Berger: Pushing the boundaries of spaceflight always involves risk

This week's second private spaceflight catastrophe, a rocket plane crashing in the Mojave Desert and killing one of its pilots, offers a moment to reflect on the emerging new space industry.

Why are these private companies risking all to do what NASA already has achieved?

The simple answer is that spaceflight remains far too expensive.

For all of its success, NASA has not reduced the cost of getting people and supplies into space. Over the course of three decades and 135 flights, the space shuttle's cost-to-orbit was a staggering $25,000 a pound.

Orbital Sciences, whose rocket blew up on a Virginia launch pad Tuesday, and the fatal crash of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo on Friday, were part of the emerging "new space" industry.

In the last 10 to 15 years, dozens of companies, many based in Mojave, Calif., where Friday's crash occurred, have begun developing vehicles that will cost less to launch into space.

Reusable craft

New space companies seek to open space to the floodgates of humanity, and they believe the only way to do this is to dramatically reduce costs by building smaller, reusable spacecraft.

That's what new space companies founded by dotcom billionaires, including Elon Musk's SpaceX, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Paul Allen's Stratolaunch Systems, as well as companies founded by businessmen like Richard Branson, who created Virgin Galactic, are trying to do.

Each of these companies has a different approach, and if history is any guide, most will fail.

But when one of them succeeds, advocates say, space will become a vital part of the world's economy.

"There are so many economic uses of space that aren't being made only because the cost of transportation is too high, and the reliability of that transportation is too low," said Jeff Greason, founder of XCOR, a Mojave-based company working on suborbital spaceflight.

"When we solve that problem, instead of arguing over what one thing we will do as a nation in space, we will be talking about all of the things that are being done in space. Then there won't be the space program, there will be the space economy."

Pushing these boundaries, of course, means taking risks. But this is as it has ever been in new frontiers.

A century ago, the world celebrated as explorers like Roald Amundsen and Robert Scott strove to reach the South Pole. Scott died in the effort.

In the 1920s the frontier had moved into aviation, and the crossing of large bodies of water.

New York hotelier Raymond Orteig offered a $25,000 prize to the first pilot to make a Trans-Atlantic flight from New York to Paris. Six people died in the attempt before Charles Lindbergh succeeded in the summer of 1927.

Difficulty of spaceflight

In 1967 three astronauts died in a fire during a test of the Apollo 1 capsule. Less than three years later Americans had landed safely on the moon.

In his famous moon speech at Rice Stadium, President John F. Kennedy perhaps said it best: "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."

Spaceflight is hard. And the development of most transportation systems, including automobiles, airplanes and rockets, has involved fatal accidents. One can mitigate against risk, but not remove it entirely from such endeavors.

"Some things can't be tested in the virtual world," observed Charles Lurio, a new space journalist on Friday. "Some things have to be tested in the real world. If you're going to prohibit people from taking risks, you're going to prohibit certain kinds of progress."

All of this is not to say authorities should not ask critical questions of Orbital and Virgin Galactic.

Why is Orbital relying on Russian engines that were built in the 1960s and 1970s to power its rockets? And was Virgin Galactic pressured into testing too hard, too fast, because Branson has said the company will make its first spaceflight at the end of this year, with himself aboard?

These are questions for NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration to investigate, and they deserve answers.

But they should not unduly hold private spaceflight back. Moreover Americans should understand that as the new space industry grows and expands, and more test flights occur, there will inevitably be more accidents.

"The important thing is that we learn from these accidents, and that the causes of them are understood," said Greason, who was working in Mojave when the Virgin Galactic crash occurred.

"And it's important that the industry's safety record improves with time and practice."