Northrop Grumman to own Scaled Composites 108
Dolphinzilla writes "According to Space.com, Northrop Grumman Corporation agreed on July 5 to increase its stake in Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites (designers of Space Ship One, Proteus) from 40 percent to 100 percent. They have purchased the company outright, marking a new future for the space pioneering firm. 'Scaled Composites currently is working with Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic venture on a vehicle designated for now as SpaceShipTwo, which would carry two pilots and six paying passengers into suborbital space for a few minutes of weightlessness. The company also is building a new carrier aircraft, dubbed WhiteKnight2, that will carry SpaceShipTwo to an altitude of 15 kilometers before releasing it to soar to suborbital space. The two companies last year formed a joint venture called the Spaceship Company to build the new vehicles.'"
Re:This is unfortunate (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not sure it's quite as bad as you fear, it's possible that Northrup-Grumman will continue in that tradition.
The challenge with these very small, innovative space companies is that their model (which is a small group of really smart guys working very hard without a lot of support overhead) can only scale up so far. At some point the products they are creating get complex enough where you hit critical mass and start needing groups to specialize in things like analysis, integration, customer support, systems integration, etc.
This is what large aerospace companies are good at. You might call this a bloated support structure, but it's the only way that the industry has found to develop really big, complex, and profitable aircraft and spacecraft (which is what a passenger ship to LEO would be). They haven't yet found a way to build a high complexity, profitable product like a Boeing 777 airliner or a Boeing 702 satellite with a small shop.
Orbital Sciences, for example, has evolved from a small company with a few neat ideas back in the 80's (in particular, the air launched Pegasus) into a major player in the aerospace world, and it is structured like Boeing, Northrup, and LockMart today.
I consider this a positive evolution of the great ideas Scaled Composites has demonstrated into something that can be built and be a commercial success.
Re:surprise, space is a business. (Score:2, Interesting)
Northrop Grumman's "Skunk Works" equivalent? (Score:4, Interesting)
Compete with Lockheed? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:surprise, space is a business. (Score:3, Interesting)
They're not a competitor to Northrop Grumman directly; they're a competitor to the government monopoly on space travel, however small. They're showing that an alternative to such is viable. And as I was saying, Northrop Grumman and the other big defense contractors might as well be considered an arm of the government, except perhaps on paper.
As for benefit? Uncle Sam says something like, "Buy out Scaled Composites, and we'll make sure such-and-such tax break goes through, and we'll buy an extra dozen helicopters from you this year," and there's all the benefit you need.
Re:surprise, space is a business. (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's a scenario that doesn't require the application of a tinfoil hat: NG took a look at NASA, and the aging Shuttle fleet, and realized that in the very near future, the U.S. space program is going to be out a launch vehicle. And because of certain other priorities that have gotten pushed to the forefront recently, NASA seems like they're pretty much out of the reusable-launch-vehicle business for the time being.
This is a pretty big opportunity. There's going to be a demand for launch vehicles, both for tourism and for more conventional purposes, and the company who can build a post-Shuttle reusable launch vehicle stands to make a lot of money. But, doing that is pretty hard, and it's not something that NG really knows anything about. They're not a space company. TRW is, sort of, but they're more of a satellite company.
The list of companies who have experience in actually building crap that goes from the earth to space (or even near it) is pretty short. Not only that, but there are a limited and finite supply of engineers who know how to do, and have experience in, that kind of stuff. And most of the other players on the field are pretty big (Raytheon, Lockheed-Martin, etc.). Compared to them, Scaled Composites is tiny, cheap, and seems to be turning out new ideas at a good rate.
NG took a full stake in SC, because it's cheaper than trying to reinvent what SC has already done, and it could potentially give NG a favorable position over its real competitors (Raytheon, LM) in the future.