Blue Origin has developed a reputation over the years as a notoriously secretive company, only grudgingly releasing information about the company and its plans. While other companies hold high-profile events [...]]]>

Blue Origin’s PM2 suborbital experimental vehicle, shown here on a flight before being lost during a test flight in August 2011. (Credit: Blue Origin)

Blue Origin has developed a reputation over the years as a notoriously secretive company, only grudgingly releasing information about the company and its plans. While other companies hold high-profile events for media and customers (hi, Virgin Galactic!) or issue press releases about their ongoing efforts, Blue Origin only rarely issues releases or discloses information, which means those interested in the company hang on, and often try to parse, any words said by company leadership, including founder Jeff Bezos.

On Friday, Bezos did discuss Blue Origin in an on-stage interview Friday that was part of the grand opening of the Bezos Center of Innovation at Seattle’s Museum of History and Industry. As reported by Seattle technology publication GeekWire, Bezos said that the company was now up to 300 employees, the first time in recent memory the company has disclosed a headcount. That makes it small compared to SpaceX, which now has over 3,000 employees, but likely on a par with the Virgin Galactic/The Spaceship Company team developing SpaceShipTwo, and much larger than other suborbital companies like XCOR Aerospace and Masten Space Systems.

“The project is going extremely well,” Bezos said of the company’s efforts to develop suborbital and orbital reusable spacecraft, according to the GeekWire report. He said the company is working on its third iteration of its New Shepard suborbital vehicle, adding that he hopes this is the final iteration before beginning commercial service, although he didn’t offer a timetable for that.

Bezos regularly devotes time to Blue Origin, according to an excerpt of a new book about Bezos and his more famous company, Amazon.com, published in the latest issue of Bloomberg Businessweek. Author Brad Stone writes that Bezos “moonlights” a day a week at the company. (According to the book itself, The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, just published today, Bezos spends each Wednesday at Blue Origin.)

Blue Origin has also been working on an orbital vehicle concept that would launch initially on top of an existing rocket like an Atlas V, but eventually on the company’s own reusable boosters. The company got some funding and technical support from NASA under the Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program, and although Blue Origin elected not to continue under the next funded phase of the program, Commercial Crew Integrated Capability, it has extended the Space Act Agreement it had under its CCDev-2 award to permit additional, unfunded cooperation with NASA. Bezos said that the company’s orbital vehicle would be ready for flights in 2018, according to the GeekWire report, but didn’t mention how it would be paid for given the lack of NASA funding.

Those orbital flights, though, would likely come well after the suborbital vehicle begins service. “We will be able to have tens, if not low hundreds of flights [suborbitally] to prove out that flight heritage before putting people in orbit,” Brett Alexander, director of business development and strategy, said at a conference on human spaceflight organized by the US Naval Institute and held at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, earlier this month.

Blue Origin, of course, has also been locked in a controversy with SpaceX over their competing bids to lease Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A; Blue Origin has proposed a multi-user commercial facility on the former shuttle launch pad while SpaceX originally sought an exclusive use agreement. SpaceX’s Elon Musk was openly skeptical of Blue Origin’s ability to use the launch pad any time in the next five years, telling Space News that “we are more likely to discover unicorns dancing in the flame duct” of the pad than Blue Origin showing up with an orbital spacecraft to launch in the next five years.

However, Blue Origin has famously also taken the long view, not surprising for a company with the motto “Gradatim Ferociter” (roughly translated as “step by step, with ferocity”). Other than the $25.7 million it received from NASA, Alexander said the rest of the company’s funding has come from Bezos, accounting for “well more than 90 percent” of the company’s total investment so far (suggesting a total investment of well more than $250 million), and that this would continue for the foreseeable future.

“Fundamentally, we are on a journey that is about changing spaceflight from being dangerous and expensive into something that’s accessible to a broader sector of humanity,” Alexander said. “We view it as a long-term endeavor, something that’s 20, 30, 40 years in the making.”

And for the secrecy? “I think the reality is that we’re just very quiet,” Alexander said. “We like to talk about things after we’ve done them, and not before that, and hopefully you’ll be hearing a lot from us in the future.”

Orbital’s Cygnus cargo spacecraft is now on its way to becoming the second commercial cargo vehicle to service the International Space Station. The Antares rocket carrying the Cygnus [...]]]>

An Antares rocket, carrying a Cygnus cargo spacecraft, lifts off Wednesday from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport in Virginia, en route to the ISS. (credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls)

Orbital’s Cygnus cargo spacecraft is now on its way to becoming the second commercial cargo vehicle to service the International Space Station. The Antares rocket carrying the Cygnus cargo spacecraft lifted off on schedule at 10:58 am EDT (1458 GMT) Wednesday and placed the Cygnus spacecraft into earth orbit. The countdown and launch went well: the only concern was during a time in the countdown when it appeared that, in a worst-case scenario, a launch failure could, given atmospheric conditions, create enough overpressure that occupants of several houses were asked, if they were home. to stand outside in the event windows broke. (As it turned out, the concern subsided and, of course, there was no explosion.)

Since launch, Cygnus has been going through its paces. The spacecraft performed overnight “free drift and abort” demonstrations, the first of ten milestones for the spacecraft as it proceeds to the station, and also carried out two orbit-raising engines burns. A third thruster burn is planned for Thursday afternoon. If everything continues on schedule—something that can’t be guaranteed on a test flight, although everything has gone well so far—Cygnus will arrive at the ISS and be grappled by the station’s robotic arm as early as 7:25 am EDT (1125 GMT) Sunday.

Once there, Cygnus will remain attached to the station for 30 days before departing for a destructive reentry. The spacecraft is carrying 700 kilograms of supplies, more than any previous commercial cargo mission to the station, Orbital’s Frank Culbertson said at a post-launch press conference (a subtle dig at SpaceX’s three Dragon flights to the station.) Culbertson added Orbital would be ready to fly another Cygnus mission, the first of eight under a commercial resupply contract with NASA, as early as December, although NASA officials said they will make a decision on whether Orbital or SpaceX will fly in the December launch opportunity after this test flight.

NASA issued a request for proposals (RFP) on Wednesday, August 7, for the NASA Launch Services (NLS) Enabling eXploration [...]]]> After abandoning plans for a prize competition to develop a nanosatellite launch vehicle, NASA is making another attempt to stimulate development of such a launch system by offering to buy a launch—just one—from such a system.

NASA issued a request for proposals (RFP) on Wednesday, August 7, for the NASA Launch Services (NLS) Enabling eXploration & Technology, or NEXT, program. The RFP is seeking to purchase one launch that will be able to place a minimum of 15 kilograms of satellites—about three “3U” CubeSats—into orbit at an altitude of at least 425 kilometers and in any orbital inclination between 0 and 98 degrees. That launch would take place no later than December 15, 2016. NEXT is reserved for small businesses, defined here as having no more than 1,000 employees.

“It’s that point in time where we need to start looking at this,” Garrett Skrobot of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center said in regards to a dedicated nanosatellite launch vehicle in a presentation Sunday at a CubeSat workshop at Utah State University in Logan, Utah. Unlike other NLS contracts, this vehicle won’t need to have a successful flight before being selected. “We’re looking at a high risk tolerance approach. The first one may go into the ocean. It’s high risk, and we’re going to go in knowing this.”

This new RFP represents a shift in strategy by NASA in promoting the development of very small launch vehicles designed for nanosatellites and CubeSats. Last November, NASA quietly canceled a Centennial Challenges prize competition for the development of a nanosatellite launcher, concluding that none of the ongoing development efforts beyond those already with government contracts could meet the competition’s goals in the next three to five years.

The NEXT approach has some people in the industry scratching their heads, wondering how effective a contract for single launch would be in promoting the development of such vehicles; it alone would do little to close the business case for those vehicle developers. John Olds, CEO of nanosatellite launch vehicle company Generation Orbit, argued in a blog post Saturday that NASA should follow an approach like it did for the development of commercial cargo and crew systems under the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) and Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) programs, using funded Space Act Agreements to help support development of those spacecraft and launch vehicles. “A similar fixed-price approach, with progress-based milestone payments, might also work for 2 or 3 competitors in the small satellite launch arena,” he wrote, adding that it would be preferable to a prize. “A COTS-style program might be a more appropriate approach and the NASA investment at this level of payload would be modest — easily less than 1% of what they’ve spent on COTS and CCDev.”

Last month, with considerable fanfare, Space Adventures and the Russian space agency Roscosmos announced at a press conference in Moscow that singer [...]]]>

Sarah Brightman attended to during tests that confirmed her fitness to fly to space as a space tourist in 2015. Some Russian officials have raised doubts that she will fly. (credit: sarahbrightman.com)

Last month, with considerable fanfare, Space Adventures and the Russian space agency Roscosmos announced at a press conference in Moscow that singer Sarah Brightman would be the next commercial spaceflight participant (aka space tourist) to visit the International Space Station (ISS). The announcement contained few details about her trip, including when she would go, although speculation centered around 2015, when NASA and Roscosmos will have ISS crewmembers on a first-of-its-kind year-long stay on the ISS, freeing up seats on Soyuz flights to and from the ISS. Brightman and Space Adventures have said little about the future flight since the press conference.

This week, Russian space industry officials have raised questions about how serious Brightman is about flying in space. Interfax reported earlier this week that unnamed officials have speculated Brightman’s announcement last month was designed to generate publicity for her upcoming album and world tour, which did come up during the press conference. “It is very probable that the singer said she may fly to the ISS to fuel interest in her year-long world tour, which she will begin next year,” the unnamed source told Interfax.

Sergei Krikalev, the former cosmonaut who now heads Russia’s cosmonaut training center, said those claims were news to him, but added he wasn’t surprised. “Many years ago there was an option to send one singer into space. He had undergone a medical selection and there were plans to sign a contract with him,” he said, referring to Lance Bass, who ten years ago had plans to fly as a space tourist but failed to line up sponsorship deals to pay for the flight.

The head of Roscosmos, Vladimir Popovkin, spoke up on Friday in response to those reports, saying that Brightman was still planning to fly, but that Roscosmos hasn’t made a formal decision yet. “I have met her, she is all set to fly, but Roscosmos has not yet decided on it,” he told RIA Novosti, adding that Roscosmos would make a decision in the first half of 2013. (Interfax said the decision wouldn’t come until the second half of 2013.)

The claims by Russian officials that Brightman wouldn’t fly may be evidence of more general disdain about flying space tourists on Soyuz flights. “Space tourism is, unfortunately, a major problem for professionals like us,” said Pavel Vinogradov, another former cosmonaut who is now deputy head of the Energia Flight Space Center. “Tourism undermines the very foundation of manned space flights, because we have to replace young cosmonauts with tourists.”

Popovkin made a similar comment to Interfax when asked why Roscosmos hasn’t made a decision yet about Brightman: “We need to provide young cosmonauts with flight practice.” The decision may hinge on whether the additional revenue such a flight would provide Roscosmos—on the order of $50 million—overcomes their reticence of flying tourists versus professional cosmonauts.

On Wednesday at the Farnborough Airshow outside London, Virgin Galactic formally announced its smallsat launch vehicle concept, called LauncherOne. The system features a two-stage rocket carried aloft by Virgin’s WhiteKnightTwo aircraft and released, much like Orbital [...]]]>

Illustration of Virgin Galactic’s LauncherOne igniting its first stage engine after being dropped from WhiteKnightTwo. (credit: Virgin Galactic)

On Wednesday at the Farnborough Airshow outside London, Virgin Galactic formally announced its smallsat launch vehicle concept, called LauncherOne. The system features a two-stage rocket carried aloft by Virgin’s WhiteKnightTwo aircraft and released, much like Orbital Science’s existing Pegasus and Stratolaunch Systems’s proposed rocket.

The rocket will be able to place up to 225 kilograms into LEO (100 kilograms into Sun-synchronous orbit) for a price “below $10 million.” (The company hasn’t released many technical details about the rocket, although the BBC’s Jonathan Amos, at the press conference in Farnborough announcing the system, tweeted that the rocket will use liquid oxygen and kerosene and not hybrid motors, as SpaceShipTwo does.) Launches would take place from Spaceport America and perhaps other sites in the US; launches outside the US may take place later after obtaining “various regulatory licenses.”

Virgin announced that they have already lined up several customers for LauncherOne, who have paid deposits for launches expected to start in 2016. They include Skybox Imaging, a company planning a series of commercial remote sensing satellites; GeoOptics, a company that plans to observe occultations of GPS signals to study the atmosphere; Spaceflight Inc. (apparently a reference to Spaceflight Services), which aggregates smallsat payloads for launch; and asteroid mining company Planetary Resources. In addition, Virgin said that two smallsat manufacturers, Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. and Sierra Nevada Space Systems, would develop versions of their smallsat buses optimized to the design of LauncherOne.

This is not the first time Virgin Galactic has talked up a smallsat system: when it announced nearly three years ago an investment by UAE-based Aabar Investments, that deal included $100 million for development of a smallsat launcher much like what was announced today; even the LauncherOne name was reported, albeit unofficially. That effort went onto the backburner, though, as the company focused on the suborbital system. Today’s announcement notes that Aabar has provided “substantial funding” for LauncherOne, but doesn’t mention an amount and whether the company has provided any more funding than that original $100-million tranche in 2009. Virgin Galactic has also received one of several Airborne Launch Assist Space Access (ALASA) awards from DARPA to develop a low-cost airlaunch system.

Virgin hailed LauncherOne as a major milestone for space access. “LauncherOne is bringing the price of satellite launch into the realm of affordability for innovators everywhere, from start-ups and schools to established companies and national space agencies,” Sir Richard Branson said in the statement announcing it. “It will be a critical new tool for the global research community, enabling us all to learn about our home planet more quickly and affordably.”

How revolutionary it will be, though, is open to question. Airlaunch systems aren’t new, with various concepts having been proposed over the years, as well as Orbital’s Pegasus, which has been flying for over two decades. Pegasus hasn’t won much business because of its price, estimated to be on the order of $30 million. Several years ago, SpaceX was going to open up the smallsat launch market with the Falcon 1, which originally was to launch about 600 kilograms to LEO for $6 million; the payload capacity later declined to about 420 kilograms as the price increased to around $9 million. Later, the Falcon 1e was to provide approximately 1,000 kilograms for $11 million, but the company withdrew the vehicle from the market, citing limited demand. While Virgin does have customers lined up, as it announced today, its prices may have to fall significantly below $10 million per launch to sustain demand over the long term, given the vehicle’s performance and the history of previous smallsat launch efforts.

In a similar vein to Virgin Galactic’s revolutionary approach to making satellite launches more accessible and affordable, the pharmaceutical industry has also seen innovative strides in making vital medications economically available. Just as Virgin Galactic is reducing the cost barrier for accessing space, efforts are being made to identify the cheapest places to buy medications like Jardiane from the link, a critical treatment for type 2 diabetes. This comparison highlights how technological and business innovations across different sectors aim to enhance accessibility, be it through aerospace ventures or healthcare solutions. By leveraging competitive pricing and distribution models, consumers can now find Jardiane at significantly reduced prices, much like the reduced costs anticipated for satellite launches. This underscores a broader trend of using innovation to serve and empower more extensive communities and consumer bases.

Some people noted earlier this week an article by Talking Points Memo (TPM) reporting that NASA plans to make selections in the next round of its commercial crew effort, the Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) [...]]]>

An illustration of the cargo module capability for the ATK/EADS Astrium Liberty system announced earlier this week. (credit: ATK)

Some people noted earlier this week an article by Talking Points Memo (TPM) reporting that NASA plans to make selections in the next round of its commercial crew effort, the Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) program, in July or August, making more than one award. While TPM, a website primarily devoted to political news, treated that development as newsworthy, that has been in fact NASA’s plan for some time now, especially after NASA worked out an agreement with a key House appropriator, Frank Wolf, about the future of the commercial crew program. During a press teleconference on June 18 about a memorandum of understanding between NASA and FAA on commercial crew regulation, for example, NASA administrator Charles Bolden said he expected the awards to come by mid-July.

NASA has said little else about the state of the competition, beyond its plan to make “two and a half” awards: two full-sized awards and a third smaller award. What NASA hasn’t disclosed is which companies submitted CCiCap proposals. One can guess, though, that at least five companies are bidding for CCiCap: the four companies with funded second-round Commercial Crew Development (CCDev-2) awards—Blue Origin, Boeing, Sierra Nevada, and SpaceX—and the ATK/EADS Astrium team that has an unfunded CCDev-2 agreement with NASA. And while these companies have made a number of announcements about their CCDev efforts, it’s been that last team that has been the most active in making the case for their crew transportation concept.

In the course of less than a week (June 28 through July 3), ATK issued five press releases related to Liberty, including:

• A teaming agreement with NanoRacks, who will market experiment space on future Liberty missions;
• Completion of a technical interface meeting (TIM) for Liberty’s software;
• Successful tests of tank structures for Liberty’s second stage, which is based on the core stage of EADS’s Ariane 5;
• The creation of an independent assessment team for Liberty, led by former astronaut Bryan O’Connor and including another former astronaut, Ken Bowersox, who formerly worked for SpaceX; and
• The announcement of a combined cargo and crew capability for Liberty, through an “extended cargo configuration” that can accommodate a cargo module based on the Multi-Purpose Logistic Module previously flown to the ISS on shuttle flights.

Their publicity push goes beyond press releases. Listeners to WTOP-FM, an all-news radio station in Washington, DC, have probably heard by now an ATK/EADS ad for Liberty during its broadcasts: a short spot playing up the benefits of Liberty to service the ISS. Such ads aren’t usual on WTOP for the defense industry (right now it’s sharing airtime with one from Lockheed Martin extolling the benefits of a missile defense systems called MEADS.) However, it’s much rarer for the commercial space field, and none of the other likely CCiCap bidders are running similar ads.

(ATK has also benefited from some friendly media coverage, like this article published Wednesday at NASASpaceFlight.com, which cites unnamed sources who claim Liberty “is actually becoming a favorite option of some high ranking Agency managers.” The site, though, may have missed the unintentional irony of the July 4th-themed headline—“ATK push for US space flight independence via Liberty”—when Liberty uses a second stage manufactured in Europe.)

Is a media push like this effective, though? As noted above, radio spots, as well as ads in newspapers and on Metro, Washington’s subway system, are commonplace in the defense industry during major procurements: at the height of the deliberations over a new Air Force tanker last year, the airwaves on WTOP at times seemed to consist of nothing but dueling ads from EADS and Boeing. Did it provide much advantage to Boeing, who won the contract? That’s hard to say, but it’s clear from this push that ATK is very interested in winning a CCiCap award to develop Liberty.

Speaking in a media telecon Monday morning, NASA administrator Charles Bolden said he expected the awards to be announced “no later than, say, mid-July [...]]]> The administrator of NASA said Monday he expects the space agency to announce multiple awards for the next round of its commercial crew development effort by the middle of next month.

Speaking in a media telecon Monday morning, NASA administrator Charles Bolden said he expected the awards to be announced “no later than, say, mid-July or so, that’s our hope,” he said. NASA had previously indicated that the awards would come by August, but chatter in the industry suggested that timetable could be moved up based on the progress NASA was making with scheduling oral presentations by companies submitting proposals.

Bolden said later in the telecon that NASA plans to select “upwards of three companies” in this round of the program, called Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap). However, he said they would fund the equivalent of “two and a half” companies: two will get full-sized awards and a third would get a half-sized award. (Although not explicitly stated, Bolden’s language suggests that other companies could get unfunded Space Act Agreements, as was the case in the earlier rounds of the program.) That award system aligns with what Bolden and a key member of Congress, Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that funds NASA, agreed to earlier this month as part of a deal to address the concerns Wolf had with the commercial crew program.

NASA did not disclose on the call how many companies submitted CCiCap proposals, citing the sensitive nature of the ongoing competition. It’s likely, though, that at least five major players submitted proposals, including the four companies with second round Commercial Crew Development (CCDev-2) funded agreements: Blue Origin, Boeing, Sierra Nevada Corporation, and SpaceX. In addition, the ATK/EADS Astrium joint venture proposing the Liberty launch vehicle, which has an unfunded CCDev-2 award from NASA, has also indicated they’ve submitted a proposal for CCDev-2.

How big these full- or half-sized awards have yet to be announced, and will depend in part on what the companies are asking for. Bolden said he will continue to push for full funding for the commercial crew program in Congress for fiscal year 2013: just under $830 million. The House and Senate versions of the appropriations bill that includes NASA, though, fund the program at $500 and $525 million, respectively. “We will ask for a significant increase in 2014 and the other years if we are to hold to the 2017 first flight for commercial crew to the International Space Station,” he said.

NASA officials also said on the telecon that, contrary to some language used in media reports about the commercial crew competition, the CCiCap awards are not a “downselect”. What that likely means is that any company will be able to submit bids for the next phase of the program after CCiCap, which will be run under more conventional Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) rules. That causes some confusion since Congressional critics like Rep. Wolf had pushed NASA to downselect to even a single company going forward, something NASA objected to in order to preserve competition and redundancy.

The news about the commercial crew competition overshadowed the primary purpose of the hastily-arranged telecon, which was to announce a memorandum of understanding between NASA and the FAA regarding regulation of commercial spaceflight. For commercial cargo, and future commercial crew, missions to the ISS performed for NASA, the FAA will license the launches and reentries as they do today, with NASA taking responsibility for crew safety and mission assurance oversight. That division of labor (which does not apply to commercial cargo or crew missions that don’t involve NASA; the space agency will have no oversight role in those cases) was largely expected.