Lecture 8b

A new world in space - commercial missions to the Moon (left) and tourist flights to the edge of space (right).
Images courtesy of Golden Spike Co. and Virgin Galactic.

Space commercialism - a new era

Space exploration was at first so expensive that it was limited to the global superpowers of the 1960s. It cost a lot because everything was being done for the first time, and on an unrealistic schedule. But like a lot of other things, space has become much cheaper. Now many nations large and small want to launch and operate satellites for economic or security reasons, and individuals or companies want access to space for science, commerce, and even tourism. Private companies and individuals are beginning to commercialize space, and at this stage we can't tell how far they will go. Will the first people to return to the Moon be NASA astronauts, or Chinese Taikonauts, or employees of a private company?

Making money in space - big business

First, of course, no money is spent in space. Apollo went to the Moon, but all its funds were spent here - on the people who mined the iron, aluminum and titanium ores the rockets were made from, or cleaned the offices where the spacecraft were designed, as well as all the salaries of the scientists, engineers and managers. Big businesses also make money from space activities, primarily building launch vehicles or satellites for communications and remote sensing. NASA spreads its work out all over the United States so the maximum number of electoral districts depend on NASA jobs and funding. Companies like Lockheed Martin and Boeing build or operate launch vehicles, and other companies like Spot Image (now called Airbus Defence and Space), Intelsat and Digital Globe fly satellites to provide TV broadcasts or to sell images for research, press use etc. Businesses and countries around the world are part of this story, making money, or trying to, in space or from space. The links below are just a few of the many possible ones.
Lockheed Martin.
Boeing.
Digital Globe - remote sensing providers.
Airbus Defence and Space - remote sensing providers
COM DEV - Canadian space equipment provider
Optech (now called Teledyne Optech)- Canadian space equipment provider
Intelsat.
Commercial Spaceflight Federation
Intuitive Machines: bringing small cargo back from the Space Station
Ecliptic Rocketcam - launch and operations video

Making money in space - launch vehicles

Earth is a big planet with powerful gravity. Getting off the ground and into space is difficult. The problem is not distance - low orbit is only 200 km away - but speed. The spacecraft has to be accelerated to 25 times the speed of sound (Mach 25) to stay in orbit, and faster to escape from Earth and go somewhere else. The first rockets or 'launch vehicles' were military missiles. Now there are launch vehicles of many kinds in many countries, and countries like India, Japan and China have their own independent launch capabilities. Businesses like Arianespace, United Launch Alliance and Orbital Sciences compete to launch satellites using both large rockets (such as Ariane, Atlas, Delta) and small (such as Pegasus). Big rockets do the job well but they are expensive, so many people have tried to make cheaper rockets and failed or run out of money. Will we be able to reduce the cost of space access? One highly innovative approach is being followed by Stratolaunch - to carry a big rocket mounted under the world's largest airplane, drop it and start the engines. It's scary... but it might work - Orbital Sciences does this with small rockets already.

Recently several companies have tried to develop novel launchers in an effort to reduce launch costs, but they often find it hard to obtain financing. Rocketlab, a joint US-New Zealand company, is working on a small launcher with a good chance of success, but in contrast Interorbital has been working for years with many promises but little to show for it yet. The most advanced is Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX). It launches its own Falcon rockets and routinely flies a cargo-carrying module ('Dragon') which returns safely to an ocean splashdown, like Apollo. SpaceX has ambitions to recover its rockets for use multiple times to reduce costs, and it has already successfully brought rockets back several times. The first reflight of a used rocket will occur in early 2017.
United Launch Alliance - Atlas and Delta launchers (Lockheed Martin and Boeing)
Arianespace - European company with several launchers
SpaceX - cargo to the Space Station, crew launch plans
Orbital Sciences Corp. - cargo to the Space Station
Sierra Nevada Corp. - developing a mini-shuttle called Dream Chaser
Rocketlab - trying to reduce the cost of launches
Interorbital - slow progress...
Exos Aerospace
Masten Space Systems

Making money in space - space 'burials' and other services

Several smaller businesses are now trying to make money from novel activities in space. Celestis, Inc. has provided orbital 'burials' (really 'memorial flights', launching a tiny portion of cremated ashes into orbit on a regular satellite launch). They have flown 13 flights, some to orbit, others sub-orbital (one failed during launch), carrying remains of, among others, Gene Roddenbury, Timothy Leary and James Doohan (Star Trek's Scotty). As a special arrangement they also put a small portion of a famous scientist's ashes on a spacecraft that went to the Moon in 1999. Orbital and lunar services are now offered. Elysium Space is another company doing the same kind of thing but without the same track record. Another company, The Crater Company, previously allowed you to (unofficially) name a crater as a memorial, but it has disappeared from the internet. A new group called Uwingu raises money for educational and space causes by allowing people to name craters on Mars.
Celestis
Elysium, another space burial service.
Uwingu - name a crater on Mars.

Commercial lunar missions.

The first proposed commercial lunar flight was called 'Harvest Moon', and was to use Apollo hardware left over after the last three Apollo flights were cancelled. It was proposed by 'The Committee for the Future' in the early 1970s and would have tried to pay for itself by selling lunar rocks. The scheme was soon abandoned. In the 1990s, several private robotic missions were proposed: Applied Space Resources planned a robotic soil sample return mission but could not raise the money needed. Transorbital Inc. was planning a lunar orbiter which would collect images and video for sale, as well as delivering cargo to the lunar surface. Lunacorp Inc. promoted remote-controlled rovers on the lunar surface, driven in part by theme park customers in driving simulators linked to live video and motion sensors on the rovers. Raising money proved very difficult for all of these companies. Lunarcorp gave up to concentrate on other topics through the Transformational Space Corporation, now effectively absorbed into Astrobotic Technology, Inc.

To help overcome the problem of raising money, the X-Prize Foundation has teamed with Google on the Google Lunar X Prize, with $30 million in prizes for a robotic rover mission to the Moon. Its deadline has been extended several times and is now DEcember 2017. Astrobotic is a Google Lunar X Prize contender, along with Moon Express, SpaceIL and several other teams. So far only SpaceIL has a booked launch vehicle, and only Astrobotic has anounced a specific landing site. In 2010 NASA announced it would buy technological data from some of these companies, adding substantially to potential earnings. Altogether the winner could potentially earn as much as $36 million. The Lunar Lander Challenge was another effort like this, but designed to test hardware on Earth, not on the Moon. The International Lunar Observatory Association (ILOA) is designing a telescope to be flown to the Moon by Moon Express, where it would be operated from Earth. ILOA has already signed agreements with China to use its telescope data from Chang'E 3, which landed on the Moon in 2013 and is still operating. China will share the ILOA data in return. Micro-satellites called cubesats are being considered for both NASA missions and private flights to the Moon.
Astrobotic Technology, Inc.
Moon Express
SpaceIL
Team Indus (India)
Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge
Google Lunar X Prize
International Lunar Observatory Association
Lunar Cubesats

Space Tourism

The simplest and cheapest kind of 'space tourism' is visiting space-related sites like Kennedy Space Center or the National Air and Space Museum... or similar places around the world. You can also fly in a special plane to experience a few seconds of 'zero gravity'. Going to space costs a lot more.

Seven people so far (Dennis Tito; Mark Shuttleworth, Greg Olsen, Anousheh Ansari, Charles Simonyi, Richard Garriott, Guy LaLiberte), have paid up to $50 million (US) each to fly in the spare seat of a Russian 'Soyuz' spacecraft for a week-long trip to the International Space Station. Simonyi has done it twice. The next was to be the singer Sarah Brightman in 2015, but she has postponed her flight. Space Adventures arranged those flights and is active in promoting this type of tourism. NASA was originally opposed to this but has had to accept it. Russia simply needed the money. Space Adventures is now promoting a voyage around the Moon for a mere $150 million in a Russian Soyuz vehicle, and another company, Excalibur Almaz, has a similar scheme using Russian hardware but is not making any obvious progress.

Another approach is being taken by Las Vegas hotel entrepreneur Robert Bigelow. He licensed NASA technology for inflatable orbital habitats, built his own and has launched two test modules into Earth orbit on Russian rockets. Full sized modules will be joined together to make a private space station. To get people up to it, he initially sponsored a prize, called America's Space Prize, $50 million for a private vehicle able to launch people into orbit and return them safely. This was too ambitious at the time, so he is now making arrangements to use commercial launch vehicles such as Atlas or Falcon. It is not clear yet how far this will go, or whether his customers will be tourists or other businesses, but countries without large space programs are apparently interested. One Bigelow module is now attached to the Space Station to expand its available space and test the inflatable module concept.

A cheaper route to space would be a short sub-orbital flight, up and down in 20 minutes like NASA`s first Mercury missions in 1961. It is cheaper and easier than orbital flight because you only have to get up there, but not accelerate to orbital velocity (25 times the speed of sound at low altitude, or more than 30 times faster than a passenger jet aircraft). You can't stay in orbit but you have a great view for a short time, and a period of 'weightlessness'. The first NASA astronauts flew suborbital missions in 1961 (Russia and China skipped this step and went straight to orbital flight). Small 'sounding rockets' do this frequently to carry instruments for studying the upper atmosphere and space. The Ansari X-Prize was set up to encourage this business. Bert Rutan's company Scaled Composites built SpaceShipOne, which flew to the edge of space (100 km) three times and won the prize in 2004. Two Canadian rockets were also in the running but came to nothing. A less high-tech approach is flying a helium balloon up to the edge of space (about 30 km) with Worldview.

Several companies are working on sub-orbital flight for tourism, notably Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin and Xcor. They might do some science at high altitude as well, science paid for by researchers. So... you want to go to space and you have some spare cash? - about $200,000... OK, these companies are looking for your money. Hundreds of people already have tickets, and Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic are in the middle of flight testing their hardware. The Virgin Galactic test program suffered a fatal accident in October 2014, seriously delaying the project.
Space Adventures.
Excalibur Almaz.
Bigelow Aerospace - big plans!
Zero Gravity Corporation
Ansari X-prize.
Scaled Composites.
da Vinci Project (Toronto, Ont., now abandoned)
Canadian Arrow (began in London, Ont., now abandoned)
Virgin Galactic
Xcor Aerospace
Blue Origin.
Worldview. (balloon to the edge of space)
Parabolic Arc - a good Commercial Space blog.

Private cargo and crew service providers

It is now official US space policy to give the routine job of cargo transportation to the Space Station to private operators so NASA can concentrate on exploration. The program is called Commercial Orbital Transportation System (COTS) - people sometimes call it Commercial off-the-shelf but that's not the original name. SpaceX has a NASA contract for routine cargo delivery to the International Space Station, but two accidents have slowed them down. A later version of Dragon will carry people, maybe as early as 2018. Orbital Sciences has another space station cargo vehicle called Cygnus which is launched on its Antares rocket, also recently delayed by an accident. The next step is human transportation to the Space Station - SpaceX is well on the way to achieving that as well, as is Boeing, whose crew capsule would be launched on commercial rockets. Sierra Nevada Corporation lost its bid to fly crew to space in a small shuttle-like space plane, but is continuing with plans for cargo flights with the same vehicle.
SpaceX
Orbital Sciences
Sierra Nevada Corporation
Stratolaunch
Boeing Commercial Crew

Other space businesses related to spaceflight

The various rocket companies buy materials and equipment from other companies, or contract work out, so the business opportunities spread out into the economy beyond the front-line players. Here I am only highlighting a couple of examples you might not think of at first, but there are many more.
MARS Scientific - (cameras, not Mars the planet)
Ecliptic Enterprises' Rocketcam
Paragon SDC - life support systems

Private moon missions

This seemed like science fiction a few years ago, and still does to a lot of people. Golden Spike hopes to take people to the Moon, two people at a time. The market for Golden Spike's lunar exploration misions is national space agencies around the world, or large institutions. Will they ever make it work? They held a landing site planning workshop a few years ago, but are currently not very active. Their website is 'under construction' after disappearing briefly.
Golden Spike website

Inspiration Mars

One idea that might fit somewhere between tourism and exploration is Inspiration Mars. This is the idea of Dennis Tito, a wealthy American who was the world's first 'space tourist' in 2001. He described a plan to fly to Mars and back in the shortest time we can do it today - about 500 days, launching (originally) in 2018. No landing on Mars, not even an orbit of the planet. Tito himself funded early work on the design, but the time was very limited and much more money was needed to make it work. Think of this like climbing a previously unclimbed Himalayan peak, or snow-shoeing across Antarctica, or paddling a kayak across the Atlantic, or flying a balloon around the world. People routinely attempt difficult and dangerous things just for the sake of pushing the boundaries of human experience and being first. If the plan succeeded, the two person crew would have been famous for ever as the first people to get to (or near) Mars. There is no Mars science, but we would learn a lot about human factors (health, psychology) and life support technology. Tito asked the US Congress for support and failed to get it. The idea has been pushed back to a 2021 launch date, but there is no guarantee it will get off the ground.
Inspiration Mars - Wikipedia article
Analysis by an expert

Mars One

This is a different way to get to Mars. It's not a short trip, it's permanent colonization, one way and no chance of return. And all funded by media rights including reality TV shows during training, crew selection and operations. The stated timeline is too rapid to be feasible, in most observers' opinions. But many thousands of people have signed up for (or at least expressed interest in) the initial crew selection process. The Dutch team behind this is trying to raise money, but as usual this is proving very difficult.
Mars One website
Wikipedia article
Criticism

SpaceX to Mars

SpaceX has plans - big plans - to go to Mars in about 10 years. This is another colonization plan, but more grounded in reality than Mars One. The intention is to fund development by launching satellites, and via cargo and crew contracts with NASA. The technology now in use to land rocket boosters and return dragon capsules can be used at Mars, but much larger rockets and crew vehicles are planned. Each would carry up to 100 people plus cargo to Mars, and return to Earth for re-use many times. Over time a self-sufficient city would be built to make humans a two-planet (and later a multi-planet) species. As a precursor SpaceX intends to send a Dragon capsule ('Red Dragon') to Mars as early as 2018 and maybe 2 at the next opportunity.
SpaceX Mars plan
SpaceX Mars plan
Red Dragon

Mining asteroids

Some people are interested in resources from space. Finding iron ore on the Moon would not be financially sound, it's cheap and plentiful here on Earth. But what about platinum? And some things may be even more valuable, like the so-called Rare Earth Elements. They are quite common in asteroids and might be mined from them one day. Companies like Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries (with some very big names behind them) are looking to build this business in the near future. Mining of asteroids raises important issues in space law. No country or other entity may claim territory in space including on an asteroid. Does this prevent mining? Not necessarily as mining companies on Earth rarely own the land they mine. The principle that NASA owns its Apollo lunar rock samples is well established and not contested, so a company should be able to own extracted or collected asteroid materials. A recent US law explicity gave companies exactly that right.
Rare Earth Elements
Planetary Resources website
Deep Space Industries
US Space Act, 2015

Lunar mining

Asteroids have hit the Moon many times in the past - that's what made all the craters. If they contain platinum and rare earth elements, most of that stuff is still on the Moon. Remote sensing can identify areas with larger amounts and we could collect it. One company, Moon Express, is working on this topic (after it attempts to win the Google Lunar X Prize). Other companies like Shackleton Energy Company are also looking to build a lunar economy.
Moon Express website
Shackleton Energy Company website
Shackleton Energy Company report

A new world in space - commercial missions to the Moon (left) and tourist flights to the edge of space (right).
Images courtesy of Golden Spike Co. and Virgin Galactic.