![]() ![]() Dave Weldon, R-Fla., whose district includes Cape Canaveral. “We did Mercury, Gemini, Apollo - all in the course of eight years,” says Rep. And only a few companies - with familiar names - have deep enough budgets and research staffing right now to take on a massive project like a new manned spacecraft. But the commercial satellite industry has tapered off and the few tourists in orbit have caught rather expensive rides with the Russian government.Ī few upstarts have survived: Orbital Sciences turned its Pegasus platform into a profitable venture Kistler Aerospace, which has been developing a reusable launch vehicle for small satellites, recently won $135 million as part of NASA’s Space Launch Initiative program.īut NASA is largely stricken by the same fear of risk that spiked so many dot-com ventures. There was a time, in the early 1990s, when the lure of a rapidly growing private satellite industry and the possibility of launching tourists into space prompted a handful of brash space startups. But there’s not much competition to be induced. The flexibility gives NASA options to decide how it wants to manage the program, and keeps a key contractor from becoming complacent. ![]() Up to 90 percent of the workers on the shuttle program work for USA, not NASA. USA originally won a $7 billion, six-year contract to manage the program that was extended in 2002 for another two years at a cost of $2.5 billion. (A third, Rockwell, merged with Boeing in 1996.) Day-to-day operations are handled by United Space Alliance, a partnership between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, two main contractors on the original program. Yet the shuttle program is essentially still run by its original benefactors. Smaller contractors have picked up the task of turning out secondary items, such as the carbon heat tiles that need continuous replacement. Most money for equipment goes into those major overhauls and the maintenance of big-ticket items like the foam-covered expendable external fuel tank produced by Lockheed Martin and reusable rocket boosters from Thiokol, which was largely faulted for the Challenger explosion. The assembly line at the Air Force’s fabled Plant 42, in Palmdale, Calif., that fashioned the original shuttles has long since been retasked. ![]() Most subcontractors who built individual portions have either been bought up by competitors or went on to other jobs. It’s not just a need for parts too complex to find on eBay: The shuttle’s entire manufacturing base is essentially gone. “And you suck up money in those technological limits.” “What they’re operating is old and has limits,” says Frank Sietzen Jr., president of the Space Transportation Association, which advocates the commercial space industry. But turning over your fleet is tough to do when your whole stable consists of four multibillion-dollar spacecraft that must be broken down and rebuilt between each flight. ![]()
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