Courtesy of the Las Cruces Bulletin, by Todd G. Dickson
The scaling back of government support for the traditional space program could be reversed if the new private space entrepreneurs are successful, said a keynote speaker on the first day of the two-day International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight (ISPCS).
Robert Dickman, executive director of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, said the space program has been going through a lot change since NASA made the decision to retire the space shuttle fleet eight years ago.
Since then, the purpose of NASA has also been revised to focus more on space exploration beyond Earth’s orbit, and servicing the orbiting International Space Station has been turned over to the private sector with the success of Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket and capsule delivery system.
How large companies such Dynetics that supported the traditional space program will adapt or survive remains to be seen, Dickman said, but there is still potential for great space exploration. However, they will require new developments in space propulsion systems and more public interest.
The good part of retiring the shuttle fleet, Dickman said, is that this should spur development of future systems, but there is currently a lack of public interest and support.
Unlike the space race with Russia during the Cold War, there isn’t public concern about current space exploration by other countries, he said. “The public doesn’t care about a space race with China or going back to the moon,” Dickman said.
But just as traditional orbital and interplanetary space exploration is ramping down, private-sector suborbital space development is ramping up, he said, and that is getting a lot of public interest. That’s because efforts such as Virgin Galactic are providing people access to space, he said, and new space entrepreneurs, such as Virgin’s Richard Branson, are celebrities.
“That’s where the people in this room play an important role,” Dickman said of the space industry leaders and entrepreneurs gathered at the New Mexico Farm & Ranch Heritage Museum Wednesday, Oct. 17, for the first day of the two-day ISPCS.
These private sector ventures may provide more efficient answers to making spaceflight systems, he said, that weren’t found in the government bureaucracy and political interest in NASA projects for job creation.
Just as the $10 million XPRIZE jump started the private sector to creating suborbital systems, Dickman suggested that a similar prize – at $1 billion or $2 billion – be offered for a manned flight to Mars to get space entrepreneurs such as Musk and Branson interested in taking on the challenge.
The current change to private sector servicing of the space station and possible future planetary exploration shouldn’t be surprising, Dickman said, because part of NASA’s original mission is to foster the private space industry.
Lessons learned
Former Space Shuttle program manager Wayne Hale, who is currently a consultant for new private space companies, said many he worked with at NASA are finding homes at the new space ventures.
Speaking at the ISPCS Community Partnership Luncheon Tuesday, Oct. 16, Hale said those people bring the tradition of caring obsessively about safety. But it is an industry in its early development, so states such as Texas, Colorado, Virginia, Florida and, now, California are trying to lure companies by providing extra liability protection. Hale’s talk was meant to help generate more awareness and support for getting competitive legislation passed in the Legislature.
Lawmakers previously had passed liability protection for human spaceflight from Spaceport America, but that was only for the flight operators, not the companies that supply, manufacture and equip the operators. New legislation would expand the protection to those in that supply chain, which is what the competing states are offering.
Hale said the new space entrepreneurs also have the lessons learned by the development of the aviation industry, which became overburdened by regulatory government oversight because of early deaths and recklessness.
Internally, these companies realize that an early mishap could stall the industry’s growth and attract burdensome government oversight, Hale said. They don’t want that oversight because they want to efficiently develop and regularly fly the systems in order to bring costs down.
“It all comes down to cost,” Hale said. “But I have no doubt there is an industry and a marketplace to make a profit from suborbital space flight.” Unleashing that opportunity, Hale said, requires the elimination of legislative impediments until the new industry can provide a proven record of safety.
