Private ventures vie to service space station

Alan Boyle Science editor • Profile • E-mail

More than 20 companies have submitted proposals to provide NASA with transportation services to the international space station, marking the start of a $500 million experiment in space commercialization.

The companies range from well-established aerospace firms to freshly minted startups. Some of them have laid out in detail what they're proposing for NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program, or COTS. Others are unwilling to confirm publicly that they've made a proposal.

NASA itself declines to say who is participating in the COTS competition, or even confirm how many are participating. But sources involved in the competition have made clear that at least 20 companies are in the game — often combined in groups of potential contractors.

The deadline for submitting proposals passed earlier this month, and NASA is expected to select the COTS winners in June.

Some see the COTS program as a prime opportunity for NASA to capitalize upon — and encourage — a new wave of entrepreneurship sweeping through the U.S. launch industry. Others are more wary about the program, fearing that much of the promised $500 million may be diverted to fund NASA's far costlier effort to roll out its own Crew Exploration Vehicle in the 2012-2014 time frame.

Two teams are vying to win NASA's nod for the Crew Exploration Vehicle, or CEV: One is led by Lockheed Martin, and the other is headed by Northrop Grumman with the Boeing Co. as subcontractor. The winning team for that multibillion-dollar project is due to be selected this summer.

Stopgap and insurance
The COTS program serves as a stopgap measure and something of an insurance policy for the CEV. If the space shuttle fleet is retired in 2010 as currently planned, there would be a gap of at least a couple of years in NASA's ability to service the space station. Russian and European spaceships could fill that gap, but NASA also wants to be able to turn to U.S. companies that could transfer cargo and eventually humans between Earth and the orbital station — particularly if it takes longer than expected to develop the CEV.

That's why the space agency has budgeted $500 million through 2010 to fund demonstrations of such private-sector capability. The first phase of the COTS program would focus on unmanned cargo delivery, and an optional second phase would expand that to crew transport.

NASA Administrator Mike Griffin emphasizes that the COTS effort, unlike the space agency's past programs or even the CEV program, would be aimed at purchasing services rather than funding the design and construction of a spaceship from the ground up. "It will not be government 'business as usual,'" he told a conference last year (PDF file).

In Griffin's view, commercializing space station supply operations would free up NASA to focus on spaceships for the moon and beyond.

Entrepreneurial muscle
Barron Beneski, spokesman for Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corp., said his company welcomed the opportunity to flex its entrepreneurial muscle. "Orbital grew up out of the private sector with venture capital," he said, "and the first products were all privately developed."

Today, NASA and other government agencies use Orbital's Pegasus air-launch system to put satellites in orbit, with the Space Technology 5 mission next on the schedule. Orbital is also part of the Lockheed Martin team vying for the CEV project.

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