A series of successful space launches by commercial companies were interrupted by two disasters in late October. We tried to figure out what private astronautics is today and what are its prospects
On October 29, a few seconds after the launch from the Wallace Island spaceport, the Antares launch vehicle exploded, launching the Cygnus truck carrying cargo for the International Space Station into orbit. Both the rocket and the truck were developed by the private American company Orbital Sciences Corporation.
On October 31, another disaster struck, casting a very dark shadow on private companies specializing in space exploration. During a test flight over the Mojave Desert in southern California, a suborbital spaceship SpaceShipTwo with two pilots on board crashed. One was seriously injured, managed to eject, and the second, 39-year-old Michael Olsbury, died and became the first victim of commercial space exploration.
This legendary ship was invented by the eccentric billionaire Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin mega-corporation and its Virgin Galactic division, created to carry tourists into space. SpaceShipTwo, designed for suborbital flights at an altitude of about 100 km, in the area of the conditional boundary of outer space, has been tested for five years already. Hundreds of tickets were sold for it, and the first flight with tourists was going to be carried out in 2015. Celebrities such as Stephen Hawking, Angelina Jolie and Lady Gaga are among the holders of $ 250,000 boundary tickets.
Dozens of clients demanded money back - their fear is understandable. Branson returned the money, promised to become the first passenger of the ship, but the sediment remained. Skeptics have revived, believing that space flights are a state matter, businessmen cannot be entrusted with such a complex and large-scale task. Russian TV news even showed a couple of stories with a tinge of hidden gloating, they say, fly with our good old Soviet-designed rockets, and all this private initiative in space is an intrigue of an evil one, like shale gas. Some tendentiousness here is quite understandable, the main successes of the Russian space industry are associated with the provision of services for launching spacecraft into orbit, in this segment we now occupy more than 50% of the world market. But this is today, and what will happen next, who will become the leader in space exploration - powerful but clumsy state machines or brave entrepreneurs?
The first steps of private astronautics
The fact that private space programs are seizing the initiative from state ones was seriously talked about last year, when SpaceX first launched a space satellite into orbit.
SpaceX is the brainchild of perhaps the most famous modern progressor, Elon Musk, the creator of the Tesla electric car, which covers the United States with solar panels and electric car charging stations. Musk, who loves to say that he wants to end his life on Mars, began to make his dream come true, having made a fortune on the creation of the PayPal payment system.
In 2002, he announced the launch of his own commercial space flight program. Musk invested hundreds of millions in the company, but in 2008 found himself on the verge of bankruptcy - his Falcon launch vehicle failed three launches in a row. The first wave of skepticism about the futility of private space launches happened just then. The fourth launch, in case of failure, was supposed to be the last. But the rocket took off, the skeptics were put to shame, and Musk got funding from NASA and signed a contract for 12 cargo flights to the ISS.
The contract is being successfully implemented; to date, Dragon trucks have already visited the ISS three times. And the Falcons are just as successfully launching satellites into orbit - SpaceX has orders for 50 satellite launches today, because the company's engineers have already managed to significantly reduce the cost of launching a rocket.
Meanwhile, Musk is engaged in the next stage of the space program, which, if successful, will reduce the cost of space flights by an order of magnitude. He is developing a reusable launch vehicle capable of landing on the tail of a flame. Today, his Grasshopper ("Grasshopper") already knows how to land on this very tail from a kilometer height. If such reusable launch vehicles fly into space, launching a small satellite will become a matter for almost anyone who wants to.
Space race
It is necessary to clarify what we mean by private astronautics. The production of rockets and spaceships was previously largely occupied by commercial companies, in the United States, NASA's largest contractors were Lokheed Martin and Boeing, in Europe - Thales Alenia and EADS. For example, Lockheed Martin has just completed the assembly of the Orion reusable spacecraft; This device, designed for manned space flights, will replace the shuttles and Russian Soyuz, which have not been used since 2011.
The rocket is a complex construct that many manufacturers are involved in creating. For example, the crashed "Antares" was equipped with modified Samara NK-33 engines, and the fuel supply system was manufactured at the Dnepropetrovsk Yuzhmash under the control of the Yuzhnoye design bureau. It's just that earlier private assembly companies handed over the finished product to customer-states, and they had already put spacecraft into orbit. And starting from the first commercial launch of SpaceX, private traders themselves began to sell services and carry out space flights.
Competitors are breathing down SpaceX's back, and the successful example is contagious. Orbital Sciences Corporation, whose transport ship crashed on October 27, is unlikely to be hit hard by this - the company has a contract with NASA to launch eight Cygnus cargo vehicles over three years at a total cost of $ 1.9 billion.
In order to carry out their own launches, companies need private spaceports. SpaceX is currently using the US Air Force launch pad in Florida for rocket launches. But Musk is not going to lease this spaceport indefinitely: one of the priority points in his plan for space exploration is the construction of his own spaceport, which he intends to declare available only for commercial launches. It is already under construction in Texas, near the town of Brownsville. And Richard Branson launches ships from his own spaceport "America". The Orbital Sciences Corporation also has its own spaceport, next to the NASA spaceport on Wallace Island.
Entrepreneurs undertake to explore not only orbital space. Planetary Resources, whose investors include Google founder Larry Page and filmmaker James Cameron, is developing ships that will extract minerals from asteroids. Company
Inspiration Mars is going to send a manned spacecraft to Mars in 2018, and the Mars One project is aimed at colonizing Mars in the next decade. This year, they have collected 200,000 applications from volunteers from around the world who want to move to Mars. As we know, Elon Musk also has a long-term goal - the colonization of Mars. He is already developing transport for the first settlers, the Mars Colony Transporter. Work on the ship, which can take on board up to a hundred people, is expected to be completed in the 2020s. Its passengers will buy a one-way ticket: the ship will remain on Mars forever and become the base for a settlement that will grow to house up to 80 thousand people in the future.
New Hope
Analysts say commercialization has been a major trend in space exploration in recent years. This is not only profitable, but also fashionable, even a tycoon like Robert Bigelow, who made his fortune in Las Vegas hotels and casinos, is now planning to build a hotel in low Earth orbit.
Aviation, too, at first was mainly dealt with by the state, but gradually it naturally passed into private hands. It seems that the same story is happening with space, and catastrophes will in no way affect the flow of private capital to where space profits are possible.
Government space flight programs are too bureaucratic. "Soyuz" turned out to be ten times cheaper than shuttles, but the technological solutions used in their design have been around for decades. During this time, other industries have made great strides forward. Of course, the Americans still fly on our cheap rockets, but in the future, the transition to reusable launch vehicles seems to be inevitable.
Now there is hope that, thanks to the influx of private capital, the era of the great cosmic discoveries is already very close.
