Private industry moves to take over space race
The space race taking shape in the private sector today is due in large part to boyhood dreams of astronauts.
50 years in space
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Editors' note: This is part of a series examining 50 years of space exploration.
The wealthy men behind today's commercial space industry were just kids when the U.S.-Soviet space race started 50 years ago.
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen was 4 years old when the Russians launched Sputnik I into geocentric orbit on October 4, 1957, an act that effectively ignited the competition for dominance in suborbit.
Aerospace engineer Burt Rutan was 14 when the United States created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration the following year. Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Megastores, was 10 when Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to orbit the Earth on April 12, 1961, followed by U.S. astronaut Alan Shepard in a suborbital flight less than a month later.
Space Adventures founder Peter Diamandis was just 5 days old when President John F. Kennedy announced that the United States would put a man on the moon within the decade.
The common denominator between these men? They are the pioneers of a new private space race, 35 years after anyone has walked on the moon. The U.S.-Soviet space race surely brought about technologies we now take for granted, ranging from satellite-based navigation to Tang. It also left an indelible mark on a generation that will shape the next 50 years of space exploration. Like the pioneers of the aviation industry, kids who idolized the Wright brothers, the men trying to get private industry into space grew up with names like Shepard and Armstrong as their heroes.
"Why are (we) doing something in space? Because that's what inspired them, that's what inspired me as a youth," said Diamandis, who has founded more than four companies in the space tourism and entertainment businesses, including Space Adventures, which takes private citizens to the International Space Station for between $25 million and $35 million.
The list of millionaires and billionaires inspired by NASA's glory years continues: Neil Armstrong finally walked on the moon for the first time in human history on July 21, 1969, when Amazon.com founder and billionaire Jeff Bezos was 5. Doom video game creator John Carmack was little more than 6 months old when astronaut Shepard played golf on the lunar turf in 1971. And PayPal founder Elon Musk was nearly 18 months old when NASA took its last manned lunar mission in 1972.
Allen, Rutan, Musk, Bezos and Carmack are paving the way for private industry in space from the deep pockets of their own industrial efforts. Made wealthy by taking chances in fields like software, computers, aviation and the Internet, they're taking the risk in space that was once the sole domain of governments. If you ask any of them what drove them into this field, they will most likely tell you it was a boyhood desire to be an astronaut. That, and frustration with government efforts in space today.
Diamandis added: "In the last 40 years, we've never fulfilled the promise that we had seen in Apollo. So, now people are saying, 'I'm going to give up on the government, I'm going to do it myself.'"
At the 50th anniversary of space exploration, many industry pundits and executives say there's a new era upon us. They describe the 17 years after Sputnik as the first phase of a journey marked by new human and robotic exploration in space, and which culminated in the Skylab and the Apollo missions. The second phase, from 1976 to 2007, was characterized by robotic missions to other planets like Saturn, collecting data about the universe.
"As it turns 50, there's a third era about to begin, one that recaptures the excitement of pioneering human voices that was characterized by the early years," said David Thompson, CEO of Orbital Sciences, which developed the first private launch vehicle, Pegasus.
Activities in the private industry come at a time when governments are stepping up their efforts in space, too. President George Bush has set NASA on a mission to put men back on the moon by 2020, and then onto Mars between 2035 and 2037. Among other international efforts, Russian plans to build a new manned space transport system by 2015 and China plans to send another rover to the moon in 2012, to survey every inch of lunar surface.
"The next 50 years are going to be historic. There's intensifying economic and space competition," said Joanne Maguire, head of space systems for Lockheed Martin.
Entrepreneurs like Rutan and Diamandis believe (with no shortage of controversy) NASA should leave manned flights to suborbit and the moon to private companies like their own. Players in private space development believe they can lay the groundwork to bring down the cost of suborbital space tourism so that it might one day be as common and affordable as taking a flight on Southwest. Eventually, entrepreneurs believe they can colonize other planets so people will have a place to visit and stay. Executives also see space as an eventual trillion-dollar market for mining its vast resources in energy, minerals and real estate.
Next page: Where does the government fit in?
50 years in space
(continued from previous page)
Certainly, there are huge hurdles to clear before the private space industry takes off, beyond the $25 million flights people can take to the International Space Station with Diamandis' Space Adventures. NASA still believes that it has important work to do to land men on the moon, even though it has formed several partnerships with private industry to further its efforts.
Michael Griffin, administrator of NASA, said at a recent space conference: "We have here a program which is affordable, sustainable and which can be highly correlated to historical successes and developments from the past."
One of the biggest challenges for private industry is to get more people on flights into space so that the costs of operation go down.
Rutan, as the founder of Scaled Composites, changed the landscape of private space travel when he designed and built the SpaceShipOne suborbital commercial spacecraft. The first privately funded venture to put a civilian in suborbital space (funded by Microsoft's Allen), SpaceShipOne broke the Earth's atmosphere twice to win the $10 million Ansari X Prize in 2004.
Now, Rutan's company is building SpaceShipTwo, the suborbital rocket for Branson's Virgin Galactic space-tourism outfit. But Scaled Composites recently suffered a major setback when two people were killed in an explosion at the company's facility in Mojave, Calif.
Diamandis pointed out that the cost of space flight hinges on the people, rather than the vehicle or fuel. The annual space shuttle budget, for example, is about $2.5 billion if it conducts zero flights that year, he said. If it flies once a year, that cost goes to $3 billion, and if it flies four times a year, the cost is just under $4 billion, "so your price might drop down to $800 million per flight," he said. "So, we need to learn how to become much more robust--to become a real vibrant system and not an annual experiment that flies flights three or four times to space."
Branson's Virgin Galactic is the most visible, and first-to-market company attempting to accomplish this task. Branson is selling tickets aboard his SpaceShipTwo suborbital vehicle for about $200,000 to celebrities and millionaires. He expects the first flights to take off in 2009.
In a much quieter fashion, Amazon's Bezos is building up Blue Origin, another commercial space company that's aiming to reduce the cost of flight for citizens. It's developing a vertical take-off, vertical-landing vehicle called the New Shepard that will take a few astronauts on a suborbital journey. So far, Blue Origin has had at least one successful test flight, but Bezos doesn't divulge many details about this venture.
Musk, who has built SpaceX with much of his own money made from selling Internet companies Zip2 and PayPal, is building launch vehicles that he says will reduce the cost of reaching orbit by a factor of two or three. Musk said at a recent space conference that he's interested in the space sector because of its impact on the future of humanity, and people transitioning from Earth to other planets.
Musk said the cost and reliability of space transportation, unlike other industries, hasn't improved significantly in the last 50 years. SpaceX, he said, is out to reduce the cost of and improve the reliability of space travel much the way the technology industry operates.
Musk's SpaceX has plans for several operational launches of its Falcon 1 next year. Musk has also promised to help teams get to the moon to compete in the Google Lunar X Prize, a race to put a robotic rover on the moon that's worth $20 million to the winner.
"For the first time in our 4-billion-year history, we have the opportunity to extend life beyond Earth, but the economic challenges are substantial," Musk said. "The reason I founded SpaceX was to try in a little way to make that happen."
Carmack founded Texas-based Armadillo Aerospace to build next-generation vehicles for transporting people and payloads into suborbit. Still under development, his experimental rockets were put to the test at last year's X Prize Cup, as the lone competitors in a NASA-funded contest to build and fly a lunar vehicle.
Rutan expressed hope that the current efforts in space will inspire the next generation.
"Right now kids are inspired by the next iPhone, not by exploration or taking risks, and that's going to hurt us," Rutan said at a recent space conference. "We have to change something so our environment excites kids. It's what really pays us dividends later."
50 years in space
Private industry moves to take over space race
Editors' note: This is part of a series examining 50 years of space exploration.
The wealthy men behind today's commercial space industry were just kids when the U.S.-Soviet space race started 50 years ago.
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen was 4 years old when the Russians launched Sputnik I into geocentric orbit on October 4, 1957, an act that effectively ignited the competition for dominance in suborbit.
Aerospace engineer Burt Rutan was 14 when the United States created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration the following year. Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Megastores, was 10 when Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to orbit the Earth on April 12, 1961, followed by U.S. astronaut Alan Shepard in a suborbital flight less than a month later.
Space Adventures founder Peter Diamandis was just 5 days old when President John F. Kennedy announced that the United States would put a man on the moon within the decade.
The common denominator between these men? They are the pioneers of a new private space race, 35 years after anyone has walked on the moon. The U.S.-Soviet space race surely brought about technologies we now take for granted, ranging from satellite-based navigation to Tang. It also left an indelible mark on a generation that will shape the next 50 years of space exploration. Like the pioneers of the aviation industry, kids who idolized the Wright brothers, the men trying to get private industry into space grew up with names like Shepard and Armstrong as their heroes.
"Why are (we) doing something in space? Because that's what inspired them, that's what inspired me as a youth," said Diamandis, who has founded more than four companies in the space tourism and entertainment businesses, including Space Adventures, which takes private citizens to the International Space Station for between $25 million and $35 million.
The list of millionaires and billionaires inspired by NASA's glory years continues: Neil Armstrong finally walked on the moon for the first time in human history on July 21, 1969, when Amazon.com founder and billionaire Jeff Bezos was 5. Doom video game creator John Carmack was little more than 6 months old when astronaut Shepard played golf on the lunar turf in 1971. And PayPal founder Elon Musk was nearly 18 months old when NASA took its last manned lunar mission in 1972.
Allen, Rutan, Musk, Bezos and Carmack are paving the way for private industry in space from the deep pockets of their own industrial efforts. Made wealthy by taking chances in fields like software, computers, aviation and the Internet, they're taking the risk in space that was once the sole domain of governments. If you ask any of them what drove them into this field, they will most likely tell you it was a boyhood desire to be an astronaut. That, and frustration with government efforts in space today.
Diamandis added: "In the last 40 years, we've never fulfilled the promise that we had seen in Apollo. So, now people are saying, 'I'm going to give up on the government, I'm going to do it myself.'"
At the 50th anniversary of space exploration, many industry pundits and executives say there's a new era upon us. They describe the 17 years after Sputnik as the first phase of a journey marked by new human and robotic exploration in space, and which culminated in the Skylab and the Apollo missions. The second phase, from 1976 to 2007, was characterized by robotic missions to other planets like Saturn, collecting data about the universe.
"As it turns 50, there's a third era about to begin, one that recaptures the excitement of pioneering human voices that was characterized by the early years," said David Thompson, CEO of Orbital Sciences, which developed the first private launch vehicle, Pegasus.
Activities in the private industry come at a time when governments are stepping up their efforts in space, too. President George Bush has set NASA on a mission to put men back on the moon by 2020, and then onto Mars between 2035 and 2037. Among other international efforts, Russian plans to build a new manned space transport system by 2015 and China plans to send another rover to the moon in 2012, to survey every inch of lunar surface.
"The next 50 years are going to be historic. There's intensifying economic and space competition," said Joanne Maguire, head of space systems for Lockheed Martin.
Entrepreneurs like Rutan and Diamandis believe (with no shortage of controversy) NASA should leave manned flights to suborbit and the moon to private companies like their own. Players in private space development believe they can lay the groundwork to bring down the cost of suborbital space tourism so that it might one day be as common and affordable as taking a flight on Southwest. Eventually, entrepreneurs believe they can colonize other planets so people will have a place to visit and stay. Executives also see space as an eventual trillion-dollar market for mining its vast resources in energy, minerals and real estate.
Next page: Where does the government fit in?
50 years in space
(continued from previous page)
Certainly, there are huge hurdles to clear before the private space industry takes off, beyond the $25 million flights people can take to the International Space Station with Diamandis' Space Adventures. NASA still believes that it has important work to do to land men on the moon, even though it has formed several partnerships with private industry to further its efforts.
Michael Griffin, administrator of NASA, said at a recent space conference: "We have here a program which is affordable, sustainable and which can be highly correlated to historical successes and developments from the past."
One of the biggest challenges for private industry is to get more people on flights into space so that the costs of operation go down.
Rutan, as the founder of Scaled Composites, changed the landscape of private space travel when he designed and built the SpaceShipOne suborbital commercial spacecraft. The first privately funded venture to put a civilian in suborbital space (funded by Microsoft's Allen), SpaceShipOne broke the Earth's atmosphere twice to win the $10 million Ansari X Prize in 2004.
Now, Rutan's company is building SpaceShipTwo, the suborbital rocket for Branson's Virgin Galactic space-tourism outfit. But Scaled Composites recently suffered a major setback when two people were killed in an explosion at the company's facility in Mojave, Calif.
Diamandis pointed out that the cost of space flight hinges on the people, rather than the vehicle or fuel. The annual space shuttle budget, for example, is about $2.5 billion if it conducts zero flights that year, he said. If it flies once a year, that cost goes to $3 billion, and if it flies four times a year, the cost is just under $4 billion, "so your price might drop down to $800 million per flight," he said. "So, we need to learn how to become much more robust--to become a real vibrant system and not an annual experiment that flies flights three or four times to space."
Branson's Virgin Galactic is the most visible, and first-to-market company attempting to accomplish this task. Branson is selling tickets aboard his SpaceShipTwo suborbital vehicle for about $200,000 to celebrities and millionaires. He expects the first flights to take off in 2009.
In a much quieter fashion, Amazon's Bezos is building up Blue Origin, another commercial space company that's aiming to reduce the cost of flight for citizens. It's developing a vertical take-off, vertical-landing vehicle called the New Shepard that will take a few astronauts on a suborbital journey. So far, Blue Origin has had at least one successful test flight, but Bezos doesn't divulge many details about this venture.
Musk, who has built SpaceX with much of his own money made from selling Internet companies Zip2 and PayPal, is building launch vehicles that he says will reduce the cost of reaching orbit by a factor of two or three. Musk said at a recent space conference that he's interested in the space sector because of its impact on the future of humanity, and people transitioning from Earth to other planets.
Musk said the cost and reliability of space transportation, unlike other industries, hasn't improved significantly in the last 50 years. SpaceX, he said, is out to reduce the cost of and improve the reliability of space travel much the way the technology industry operates.
Musk's SpaceX has plans for several operational launches of its Falcon 1 next year. Musk has also promised to help teams get to the moon to compete in the Google Lunar X Prize, a race to put a robotic rover on the moon that's worth $20 million to the winner.
"For the first time in our 4-billion-year history, we have the opportunity to extend life beyond Earth, but the economic challenges are substantial," Musk said. "The reason I founded SpaceX was to try in a little way to make that happen."
Carmack founded Texas-based Armadillo Aerospace to build next-generation vehicles for transporting people and payloads into suborbit. Still under development, his experimental rockets were put to the test at last year's X Prize Cup, as the lone competitors in a NASA-funded contest to build and fly a lunar vehicle.
Rutan expressed hope that the current efforts in space will inspire the next generation.
"Right now kids are inspired by the next iPhone, not by exploration or taking risks, and that's going to hurt us," Rutan said at a recent space conference. "We have to change something so our environment excites kids. It's what really pays us dividends later."