In my last post I extolled the virtues of Burt Rutan and the awesomnosity that his contribution not only to aerospace, but to private spaceflight, a tirade that was spawned by this CNN video. Now I would like to take a look at the entire issue of that private space flight.
NASA is one of my favorite things. When Kennedy told the world that he was going to put a man on the moon “not because it is easy, but because it is hard,” there was bound to be much groaning and forehead slapping in congress. NASA was formed and took it upon themselves to accomplish this mission; which they did in grand fashion with the Saturn V launch vehicle. Now, decades later, America is sitting on its technological haunches pouring billions of dollars into the orbiting boondoggle that is the International Space Station while holding it’s breath waiting for the next Space Shuttle to explode. This is no way for the most advanced space-faring nation on the planet to exist.
Now I am more than okay with spending the money on a national space program. The only way to make (or afford) a large scale effort to, say, Mars is to have the resources of an entire nation behind the project. That being said, I feel that the main reason that NASA has become the bloated and in-efficient bureaucracy that it has is the use of NASA resources to launch private satellites and conduct similar, smaller-scale launch and scientific activities. Here is where the privatization effect comes into play. Like so many of the activities in the US, using the resources and competition of private companies is a way to take the burden of operation off of government. As applied to spaceflight this can be proven by the fact that there has already been a revolution in the private satellite launch industry. The only satellites these days that are launched under contract by either private companies or the govt. that are not put up on private birds (such as Boeing’s Delta IV, the workhorse of the satellite launch fleet) are those launched directly from the space shuttle. This makes sense, to a point, since no private company has the monetary resources to create a vehicle that can, say, launch and construct parts of a space station or service an orbital telescope.
Of course, the only way to put people in space is to use a bulky, technologically archaic, overly complex and hugely dangerous vehicle like the STS.
Private companies could rid the govt. of this burden as well. Granted, NASA will always exist as the national spaceflight authority, and rightly so, but if there is a way that private citizens can get into space, I say go for it. Not only will this lead to an increase in the publics comfort level with spaceflight (something which I think I can argue is at an all time low), but it will lead to competition amongst companies. This competition, as in every market, will lead to a reduction in prices and a boon in technological achievement that will propel spaceflight into the next level.
I feel very strongly that Virgin Galactic and Burt Rutan’s Spaceship 2 are going to go down in history as the cornerstones of this revolution. They are currently developing what amounts to a joy ride; a vehicle that takes you up and drops you so that you are weightless for a few minutes on the edge of space. Once they perfect this, the technology, according to Rutan, will be adapted to make it possible for a person to travel from Sydney to LA in a matter of a half hour or so by launching a craft into sub-orbital space and dropping them neatly where they want to go.
The key to all of this is that it is a private travel company (Virgin Atlantic) funding private tech company (Rutan’s Scaled Composites) in an adventure that puts them on a relatively even footing with governments and dropping the price for sending 6 people into space from 2 billion dollars to a few million (a price that is sure to drop even more). It is, in my estimation, the beginning of the future for manned spaceflight.
It also means that there is a chance that I will se the black sky over the blue earth before I die.
