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The New Space Race

Jeff Foust has a story today on the current real space race (as opposed to the fantasy one between the US and China)--the new race for customers in the suborbital market. It's basically a compilation of last week's XCOR press conference announcement and this past weekend's Space Access conference, both of which I attended. This to me is the key point:

"Quietly, this has turned into a horse race," said conference organizer Henry Vanderbilt during a wrap-up panel at the conclusion of the Space Access conference. "There are a lot of people who could be the first to fly a passenger to suborbit at this point. Two years ago I'm sure the money would have been on Virgin Galactic. It isn't necessarily so at this point."

"What struck me about the events of this week was that we have finally, with all due respect, broken the mystique of Burt [Rutan]," Rand Simberg, an aerospace engineer and blogger, said. "He has had setbacks"--referring to the engine test accident last July that killed three Scaled Composites employees--"and, this week, now he has a competitor." The growing awareness of companies other than Virgin "is going to be very good for the industry."

"This perception of a horse race is probably a really, really good thing for investment," said Joe Pistritto, an angel investor. "Ninety-nine percent of the people who could invest in this industry don't know about this industry" but may start to learn about it as the find out about these competing companies.

If it is a horse race, who will win the ultimate prize: not just the first vehicle to enter the market, but the one that wins the market in the long run? The diversity of technical approaches, from the takeoff and landing techniques to the number of passengers, makes any predictions difficult. "If there's four different operators flying people into space, their offerings are going to be a little different," said Pistritto. "So you see an actual segmentation of the market around the experience you want, how much money you have, and where you are."

What I meant about the "mystique of Burt" was the notion that the winning of the X-Prize was some kind of fluke, enabled only because the most brilliant aeronautical engineer in the world applied his genius to it. Many have used this as an excuse to denigrate the efforts of others building suborbital vehicles, which hasn't made it any easier to raise money for such ventures.

Many seem to believe that it really takes the genius of a Rutan to build a suborbital vehicle. As evidence of this proposition, they point out that no other suborbital vehicles have been flown since 2004.

But in so doing, they display a fundamental ignorance of the nature of the technology and the requirements. There is no "one way" to skin that cat, and never was. Burt's design was clever, and perhaps intrinsically safer, but it was not necessary, and there are other, better ways to do the job that are safe enough. It's not at all clear that the SS1 approach is the best one for a commercial application, and if one includes in that the hybrid propulsion, it's already caused delays (though those are partly due to Scaled taking on a project outside their area of expertise--they're an aircraft manufacturer, not a propulsion house) in their development program, and it's certain to result in higher operational costs and increased turnaround time.

The real point is that if only Burt could win the X-Prize, it wasn't because he was the only guy smart enough to design a vehicle to do it. It was because he was the only guy with the reputation of being smart enough to be able to raise the money to do it. When it comes to space ventures, the hardest part is always raising the money. The technical challenges generally pale in comparison.

So, with schedule delays in SS2, now comes XCOR. XCOR has a reputation of its own, hard won over the past eight years, of underpromising and overdelivering. So when they have a (rare, almost unheard of) press conference announcing that they have the design and the cash to build a suborbital vehicle, with an endorsement from the Air Force Research Laboratory, the world listens, and suddenly it's a real race.

Evidence that the mystique has been broken is this CNBC story by Jane Wells from last week, after XCOR's announcement, with the hed "Branson And Northrop May Be Backing "Wrong" Rocket Man!"

Burt is no longer God, other companies are getting serious attention from both business journalists and investors, and it's been a very good week for the new space industry and space age.

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13 Comments

Dave G wrote:

Not one to pick a nit, but shouldn't "higher operational costs and reduced turnaround time", actually read "higher operational costs and longer turnaround time"? If I understand you correctly.

Anyway, I think I agree with you on your point regarding the mystique of Burt. Great guy, and very creative, but so are a host of others just waiting for an investor with the balls to give them a "shot at the heavens".

March 31, 2008 3:12 PM

Bbrewer wrote:

I'm surprised Virgin has actually fallen behind since they've already had a prototype go into space. Did they simply bite off more than they could chew technically?
Do these other companies have a more realistic approach technically?

March 31, 2008 5:41 PM

amrobinson wrote:

So there is competition to create companies to fly millionaires to sub-orbital space. How does this get up to the real start of open space...commercial flights to near-earth orbital space and beyond?

These companies are building swan boats to paddle around the park pond. A far cry from building clipper ships.

Is it possible to build a small craft that can ferry passengers to orbit? Is there possible improvement in fuel composition, or reduction in the craft weight, or a better design that will allow for a spaceplane, one that will take off from a spaceport, deliver passengers to orbit and return for a landing? And won't take weeks and millions of dollars to turn around for the next flight?

March 31, 2008 6:08 PM

Private wrote:

How is XCOR competing with Virgin Galactic?
Xcor proposes to fly one passenger to 60km, well short of space.
Virgin proposes to fly 6 passengers to 110km, well into space.
This is a big difference. Its like comparing a Cessna to a Learjet.

I think Xerus started to get big weight problems, so XCOR had to scale it back.

March 31, 2008 7:58 PM

Private wrote:

You mention that Scaled encountered delays due to it being an aircraft manufacturer, not a propulsion house.
Doesn't that apply in reverse to XCOR? They consider themselves a propulsion house, and they sure as hell aren't an aircraft manufacturer.
And Scaled is certainly a much more reputable aircraft prototyper than XCOR is a propulsion shop; XCOR having never sold an engine to anyone for anything. They do make some nice photographs though.

March 31, 2008 8:06 PM

Corporal wrote:

XCOR having never sold an engine to anyone for anything.

So, the Air Force, NASA, and the US Navy are nobodies?

March 31, 2008 10:40 PM

Jeff Mauldin wrote:

Ooo, ooo, I'll take this one!

"So there is competition to create companies to fly millionaires to sub-orbital space. How does this get up to the real start of open space...commercial flights to near-earth orbital space and beyond?"

One could easily have said similar things about aircraft in the early 1900's. "How does a few people building these things that fly for a few minutes get up to the real start of open airspace... commercial flights for hundreds of miles and farther?" It's precisely the unpredictable power of the market and innovation that will do this. An amazing number of technologies available for everyman nowadays started off as things available only for the millionaires.

"These companies are building swan boats to paddle around the park pond. A far cry from building clipper ships." You actually could have said precisely the same thing, word for word, about the early aircraft industry.

"Is it possible to build a small craft that can ferry passengers to orbit? Is there possible improvement in fuel composition, or reduction in the craft weight, or a better design that will allow for a spaceplane, one that will take off from a spaceport, deliver passengers to orbit and return for a landing? And won't take weeks and millions of dollars to turn around for the next flight?"

The simple answer is yes, but I certainly won't guarantee many of your stipulations. Maybe not "small craft" (maybe a large craft, maybe combinations of craft such as airship-to-orbit or Virgin's mothership/spaceship combo), maybe not "spaceplane" (maybe SSTO, other vertical takeoff/vertical landing, vertical takeoff horizontal landing, etc.), maybe not "spaceport" (maybe from airports, maybe from at-sea platforms, maybe from space elevators). Better design does seem necesary, and "won't take weeks and millions of dollars to turn around" is an absolute necessesity.

The point is that lots of entrepreneurs, working on lots of different projects, building the capabilities up slowly, and learning more and more as we go will be immensely more successful than any giant government program ever was.

April 1, 2008 12:15 AM

Bruce Hoult wrote:

Private:

Lynx Mk1 is announced to fly to at least 200,000 ft. Lynx Mk2 may fly as little as 18 months after Mk1, and is expected to fly to 300,000+ ft. The basic design is the same, with the difference being such things as adding a thermal protection system using advanced materials for the propellant tanks to save weight, and more powerful engines.

You might say it's better for them to wait until they can make 300,000 ft before they do anything at all. Or you migth even say it's better for them to wait until they can make it to orbit before they do anything at all. XCOR appear to think that proving they can make 200,000 ft is a useful step in gaining credibility and no doubt some revenue.

Re airframe construction: no one in the world knows how to make reliable, safe, long lasting rocket engines. Or, at least, no one before XCOR ever worked on that problem. On the other hand there are probably at least half a dozen companies in the USA that you could go to, cheque in hand, and say "please build me a Mach 2 airframe to fit this engine". Boeing and the other usual jet fighter suspects could do it in their sleep. No doubt XCOR could contract that out to Rutan as well, if they wanted to. Or they could hire some of the people who already know how to do it.

It's just not that hard a problem.

April 1, 2008 12:20 AM

Private wrote:

Bruce,
I am not saying that XCOR should not go for it with Lynx. However, it is very specious to say that it competes with SpaceshipTwo.

As far as reliable, safe, long-lasting rocket engines, XCOR's claims are far from unique in this regard. Reaction Motors, Rocketdyne, Pratt Whitney, Aerojet, TRW, Energomash, Bell, Kuznetsov...

April 1, 2008 7:11 AM

Sam Dinkin wrote:

Lynx Mk1 can address a market segment between a 80,000 ft. flight in a fighter aircraft and a 328,000 ft. flight in SS2. If XCOR is first to market, they will be the only experience between 80,000 ft. and orbit at a price point that is accessible to millions of people worldwide. The market is unproven, but one thing is true: they won't have trouble getting media attention. They will also be able to address the scientific experiment market that Masten is going after.

Lynx Mk2 may be interesting. If it's space suits, that's claustrophobic, but safer and more astronaut-like. It would probably decrease the potential market demand by as much as half, but would differentiate from shirt sleeves. Sitting in the front seat was worth 20% more to people than back seats based on Rocketplane's list prices.

April 1, 2008 8:15 AM

Aleta wrote:

XCOR has sold engines. We don't put everything we do on the Web. Also, the Xerus was a place holder. We knew it would change as we worked on it but we had to show _something_, a picture being worth 1,000 words and all that.

April 2, 2008 10:32 AM

Pete Zaitcev wrote:

Sure I can compare a Cessna to the LearJet. There's a reason why Citation beats the pants out of Lear in the market (Learjets are now made by Bombardier). Heck, according to Wikipedia, Cessna Citation X is the fastest civilian aircraft in the world since the retirement of Concorde (poor, poor Sino-Swearingen).

April 2, 2008 11:10 AM

Andrew Reynolds wrote:

Good stuff check out mine

September 19, 2008 7:12 PM

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The New Space Race

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