American Aerospace Companies So far in the United States, NASA has had a monopoly on missions to other planets but this is about to change. We are beginning to see cracks in their programs. These cracks are composed of several things which may allow a private company to beat them in some of their missions. Take the mission to Venus to check for life for example. The CEO of Rocket Lab a small launch company wants to launch a probe to Venus in 2023. Talk now is NASA is not going there until 2027 to search for life. Rocket Lab is a small New Zealand company and if they could launch a sophisticated probe which could settle the question of life on Venus, and do it on a small percentage of the cost for a NASA launch this will get people thinking. They may come to the conclusion NASA is a lame duck and will not be needed much longer for these types of missions. The worst scenario is people or the president feel NASA is not putting their money to a good enough use. The Rocket Lab mission is expected to cost between 10 to 20 million dollars while the NASA mission to Venus is being pegged at around 450 million dollars. If we look at other private companies, we find SpaceX wants to be the first to send colonists to Mars and to this end they are building a huge spaceship which can hold one hundred people. Elon Musk the CEO of SpaceX has predicted he will send people to Mars in 2025 which incidentally, is before NASA gets back to Venus in their search for life. If the flight is successful, this would really set NASA back on its heels. It would mean another private company has passed NASA in an important accomplishment in space. Musk had made it no secret it wants to move off world. When asked about going to Mars, Musk replied, “If there’s something terrible that happens on Earth, either made by humans or natural, we want to have, like, life insurance for life as a whole, then, there’s the kind of excitement and adventure.” Musk has taken a task which seems too fraught with problems and expense and decided to tackle it himself using only his company’s resources. If he succeeds, he will have left NASA in the dust. Musk has the profits from his other companies which he can use to pay for his dreams in space along with the money SpaceX is making. He is far more interested in accomplishing his ideas for space travel and colonization than making money and has proved this by plowing money back into SpaceX. Blue Origin is a company which was foundered by Jeff Bezos the CEO of Amazon and the richest man in the world. His company Blue Origin is one of the up and comers. They just built a mockup of a moon lander as did SpaceX and both were delivered to NASA and certified. The company sees a future for humans living in space and boldly proclaims that. They claim to have created reusable rocket engines and space vehicles. They are almost ready as of the writing of this article to begin transporting people into space. They have a rocket named the New Shepard which has already been successfully used to send cargo into space and this will be their first one to eventually be used to transport people. At this point it seems they are somewhat behind SpaceX. Orbital Sciences is another U.S. space company. They manufacture small and medium rockets not only for commercial use, but also the military and the government in general. This company had merged with another company known as Orbital ATK, Inc which in turn was purchased by Northrop Grumman and is now part of Northrop Grumman Space Systems. The President of the company is Blake E. Larson. This company is one of the main suppliers of equipment to NASA. I can’t help but think of it as the old guard, and being troubled by delays and cost overruns. They have a contract with NASA to fly unmanned missions to the International Space Station. They are the lead contractor on the James Webb Space Telescope. They were awarded a contract to build the Lunar Gateway module. They also own the Cygnus Rocket. They are responsible for many satellites and other payloads. Bigelow Aerospace was founded by Robert Bigelow. It doesn’t have rockets or spaceships of its own but works closely with Boeing. What it does have is inflatable modules which can attach to space stations. The company has even launched two mini space stations which were inflatable. Bigelow has his own dreams; he wants to put an inflatable base on the moon. Another American aerospace company is SpaceDev. Its founder was Jim Benson who is now deceased. It is being run by Fatih Ozmen. The company is part of Space Systems Business of Sierra Nevada Corporation. SpaceDev is known for its expertise in building components for hybrid rocket motors and development of micro and nano scaled satellites. They are building a sub-orbital spaceship named Dream Chaser. The vehicle is a miniature space shuttle and will be finished in 2021. Boeing calls itself the world’s largest aerospace company. Much like Northrop Grumman, Boeing is a member of the old guard with the same problems as Northrop Grumman. They are involved with many projects with NASA. They have been involved with the CST-100 Starliner and are involved in critical research on the International Space Station. Their contracts with NASA are too numerous to be listed in this short space, but you can bet they are involved in some way with many NASA contracts. Lockheed Martin is the third member of the old guard. They had a hand in building a lunar lander mockup for NASA. They also have the same problems as the rest of the old guard and NASA was recently criticized by the Office of the Inspector General for paying them performance bonuses even though the company had cost overruns and delays. This just makes the newer aerospace companies look so much better. Lockheed Martin is also involved in a lot of NASA’s projects. There are other aerospace companies I didn’t mention, but I think the ones I did were the most important American ones. It amazes me how the relatively new ones are now able to compete with the older ones and out do them in many areas. They seem to have a spark for exploration of space which the older companies have lost and have just concentrated on making as much money as they can.
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