Business, Economics, Space, Technology and Society

Spaceplanes

9 Comments

DARPA has announced the winning teams for XS-1. I’m not surprised by Masten/XCOR. They’ve been collaborating for years. I have no inside info, but I wouldn’t be shocked if there’s an acquisition or merger at some point. The NG/Virgin alliance is no surprise, either, given that Northrop owns Scaled. The Boeing/Blue team is more interesting to me. I wonder if it’s away for Boeing to try to become more entrepreneurial?

9 thoughts on “Spaceplanes”

  2. Blue Origin is a Seattle-based company. I suspect they have a lot of ex-Boeing employees and connections.

    On the other hand, Boeing has always been big on winged vehicles, while Blue Origin has never been interested in anything but VTVL. I wonder if there will be friction on that point, as there was between Boeing and McDAC on their X-33 bid.

  3. Reading an old science fiction work “Act of God” from 1985, and there’s a quote that follows along with the meme of the book.

    “Hold it!” Baustein protested, “Throughout its history, NASA has given its highest priority to the personal safety of the personnel in space.” …
    “Hell with that,” Moore said. “This is a national security issue. Hell, test pilots get killed all the time. … I guarantee you there’ll be no lack of volunteers.”

    Quite a bit of discussion on the seeping crud called “Process”.

  4. Rand,
    I also have no inside scoop, but while I’d love to see a Masten/XCOR merger…do you really think it’s likely? Masten and XCOR do have some overlap in culture, but Masten is all about unmanned robotic, VTVL spacecraft, while XCOR is all about pilot-flown, un-automated-as-possible HTHL rockets. I can definitely see them teaming together, and hope this is the first of many collaborations, but I’d be surprised if they tried to merge. Surprised, but very happy to be wrong if they do so.

    It’ll be interesting to see what XCOR is being tasked to do, and what Masten’s concept is. My guess is that XCOR would be doing some or all of the propulsion system, but I hope that there’s more info that Masten has working its way through DARPA’s DISTAR approval process.

    ~Jon

  5. Three sets of next-door neighbors. Maybe we aren’t quite in the era of teleconferencing uber alles just yet.

  6. “Masten and XCOR do have some overlap in culture, but Masten is all about unmanned robotic, VTVL spacecraft, while XCOR is all about pilot-flown, un-automated-as-possible HTHL rockets.” Sounds like a very complementary relationship to me. Looks like they cover each others weaknesses.

    1. Agreed. Probable division of labor: XCOR builds the 1st-stage airframe and propulsion and also the engines for the expendable second stage. Masten builds the rest of the second stage and does all the avionics.

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