Private Space Companies Are on The Rise We are on the verge of a big change at NASA. It is beginning to become obvious that the big aerospace companies of yesteryear are having a problem competing with the new upstarts and things are only going to get worse for them. There has been an operation which has been standard in government and that is the military industrial complex would bid low on a project and as they are designing and building it, they will ask for increases in funding which are granted almost without question. The same is true for falling behind schedules and releasing devices which are not ready. Some of this seems to have run over into NASA. NASA officials have said they do not want to abandon their Boeing SLS rocket because of its size. It is late and over budget. Is this just another way of keeping the gravy train on the rails for Boeing and the old school contractors? There is pressure by those who realize some of the new space companies seem to be able to accomplish their goals a lot faster and at times very much cheaper. I am sure this is making those older aerospace companies very nervous. Even among the new companies there are two which stand out because of their reusable rockets which can make journeys into space a lot cheaper. This was the original goal of the space shuttle, but that never worked out because the military insisted on making the original space shuttle much larger requiring more rockets to launch it. I am talking about SpaceX and Blue Origin. SpaceX has set their sights not only on the moon but on Mars and if they were to succeed in this task, it could be years ahead of manned flight by NASA. I don’t want anyone out there to think I have anything to gain by pushing SpaceX, but I do think the reusable technology put them far ahead of most of the other companies. If other companies in the same field want to compete on the prices of launches, they will either have to develop reusable technology themselves, or come up with either a better rocket or some other way to launch astronauts and cargo into space. Let’s not write this off, as technology advances, we have no way of knowing what is coming next. When steam was the source of power for things did anyone ever think it would be overtaken by the internal combustion engine? I think NASA has to have been taking notice of the progress the new aerospace companies are making. When you look at a lot of the new aerospace companies you see how billionaires are shaping our future. You have people like Elon Musk and SpaceX, Jeff Bezos with Blue Origin, Richard Branson with Virgin Galactic and Paul Allen with Stratolaunch, to name a few. For some reason these people feel their destiny lies with space and space travel and perhaps the colonizing of planets. Not every aerospace company which was founded by a billionaire is into launching rockets. Bigelow Aerospace is run by Robert Bigelow an American billionaire. His company builds inflatable modules for space stations among other things. There has been a rumor about his company which states the United States is secretly storing parts from crashed UFOs at his company. Perhaps this has something to do with his interest in UFOs? So, what are some of the companies I named above planning for the future? Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin company has filed plans to expand its Florida rocket manufacturing facility. They want to take over a ninety acre piece of land which is next to their factory. They have big plans. Blue Origin is building a large rocket known as the Glenn. They have scheduled the first launch from Cape Canaveral’s Launch Complex 36 for 2021. It has other factories and is building a suborbital rocket known as New Shepard. The New Shepard is said to be on track to carry people near the end of this year (2019). What many may not know is that SpaceX is not the first company to have their rockets make a soft landing back on earth. Blue Origin did it first and repeated it five times. So, this is one company which may be able to compete with SpaceX in price. SpaceX has announced it is going to build the next generation Super Heavy Booster and Starship in Florida and Texas. It builds the Falcon 9 and has successfully soft landed 16 rockets so far. Some believe SpaceX with be able to build a rocket which will be as large as Boeing’s SLS rocket. If this happens could NASA eventually include SpaceX and the other new aerospace companies into its considerations for new space vehicles? I am sure this is scaring the old guard. Virgin Galactic seems to me to be more of a tourist based company where the main theme is to bring tourists to the edge of space and then return them safely to earth. For this feat the company has built the SpaceShipTwo. A few years back they had a vehicle called SpaceShipOne but it crashed returning to earth killing the pilot and seriously injuring the copilot. It was determined to be human error which caused the crash but an investigation found the company failed to take into consideration human error when creating the controls. Paul Allen had funded SpaceShipOne in the beginning. Paul Allen is a billionaire of Microsoft fame. Allen founded Stratolaunch Systems in 2011. When he was asked to describe the company, he said it was an air-launch system to make access to space more convenient. The idea behind this company is using a huge plane they built which looks like two large planes put together, to carry rockets high up in the atmosphere where they are released and travel into space. This saves on fuel, a lot of fuel. There are several different types of rockets available to launch from this platform. This is reminiscent of the launches of the X-15 rocket plane. It was carried into the air by a B-52 bomber and released. We are at an exciting time in the private space industry which rivals the early days of flight when private companies were emerging. The difference here being the first civilian rockets were built under government contract where the early planes were made by individuals. It may only be a matter of time before space travel becomes the realm of private spacecraft. I believed for a long time if private companies built their own rockets and such, the price would come down for launches. This seems to be what has happened in some instances already. One should not forget the space shuttle cost far more to launch and carry freight and people than any rocket and it was built under government contract.
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