Commercial Space, The Myth

In the proposed NASA budget, the NASA administrator is trying to support a a statement that NASA is now creating an "enhanced US commercial space industry."  I would like to propose that "commercial space" is a myth when it comes to launching humans to space.  One only has to look at history, physics and the state of commercial ventures in space over the past 20 years.

After reading articles and hearing NASA administrator Bolden talk, there is a belief out there that space travel today can be run like Boeing's aircraft business.  You build a new plane (based on profites from previous sales of planes) and companies buy 100's of them to move people through the air for a fee.  Space travel still doesn't work that way, and won't for a long time.

Truly commercial, private industry requires economies of scale that make the development of a product economically viable in the marketplace.  Space travel doesn't work that way yet.  Imagine if I started a company and said I was going to build aircraft carriers and market them to the countries of the world.  There is no way I could show a profitable outcome for my company as I could not make a profit on the few carriers that would be purchased.  Obviously this is an extreme case, but it makes my point.

So lets look at history and see if there is a "true" commercial market for space flight.  In the 1990s there was a belief in the industry that satellite programs like Iridium would make these economies of scale viable in the development of launch vehicles.  Many start-up aerospace companies arose from this belief.  These were companies like Rotary Rocket, Kistler Aerospace, Pioneer Rocketplane, and others.  One may not have heard of these companies, because they either didn't survive or are only a second or third tier supplier of aerospace parts.  The reason they didn't survive is because the satellite market didn't manifest itself and there was no reason for customers to purchase that many launch vehicles.

We can also look at the history of the United Launch Alliance.  They launch satellites to space commercially.  But they didn't build a rocket and a customer came with money.  The boosters they are flying now were developed based on a DoD Evolved Explendable Launch Vehicle contract in excess of a billion dollars.  Also, the United Launch Alliance did not  merge the giant launch vehicle providers Boeing and Lockheed Martin because business was booming.  ULA was formed to leverage both companies assets in an ever reducing market.  The economies of scale are still not evident in that market.

Now NASA wants to kick start the "commercial" human spaceflight industry and they parade companies liek SpaceX and Orbital in front of the world as pioneers of this emerging market.  I have to ask, what market?   Is there really a market for flying humans to space.  Yes we can send researchers to ISS, but I would guess that any company would need about 20 launches to space in a year to make the endavor commercially viable.  Are there really 20 customers out there a year that want to fly to ISS?  Can the Space Station support 20 trips a year?  The answer is no.

So how do companies like ULA, SpaceX, and others fly vehicles to space?  They do it through the foundational government contracts that allow them to build the capabilities they desire.  In the end, "commercial space" is just "where can I get my next government contract."  I, therefore, submit that the "commercially" funded crew access to space in the 2011 budget proposal is a myth.  It is just another government contract to fly human's to space.

Given that this is a myth, then the statements made by Administrator Bolden that this is a new way of doing business are false.  With the Constellation program, there were many contractors that fairly won competitions to get a government contract to provide crew access to space.   If NASA is just using the 2011 budget to kill the Constellation program under the guise of a new way of doing business, I say that is a myth, and the government just threw away $9 billion of our taxpayer dollars.  And we still won't be providing US access to the ISS in the next 10 years with this new way of doing business.  With the US debt over a trillion dollars, does it make sense to change course now and throw away billions of dallars?

We are still going nowhere, and its costing us a lot of money.