In May 1996, the X-Prize Foundation offered to pay $10 million to any non-governmental agency that could twice in two weeks launch a reusable, three-manned spacecraft 100km above the earth. Redubbed the "Anasari X-Prize" in May 2004, the prize sought to spur private innovation in manned spaceflight. On the 4 October 2004--the 47th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik 1--Burt Rutan and Paul Allen's Tier One Project claimed the prize with their space plane SpaceShipOne, essentially paving the way for non-governmental activity in space.
On 25 May 2012, Elon Musk's California-based Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) became the first private company to dock with and resupply the International Space Station. With its Dragon spacecraft, SpaceX is currently under contract with NASA to resupply the station 12 times for $1.6 billion. By 2015, SpaceX hopes to have a manned version of its Dragon capsule for delivering astronauts, as well as cargo, to the station.
In January 2013, NASA announced the signing of a $17.8 million contract with Bigelow Aerospace, a Las Vegas-based firm, to have an experimental inflatable module attached the International Space Station by 2015. Called the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), the technology has the potential to revolutionize space-based habitats, not only by vastly increasing the square-footage of future space stations, but also by dramatically reducing the cost of launching components into orbit.
And finally this past Sunday (21 April), Orbital Sciences--a 30-year-old aerospace company from Virginia--conducted a successful test of the Antares rocket, a platform designed to carry its Cygnus resupply ship. The company is currently under contract with NASA to fly eight resupply missions to the International Space Station for $1.9 billion.
Why do these matters of news interest us? Chiefly because they reveal an emerging and quite possibly thriving commercial space industry developing in the United States today. Barely nine years after the Anasari X-Prize was claimed, one private company (SpaceX) has already helped resupply the International Space Station, with a second firm not far behind. SpaceX is also developing a manned version of its Drago spacecraft, and has plans to cooperate with NASA on an unmanned mission to Mars in 2018. And as an extension of its plans to test an inflatable module on the International Space Station in 2015, Bigelow Aerospace already has plans to build extensive inflatable stations of its own (it already has two test stations in orbit).
That all this has happened within two decades of the X-Prize's first unveiling is somewhat surprising, given the virtual monopoly governments have had on spaceflight in the preceding four decades. What is more surprising, however, is how little this innovative private-public partnership is cited or explored by those looking to solve our country's looming challenges in healthcare, infrastructure, and education. Partisan arguments (to say nothing of Newt Gingrich's moon colony proposal) miss the point by enlisting an older, nationalist view of space exploration; said Mr. Gingrich on the campaign in January 2012, "By the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the moon. And it will be American." Yet if developments from the last ten years are any indication, space exploration (and commercialization) works well when private and public entities cooperate, each working problems for which they are best suited.
This approach informed President Obama's 2010 space policy. Among other things, it:
"...directed NASA to work toward getting astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid by 2025, then on to the vicinity of Mars by the mid-2030s [by] developing a huge rocket called the Space Launch System (SLS) and a crew capsule called Orion, which NASA hopes will begin carrying astronauts by 2021." Furthermore, "The Obama Administration has also encouraged NASA to hand over crew and cargo activities in low-Earth orbit to private American spaceflight firms. The goal is to have commercial spaceships fill the shoes of the space shuttle, whose July 2011 retirement was set in motion by the Bush Administration back in 2004" (source).
In other words, using the public-sector (NASA) to expand the boundaries of manned spaceflight, while seeding private-sector (SpaceX, Orbital Sciences, Bigelow Aerospace ect.) efforts to commercialize and reduce the cost of orbital delivery and habitation. The approach in concept seeks to take advantage of the strengths of each sector: public investment for important-albeit-not-immediately-profitable ventures, and private competition and innovation for improving efficiency and reducing costs. Both have their place, and commercial spaceflight in the United States today seems to provide a useful example of how such a partnership can work. It is a story warranting greater attention that it currently receives, and might serve as a model for future partnerships in other fields.
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