Editorial: “Silicon valley reaches for the sky“
HALF a century after the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik 1 satellite, sparking a race with the US that helped put astronauts on the moon, spaceflight is on the brink of another revolution. On 19 May, the cargo-carrying Dragon capsule, designed and built by private company SpaceX, is due to launch for low-Earth orbit, where it will dock with the International Space Station – a first for a commercial craft.
In the short term, success for SpaceX would give NASA, which retired its shuttle last year and is picking up the cheque for the mission, a way to ferry supplies to the ISS. But the feat contains the germ of a much bigger idea: a new era in our relationship with space, driven by the goals of nimble companies not sluggish, state-funded agencies.
Advertisement
“Spaceflight innovations have just not been happening with the traditional government approach to things,” says Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of , based in Hawthorne, California, who also co-founded internet company PayPal.
“Innovations have just not been happening with the traditional approach”
Dragon’s first task will be to carry supplies to the ISS. Crewed missions are expected to follow, eradicating NASA’s need to buy expensive seats on Russian rockets. But SpaceX is also working on technology that could one day land astronauts or paying tourists on the moon, Mars or even asteroids. A range of companies are watching SpaceX’s mission closely, hoping for validation of the commercial space model (see “Today the ISS… tomorrow Mars?“).
Key to SpaceX’s approach is that it eschews the traditional government agency model – used by NASA among others – of outsourcing to expensive, potentially unreliable contractors. Instead, the firm, founded in 2003, makes its own engines, rocket bodies and electronic systems from scratch.
“Metal comes into the SpaceX factory and rockets come out,” says Mike Gold of in Las Vegas, Nevada, which plans to use rockets made by commercial outfits such as SpaceX to launch expandable space stations in the next decade. That allows the firm to rigidly control costs. “SpaceX offers some extremely aggressive pricing and part of the reason for that is its exclusive control of construction,” adds Gold. SpaceX sells its Falcon 9 rockets for $60 million each, one-third the cost of traditional government contractors.
Independence has also led to innovation. The Dragon capsule is designed to be used for both uncrewed and crewed missions, and to return to Earth via a parachute splashdown in the ocean. That’s a welcome capability for trips to the ISS, says , a former head of NASA’s space science programme and chief scientist at lunar mining start-up .
The shuttle used to take science experiments to the ISS and return them to Earth. The only vehicles going to the ISS now are the Russian Soyuz rockets, which carry people, and uncrewed robotic craft operated by Russia, Japan and Europe. These take cargo, including scientific gear, to the ISS, but don’t return to Earth as they are filled with trash, deorbited and burned up in the atmosphere.
“The ISS needs a cargo-carrying vehicle that can get supplies up there and then bring material like scientific samples back. The Dragon has a unique capability in being recoverable,” says Stern, who hopes commercial spaceflight will lower the cost of doing science in space. There are even plans for Dragon to touch down on a planet, moon or asteroid under its own power.
Musk insists Dragon could not have happened if governments had been at the helm: “Under government control, people on space programmes have always been too worried about trying a new technology in case their career is forever marred if it doesn’t work out. That’s a strong incentive to go with what worked last time.”
A close analogy, says Musk, is the internet, which “grew very slowly until the mid 1990s, when commercial companies entered the scene, causing the rate of technology evolution to dramatically accelerate”.
So far SpaceX has spent $100 million developing its rockets, capsules and launch facilities – impressive considering its order book currently stands at $4 billion, with 40 planned launches. Thirteen are for NASA; the other 27 are for commercial broadcast, mapping and weather satellites.
But it will only be worth it if the capsule works. Once Dragon reaches an altitude of 200 kilometres, SpaceX will have to prove it is under control via a . Only then will it be allowed to approach the ISS. This is to reduce the risk of a collision, which could puncture the pressurised ISS.
When the capsule gets within 28 kilometres of the ISS, a radio control unit will guide it to the station’s robot arm, which will grasp the capsule and plug it into a docking hatch.
The mission was scheduled for April but software checks delayed it. Not everyone expects the docking to work first time. “The Dragon mission to the ISS is a test flight,” says Stern. “It’s designed to work out bugs – and there are likely to be some surprises, some issues that arise that no one predicted.”
Gold says that even a successful launch would be a “tremendous validation of the technology and commercial space policy”. SpaceX has launched Dragon only twice before, most recently in 2010. “Docking would be the icing on the cake,” he says. “But let’s not mistake the icing for the cake.”
Once SpaceX does succeed, the next step will be carrying people to the ISS. NASA is funding SpaceX to develop this capability, as well as its rivals Boeing, Blue Origin and Sierra Nevada Corporation, which are not so advanced in their crewed launch plans.
These newer crewed capsules might be safer than their predecessors. Musk says the main challenge in making Dragon people-friendly is developing a lightweight launch escape system. The shuttle had no such system, while the Soyuz – and China’s Soyuz-derived rockets – have systems that sit atop the capsule and must be jettisoned after 3 minutes of flight. SpaceX’s idea is to build high-thrust liquid rocket motors into the Dragon’s side walls. “This gives the crew an escape capability all the way to orbit,” says Musk. Their high thrust will also allow the Dragon to land “anywhere in the solar system”, he says, by pushing the capsule upwards as it descends to slow down and smooth the landing.
In the long term, Musk wants to develop a reusable rocket, noting that Falcon 9 only costs $200,000 to fuel – the same as a Boeing 747. That could boost the plans of firms with imaginative plans, such as asteroid mining. “We will be glad to provide transportation services to them,” says Musk. “Our rockets are standing by.”
Today the ISS… tomorrow Mars?
Docking with the ISS is a key milestone for commercial spaceflight but it’s a mundane venture compared with other plans. Here are our picks from a variety of destinations announced in recent months, often with the backing of technology billionaires.
• ASTEROIDS Backed by Google’s Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, and Microsoft Word creator Charles Simonyi, of Seattle, Washington, plans to mine asteroids for water and precious metals like platinum.
• THE MOON Backed by technology investor Barney Pell and philanthropist Naveen Jain, of Las Vegas, Nevada, will first use a lander to dispatch two rovers to scout out the best areas for mining, before tapping the moon’s resources.
• SPACE HOTEL , named after its founder Las Vegas hotel magnate Robert Bigelow, has licensed and improved a NASA design for an expandable space habitat that fits in a small rocket and inflates once in space. It can either orbit Earth or sit on a lunar or planetary surface as a base.
• MARS , founded by PayPal co-founder Elon Musk, isn’t just eyeing up the ISS: a few rocket generations down the line could transport astronauts to Mars and use the capsule’s ability to land under its own power.
