It has been a week of ups and downs for America's space community -- literally. On October 28, an Antares launch vehicle being used by Orbital Sciences Corporation to ferry supplies to the International Space Station failed shortly after liftoff in Virginia, falling back onto the launch pad in a spectacular explosion. The very next day, an Atlas V booster operated by United Launch Alliance carried a Global Positioning System satellite into orbit -- marking the 50th successful mission in a row using that type of launch vehicle.
(Disclosure: My think tank receives money from several companies that provide space technology and services, most notably Aerojet Rocketdyne,
As usual, it is the best of times and the worst of times for the space sector -- an industry where seemingly minor details can make the difference between triumph and tragedy. It will take some time to sort out what went wrong with Antares, but one fact that should not be lost in the post-mortems is that Orbital Sciences was operating under a commercial launch contract with NASA, whereas the Atlas launch was carried out as part of the Air Force's Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle program. The latter program assures the government of comprehensive insight into the pricing, performance and problems of launch providers, while the NASA contract affords much less transparency.
Support of entrepreneurial launch providers seems to be one of those rare issues that still attracts broad bipartisan support in Washington. Republicans want to believe that market sources can deliver better solutions than the government for most public needs, and Democrats want a cheaper way of getting into space so they can use the money thereby freed up for other purposes. Thus, neither party is inclined to look too closely at why launch vehicles operated under a high-price, heavily-regulated military contract always seem to function correctly, while those supplied by lower-cost, less-monitored commercial providers have more frequent problems.
An engine of the type used on the Orbital Sciences Antares vehicle reportedly failed at Stennis Space Center in May. SpaceX, the other company that was awarded a resupply contract for the space station, suffered catastrophic loss of a reusable rocket prototype based on its Falcon 9 booster in August. These events seem to happen with startling regularity, considering how infrequently the vehicles in question actually fly. Contrast that with the performance of United Launch Alliance, the sole company currently certified to lift Air Force payloads: it uses both Atlas V and Delta IV boosters, and not one has failed in over 70 launches since ULA was formed. That can't be a coincidence.
So what lessons might Washington learn from this pattern of success and failure? Well first of all, to quote SpaceX founder Elon Musk in the aftermath of his company's recent launch failure, "rockets are tricky." In other words, space launch is an exacting business where small discrepancies can produce big consequences. The RD-180 engines on an Atlas booster generate nearly a million pounds of thrust, which is what the launch vehicle requires in order to attain the 25,000 MPH speed needed to escape Earth's gravity; and yet the engines have to be able to throttle back that power in order to reduce dynamic stresses on the vehicle as it passes through the atmosphere. This is not the sort of technology that the Wright Brothers could have cobbled together in their bicycle shop. ULA's exemplary track record should not be mis-interpreted as evidence that space launch has become easy. It will always be difficult and dangerous.
An Orbital Sciences Corporation Antares launch vehicle in better times. (Image: Wikimedia/NASA)
A second lesson that might be inferred from this week's events is that in space, as in other fields of human endeavor, you get what you pay for. If a federal agency wants to pay less for access to space, then it is probably going to assume significantly greater risk. ULA doesn't publicly disclose what an Atlas launch costs, but published estimates suggest it is at least twice the price of using a Falcon 9 booster built by SpaceX. Falcon 9, like the Antares rocket that failed on Tuesday, looks like a bargain compared with any ULA launch vehicle. But ULA vehicles don't blow up, they typically are ready for launch on time, and they incorporate features such as radiation-hardened electronics that may be missing from lower-cost vehicles. These factors are likely to matter more as NASA gets closer to putting astronauts back on U.S.-made rockets.
A third lesson to be found here is that when it comes to space, haste makes waste. Congress is so eager to end reliance on the Russian RD-180 engine used in the Atlas V first stage that it has drafted legislative language potentially excluding ULA from future military launch competitions. Since no other launch provider is currently approved to carry national-security payloads into space, some legislators are also pressuring the Air Force to speed up its certification of SpaceX as an alternate source of launch services for the military. Such political pressure inevitably increases the risks associated with sustaining access to space. Where would the human spaceflight program be today if NASA administrators hadn't been so eager to get Challenger into space on that frigid morning in 1986?
A fourth lesson, which applies specifically to the Air Force, is that if you don't stay engaged, then be prepared to live with the consequences. As the Pentagon's lead service for space, the Air Force knows it must respond to congressional intent to end reliance on Russian rocket engines as soon as possible. But because budgets are tight, it isn't so clear where the money would come from to develop a new U.S.-made rocket engine capable of replacing the RD-180. So there is a temptation to simply leave it to the launch providers to come up with their own solutions. That might save the Air Force some money in the near term, but it could also end up jeopardizing access to space if the launch providers don't field a suitable solution in timely fashion.
The bottom line on that latter lesson is that the Air Force needs to find a billion dollars over the next several years to develop a next-generation rocket engine in the RD-180 class. The good news is that the cost of developing, testing and certifying such an engine will work out to less than one hour's worth of federal spending annually. The bad news is that there is no telling what Congress might do in limiting access to the boosters the Air Force is using today if Russia mounts new aggression against Ukraine (or Estonia, or Kazakhstan). So the Air Force can't just count on the good intentions of launch providers to solve its problem. It needs to take an active role in competing and selecting a new U.S.-made rocket engine to assure it gets what it needs.
