B
low up a rocket bound for the International Space Station
in spectacular fashion on the East Coast of the U.S., as Or-
bital Sciences Corp. did on Oct. 28 (see page 26), and you
can be sure it will be noticed. Just as with a high-profile airplane
crash, the amateur analysts were out in force with misunderstand-
ings about the technologies and shoot-from-the-hip theories about
what went wrong and the impact the accident will have.
Lessons will be learned from the failure of Orbital’s Antares at
NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. What exactly all those
lessons are, it is way too early to tell. The accident investigation
has only just begun. However, it is not too early to lay out some les-
sons that should not be drawn and to point out a broader concern
that this mishap does highlight.
One conclusion that should not be drawn is that commercial
space companies are simply less capable than the legacy aero-
space giants. Nor should it be inferred that spaceflight is so
staggeringly difcult only a large government-run enterprise
can achieve a high level of performance. First of all, Orbital has
already used Antares to fly its Cygnus vehicle to the space sta-
tion three times. Competitor Space Exploration Technologies
(SpaceX) has used its Dragon spacecraft to deliver cargo to the
station successfully four times.
The Antares accident does not show that NASA opted for a
risky strategy by relying on commercial providers for space sta-
tion resupply missions. The truth is quite the opposite. With two
commercial suppliers, NASA can shift missions to SpaceX, if An-
tares is grounded for a prolonged period. The failure was a setback
for a commercial space company, but it was not a setback for com-
mercial space writ large. No one was hurt. No critical space station
payload was lost.
Thankfully, so far, NASA leadership does not seem inclined to
retreat from the commercial path it has charted. Several weeks
ago, the agency awarded the first contracts (to SpaceX and
Boeing) for spacecraft to carry astronauts—the first for NASA
to be developed under the new approach in which broad per-
formance parameters are set and contractors are free to apply
their creativity and ingenuity in the design of this “commercial
crew vehicle” (AW&ST Sept. 22, p. 24). And the agency recently
requested proposals for the next phase of space station resupply
services. Don’t be surprised, though, if some politicians trying to
protect parochial interests argue that the commercial approach
is fraught with programmatic peril.
Where the armchair engineers were onto something last week
was in questioning Antares’s reliance on modified 1960s Russian
engines. There is nothing wrong in principle with using AJ-26s,
as Aerojet calls the Kuznetsov Design Bureau NK-33s it modified.
Still, it is a commentary on the sad state of American rocket pro-
pulsion that Orbital found no competitive indigenously developed
powerplant for the first stage when it designed Antares. Orbital
had begun looking for a replacement engine before the accident,
but the leading contender is also Russian, the RD-193. The U.S.’s
neglect of launch propulsion technology was punctuated the day
Commercial Space
Still the Way to Go
after the Antares accident when a United Launch
Alliance Atlas V flew with a Global Positioning Sys-
tem satellite from Cape Canaveral. That vehicle,
too, uses Russian engines: RD-180s.
All this is certainly not the fault of “New Space”
entrepreneurs. On the contrary, companies like
SpaceX and Jef Bezos’s Blue Origin, have been
spending their own money to advance rocket propul-
sion. If U.S. capabilities have atrophied, the blame
rests squarely on government for not investing suf-
ficiently in research and development, as we have
noted on this page (May 26/June 2, p. 74).
Spaceflight is difcult—today. It is expensive—
today. And the level of risk remains high—today.
But it need not remain so forever. We must resist
the idea that space is inherently difcult, expen-
sive and risky. Aviation once seemed so, too. To-
day, aviation is efcient and safe. Space can get
there—if we accept that it can improve and real-
ize that it will require hard work, investment and
experimentation. And we must acknowledge that
true progress is always punctuated by failure.
There is no progress without failure.
Ex-NASA astronaut Leroy Chiao put it well. Writ-
ing for CNN, he said: “Without a doubt, critics will
arise and question why we are entrusting cargo
deliveries and future crew exchanges to commer-
cial companies. The answer is simple: It is the logi-
cal evolution of technology and commercialization,
following the same path as the development of the
airplane and commercial air transportation.... This
mishap is painful, but it is only a speed bump on the
way to the commercialization of spaceflight.”
So let us progress. Getting to the point where
spaceflight is much less risky and much less expen-
sive requires new approaches such as those being
pioneered by commercial space companies. Gov-
ernment can do its part by investing more in the
research and development of space technologies. cThe Antares failure is a
setback for a commercial
space company, not a setback
for commercial space
writ large.
“
“
Editorial
74 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/NOVEMBER 3/10, 2014 AviationWeek.com/awst
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