SpaceX, Rocketplane win spaceship contest

Alan Boyle Science editor • Profile • E-mail

Two aerospace teams headed by SpaceX and Rocketplane Kistler will share almost half a billion dollars set aside for demonstrations of new spaceships capable of transporting cargo and crew between Earth and the international space station, NASA announced Friday.

The Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program, or COTS, marks a dramatic departure in the way NASA does business and could give a boost to the nascent private-sector space race — including space tourism for paying passengers.

NASA Administrator Mike Griffin acknowledged earlier this week that the program could also turn out to be a $500 million flop. "If it doesn’t work, I’ve frankly made the wrong bet … with a good amount of money that we could have used for other purposes if the entrepreneurial sector is, in fact, not able to step up," he told Space.com.

Critics of NASA's traditional approach to spaceship development, on the other hand, tend to see COTS and similar initiatives as the space agency's best hope. "If anything's going to get us out of this hole, it is this new entrepreneurial spirit," Jerry Pournelle, a science-fiction author who also served as a space policy adviser to the Reagan administration, told MSNBC.com.

With the rise of less expensive rockets, "we will see human transportation to low Earth orbit become more of a reality in the next four or five years," said Will Trafton, executive vice president for business development at Rocketplane Kistler.

Elon Musk, SpaceX's founder and chief executive officer, told MSNBC.com that "this is going to be the best value for money that NASA and the American taxpayers have ever received."

Two approaches to funding spaceships
In the past, NASA has funded the entire development cost for creating spaceships for human spaceflight, ranging from Mercury capsules to space shuttles. This approach is still being used for the development of the main successor to the space shuttle fleet, known as the Crew Exploration Vehicle or CEV. Two teams, led by Lockheed Martin on one side and Northrop Grumman and Boeing on the other, are vying for that multibillion-dollar project — and NASA is expected to announce the winner of the CEV contract sometime in the next couple of months.

COTS is different in that NASA will be merely "investing" in projects primarily supported by the private sector, with quarterly payments made as the development teams reach technical and financial milestones through the end of 2009. The final milestones call for three test flights, including an unmanned flight to the space station itself, said Alan Lindenmoyer, commercial crew/cargo project manager at NASA.

The spaceships developed with NASA's support could well help fill the gap between the scheduled 2010 retirement of the shuttle fleet and the start of CEV flights in the 2012-2014 time frame.

When the first phase of the COTS program runs out in 2010, NASA says it will conduct another competition for pay-as-you-go contracts to resupply the space station. Officials have compared it to renting a moving van rather than having one custom-built for your exclusive use. Such "vans" can be used for non-NASA purposes as well, ranging from private-passenger joy rides to commercial research flights.

The applicants for those future NASA contracts are likely to include Friday's winners, but would also be open to other COTS competitors that were passed over.

Unlike Boeing and Lockheed Martin, SpaceX and Rocketplane Kistler are unaccustomed to having a lead role in the development of piloted spaceships. Now they will manage $485 million between them. NASA is setting aside another $15 million from the half-billion-dollar program for its own program costs, Lindenmoyer told MSNBC.com.

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