Private Firms Look to Cash In on NASA Cuts

(Feb. 1) – With NASA's Constellation program cut from the budget President Obama proposed Monday, private companies have the chance to play a bigger role in the next space race.

While the budget request for fiscal year 2011 eliminates the Constellation program – which would have replaced the space shuttle with new rockets to return humans to the moon and ultimately land them on Mars – it provides funds for NASA to work with private industry to provide transportation to the International Space Station (ISS) and take on other exploratory and scientific projects.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden briefed reporters Monday afternoon about the budget, calling it a "bold challenge" from Obama for NASA "to become an engine of innovation." He emphasized that the space agency's budget is rising by $6 billion over the next five years to facilitate, in part, the "growth of new commercial industry."

William Pomerantz, the senior director for prizes at the X Prize Foundation, believes that government and private industry will both continue to play important roles in space exploration.

"It's certainly not an 'us or them' proposition," said Pomerantz, whose foundation awards multimillion-dollar prizes to private-sector innovators in space exploration and other fields. "We recognize that these agencies – like NASA and the European Space Agency – have unique qualities and capabilities, but there are gaps that private industry can fill."

In fact, private industry has always played a role in space exploration.

"Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, for example – they are the contractors that built the spacecraft, the rockets," said Susan Lendroth, a spokeswoman for The Planetary Society, a nonprofit space exploration advocacy organization. But now, newer companies with different missions are entering the field. "They offer the possibility of new and cheaper launch vehicles and are taking on the development costs even before they get contracts," Lendroth noted.

Aerospace company Scaled Composites, for example, won the Ansari X Prize in 2004 for conducting the world's first privately funded human space flight with SpaceShipOne.

The same company, with Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, recently unveiled SpaceShipTwo, a suborbital aircraft designed to carry tourists into space.

Virgin and Scaled Composites aren't the only companies developing space flights for nonastronauts. Space tourism company Space Adventures has taken clients to the ISS aboard Russian Soyuz crafts. Those space tourists have paid millions of dollars to orbit Earth. Tickets for suborbital flights like Virgin's and others are expected to cost between $100,000 and $200,000. Pomerantz believes passengers will pay a premium to be among the first in space.

"They will demonstrate that the business model works," he said. "And they will help to work out the kinks in the system. Eventually, it is very possible that tickets will drop down in price to around $50,000."

While that's still expensive, Pomerantz pointed out that it's roughly the price of a luxury car. For someone whose dream it is to go to space, it could well be worth the price.

Space tourism isn't the only way private companies can tap into the space industry. When government spacecraft travel to the ISS, trips come at great expense. According to NASA's Web site, each shuttle trip costs about $450 million. Private companies could carry one or two payloads to the ISS or on other missions, said Pomerantz, and could make the trips more frequently for less money.

Lendroth said there is also great potential for private robotic missions. The moons of Jupiter, for instance, offer exciting possibilities for robotic exploration, as do other projects far beyond Earth. The Planetary Society plans to launch Lightsail-1 by the end of 2010. The craft is designed to orbit Earth propelled by sunlight. Subsequent missions would reach farther into space.

The X Prize Foundation, meanwhile, is sponsoring the largest-ever international incentive prize. The Google Lunar X Prize will award $30 million to the private team that is able to send a robot to the moon, have it travel 500 meters and transmit video, images and data back to Earth.

As for the future of space exploration, it's a market with all kinds of possibilities.

"It's not about the place," said Pomerantz. "It could be either the moon or Mars, or it could be neither. It's about the purpose."