NASA Buying Private Companies' Suborbital Rocket Flights

FleaPlus writes "NASA is spending a total of $475,000, split between Masten Space Systems and John Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace, for a series of seven test flights of the companies' reusable suborbital rockets over the next several months, going to altitudes as high as 25 miles. NASA's goal is to foster a more cost-effective and flexible way to conduct microgravity and upper-atmosphere research. Jeff Bezos's suborbital spaceflight company Blue Origin has also been making steady progress this year on their $3.7M contract to test pusher-escape system and composite pressure vessel technologies, which NASA is interested in for orbital spaceflight."

Commercial Payload Companies

[BJ_Covert_Action]

You know, it's kind of funny. Lately with all the hub-ub regarding the closure of the shuttle program, the small launch companies have been getting a ton of publicity. We have companies like SpaceX and Orbital working their way into the medium and heavy lift rocket arenas. We have Blue Origin, Masten, Armadillo, and a half-dozen other small rocket/sounding rocket/propulsion companies developing launch platforms for low gravity environments (moon, Mars) and suborbital flights. One thing that I can't seem to find a lot of, however, is small, commercial payload companies. There are definitely a few. Companies like Clyde Space [clyde-space.com] for instance are starting to offer available payloads on cubesat buses. There are also companies like Interorbital Sciences [interorbital.com] that are trying to push the small payload/tubesat architecture. And, of course, there are dozens of startups competing for the rover portion of the GLXP. Nonetheless, I would like to see more small satellite companies start cropping up. It seems like there would be a market for a company that could develop a common, reliable, small payload bus (about 250 - 500 kg) that could guarantee a mission life of XX many years and a power base of XX many kW that customers could mount scientific payloads on to test technologies, gather a bit of data, whatever.

I guess that I am surprised to see commercial launch companies getting so much publicity, while the market for commercial satellite buses remains so small. It would be cool to see a company do to satellites what SpaceX is trying to do the launch market. Surely some science communities out there would pay to gather 0 g data for some field or another...

This is good.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is good news. This is capitalism in action, it's all thanks to capitalism. Free market, thank you free market.

Re:Commercial Payload Companies

[tomhath]

I guess that I am surprised to see commercial launch companies getting so much publicity

Surprised? The Obama administration is pushing the idea, so NASA is providing the publicity (one thing they were always good at). I'll be impressed when the rockets have more capacity than the surface-to-air missiles that were in use during the Vietnam War. Sounds like they still have a ways to go.

Re:Commercial Payload Companies

[quanticle]

This may be on a smaller scale than you're imagining, but there does exist one such service today: TubeSat [slashdot.org].

Re:Pay per flight

[wiredlogic]

When was the last time NASA dealt in dollar amounts under a million?

The Navy launched the Clementine moon probe [wikipedia.org] for ~$100K in 1994 and sparked the "Faster, Better, Cheaper" mantra within NASA. This freaked the space industry powerhouses because it threatened a significant reduction in the fat they could carve out of their contracts with the government if it took hold as an industry wide standard. Fortunately for them, some notable failed projects built around FBC led to the abandonment of that policy and the continued largess for publicly funded space programs.