rivate spaee eompanies have almost always over-
promised. In the last 30 years, just ovcr [Cn have
(ried to break into the business. The only one to
bceome a respeetably sized spaee firm is Orbital
Scienees, of Dulles, Virginia.
Big aerospace firms wanting to join NASA's new proj-
{'crs will remember rhe publie-privare partnership fias-
(:0 when Lockheed Marrin's X-33 design was chosen to
rcplace the spaee shuttle in ·1996. Befare it was eaneeled
111 200 ·1, this program cost the govcrnmcnt $912 million
and Lockheed Martin $357 million.
In the 1 990s, Kisrler Aerospace devcloped a reusable
la unebcr using reconditioned Russian encines. In 2006,
reorganized as Rockerplane Kisrler, it won a share in a
:"ASA program to deliver ~ tO the international
~pacc Station. When the company did not meer a finan-
.:ial mjles[one the following year, NASA then stopped
[he financing.
Bille Origin, a secrerive spacecrafr-dcvelopment firm
owned by Amazon.com boss J eff Bczos, is interesting
hccause it uses eonceprs and technology for reusable":'
Up In the alr;
Is there room for
private ftrms to
el(p!ore space?yehicles originally deve!oped by the Reagan-era Strare-
gie Defense Initiative O rganizarion (also called "Star
Wars"). in the early 1990s, the organization started the
DC-X program, and its suborbital test vehicle flew "
rimes before it was desrroyed in a landing accident.
The Clinton administration saw the DC-X as an old
ReaganfBush projeer, and was happy tO ea nee! ir after
the accident. The sad lesson of the DC-X is that some
politicians won't keep their prcdecessors' programs go-
ing, no mauer how promising. To turn thc DC-X into
a spaee-Iauneh vehide would havc taken at least a cou-
pie of dccades, and a few billion in investments. Yet the
total COSt might not have been much more chan the
amount the government has spent on orher failed
launeh-vehicle developmenr schemes over rhe past 20
years.
Gearge W. Bush's promising Constellation human
spaccflight program - which would bc stopped under
Barack Obama's plan - has already cost $9 billion
since 2004. It is hard ro imagine how rhe private sector
can build a replacemenr for the Constcllarion spacc-
craft, as weil as dcvelop a program to get America back
co the moon - and wirh the relatively small sum of $
billion and the haphazard financing that NASA's lead-
ers are propOSlOg.
Private space firms lllay say r.hat they can makc space
velltures afford able by making COStS a lot lower, bur
they havc yer ro prove ir. III
Repnnted wilh permission of The Wall Street Journal C 2010 Dow
JOI"IeS & Company, lne. All rights reserved.
TAYLOR DINERMAN is a member of Ihe board of adyisors of
Space Energy, a company working on space solar-power concepts,
and wnles a regular eolumn for thespacereVlew.com.
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