Jeff Foust has a report on the past weekend’s conference, over at The Space Review this morning.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here’s another report on the conference, from Doug Messier.
7 thoughts on “The Maturing NewSpace Industry”
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This is the most interesting part…
[[[Chuck Lauer, vice president of business development at Rocketplane Global, blamed that on the financial crisis that made it virtually impossible to raise large sums of money, exacerbated by the distraction of trying to also develop an orbital system by a sister company, Rocketplane Kister, which had a funded agreement with NASA as part of the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program. “The whole COTS debacle damn near killed us,” he said.]]]
Yes, the industry is maturing, at least some firms are learning that NASA subsidies are not the best route to systems that are suppose to be viable in the commercial market.
One good thing about the new policy. The New Space firms are getting everything they ever asked for.
The end of the NASA “monopoly” on human spaceflight.
Government guaranteed payloads to close their business models.
Massive ($ 6 billion plus) government subsidies to satisfy their financing needs.
Now if they don’t deliver the “Golden Age” of space commerce the New Space firms will have only themselves and their proposed policies to blame.
I think the keen insight regards a tipping point and shift from vertical integration to horizontal integration and the other saying his favorite speaker was Paragon is positioning itself as the go-to supplier for both NewSpace and government agencies.
I think the only way Rocketplane/Kistler/whatever is going to get more money is if they change the company’s name. Plus perhaps some more credible management. It’s tarred beyond measure.
I mean how many times were they funded to do this or that, and where is the hardware? I only remember a bunch of computer renders and assorted paperware. I’m surprised they still exist. Even the X-33 debacle at least produced some visible, albeit non-usable, hardware at the cost of a bundle of money. Start bending metal or whatever folks. To be honest I have more faith in Rutan doing an airplane like vehicle. While XCOR at least has experience at building the rocket engines.
With a track record like this is it a surprise investors aren’t lining up at the door? Well you do the math…
The New Space firms are getting everything they ever asked for.
No they won’t.
One prediction: Once shuttle derived is declared dead, we will be reminded about the ISS logistics gap and then it will by cost plus EELV contracts sucking up the entire HSF budget.
With just a few crumbs for New Space.
Gary Hudson said much the same thing this past weekend.
PS — My solution would be for NASA to buy a Bigelow BA-330. Launch it. Use it for 12 months.
Then sell it on orbit to the highest private sector bidder.
Jeff Foust: “That perception hasn’t been helped by a reputation among some in NewSpace to bash NASA…It is time to grow up…
Translation: It is time for NewSpace to suck up to NASA and start doing things NASA’s way like the other properly behaved contractors.
No they won’t.
One prediction: Once shuttle derived is declared dead, we will be reminded about the ISS logistics gap and then it will by cost plus EELV contracts sucking up the entire HSF budget.
With just a few crumbs for New Space.
Gary Hudson said much the same thing this past weekend.
Even if that does happen, which it might given politicians are fickle beings and elections being what they are, the money NASA already dropped on SpaceX and Orbital partially funded Falcon 9 and Taurus II. SpaceX already said they were going to do it anyway: the extra funds probably only made them do it faster. That is a typical software startup plan, use money to buy time. What did NASA pay already, some tens of millions? To make something they were going to do already? Not too shabby when initially estimated development costs were like hundred million.
The problem would be if NASA starts funding competing EELV vehicles from ULA with a single source contract, enabling EELV to use economies to scale to further compete with other companies. But this could happen with any other frequent client. For example Bigelow wants to buy tens of launches from ULA.
Also the LEO market imploded because of commercial operators like Iridium and Teledesic just fine. It was no fault from the government. This can always happen when you are pursuing a market with few clients. Smart businessmen try to spread their bets and SpaceX has clients other than NASA.
If anything I am more concerned about range permission to launch Falcon 9.