SUPPLY CHAIN
& LOGISTICS
Exploration Technol-
ogy Corp., or SpaceX,
which plans to send
one of its Falcon 9
rockets up to dock
with the ISS later this
year. SpaceX already has a mod-
est track record of success, as
in 2010 it was the first private
company to successfully launch
and recover a space capsule from
orbit. “Successfully” is the key
word, as a Russian cargo space-
craft crashed to Earth last month,
failing to deliver its payload of
supplies to the ISS.
According to Elon Musk, CEO
of SpaceX, the price of a standard
flight on a Falcon 9 rocket is $54
million, and the average price of a
cargo mission on a Dragon space-
craft to the ISS is $133 million.
Dragon, which is being developed
in partnership with NASA as part
of the Commercial Orbit Transpor-
tation Services (COTS) program,
is a reusable spacecraft capable of
transporting cargo and crews to
the ISS. The thinking on NASA’s
part is that by encouraging and co-
sponsoring U.S. companies to de-
velop the next generation of space-
craft, the ongoing transportation
costs to the ISS and other missions
will shrink significantly.
Referring to last year’s
demonstration flight, Musk
points out, “the [Dragon]
spacecraft and the Falcon 9
rocket that carried it were
designed, manufactured
and launched by American
workers for an American
company.” He adds that
2010 marked the first time
in more than three decades
that U.S. companies began
winning back global market
share in commercial satel-
lite launches.
Another U.S. company,
Orbital Sciences Corp., is
working on a pressurized
cargo module (PCM) of its
own with NASA under the
COTS program. Orbital Sci-
ence’s Cygnus cargo logis-
tics spacecraft is scheduled
for a demonstration flight to the
ISS in early 2012. However, while
Orbital Science is a U.S.-based
company, the PCM was manufac-
tured and tested in Italy.
NASA
administrator
SPACEX
business of owning
and operating low-Earth orbit transportation systems and hand
that off to the private
sector,” according to
Charles Bolden, NASA
administrator. Bolden
emphasizes that it
should be U.S. companies and U.S.-built
spacecraft that transport U.S. astronauts to
the ISS, and not foreign governments.
One of those companies will be Space
Charles Bolden
believes that
“now is the time
to cut the cost of
transportation
to low-Earth
orbit,” while
helping the
U. S. aerospace
industry
“become a job-creating engine
for decades to
come.”
Cost in Space
NASA is encouraging U.S. companies to create vessels capable
of transporting cargo on the ‘final frontier.’
Dragon
spacecraft
in cargo
configuration.
Commercial transportation dates back at least several millennia, from the earliest waterborne vessels and rudimentary livestock-pulled wagons.
Certainly by the time of Christopher Columbus, the human race
had developed vehicles capable
of reliably carrying cargo across
continents and even hemispheres.
While technology has made it
possible to deliver larger amounts
of goods farther and faster than
anybody could have dreamed, all
commercial transportation since
time immemorial has been limited
to terrestrial boundaries. That
situation is about to change.
Echoing the famous “Star Trek”
idea of space being “the final frontier,” NASA has decided to open
up the transportation of freight,
supplies and even people headed
to the International Space Station
(ISS) to commercial ventures.
Now that NASA has retired its
fleet of space shuttles, the space
agency intends “to get out of the
