations at NASA. Eventually the firm would launch and land in Australia and the United States with possible launch sites in Florida, Nevada, Virginia and California, said executive vice president Will Trafton. Despite many years of aerospace history, Rocketplane hasn't launched a rocket yet, but its partners include veteran aerospace firms Orbital Sciences, Lockheed Martin, Aerojet and Northrup Grumman. SpaceX, a relative newcomer to the space field started by Elon Musk who sold PayPal for $1.5 billion, would put teardrop Dragon capsules (named after the '60s icon Puff The Magic Dragon) on top of its Falcon rockets (named after Star Wars' Millennium Falcon). The rockets now launch from the Pacific island atoll Kwalajein, and land in water there, but eventually would use Cape Canaveral, Musk said. Both companies would use a combination of liquid oxygen and souped-up kerosene as fuel and be completely reusable. SpaceX chief executive Musk said that even though his initial launch this March of the Falcon 1 had a fuel leak and fire that lost the rocket, it wasn't a failure for the Defense Department which sponsored his launch. He said the purpose of the mission was to gather data on its launch. Rocketplane Kistler's Trafton said his company's financial problems were in the past and it now has "a very solid business case going forward." NASA and officials at the two firms said the key to the new plans is making sending anything into orbit — cargo or people — much cheaper than it is now. "Long-term I would like to make space accessible to the general public," said Musk. In the short run, he figures he will charge somewhere less than $10 million per person for space tourists — Russia through a private company now charges $20 million a person. The first job of the new ships — if they are developed — will be to haul cargo to the space station. Then, they can be updated to carry people. If that's accomplished, NASA's future new Crew Exploration Vehicle can focus on its mission of returning people to the moon. Also, the cost of carrying cargo into orbit will drop significantly because of this program, Trafton said. But some remain skeptical. "I'm tired of hearing that; it never comes true," said longtime space analyst John Pike of Globalsecurity.org, an independent research group. "There have been no improvements of per-pound launch costs since John Kennedy was president ... I think it's just going to be a good way to burn up a bunch of money." ___ On the net NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/home/index.html Rocketplane Kistler: http://www.rocketplane.com/home.asp SpaceX: http://www.spacex.com/ -- Greg Williams K4HSM [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.twiar.org http://www.etskywarn.net _______________________________________________ Medianews mailing list [email protected] http://twiar.org/mailman/listinfo/medianews_twiar.org Archives at http://twiar.org/pipermail/medianews_twiar.org/
