bjbjLULU JEFFREY BROWN: With the shuttle era
over, American spaceflight is on the verge
of going private for the immediate future.
This week, the company behind the so-called
SpaceX project announced another delay in
its planned launch of a commercial cargo capsule.
Liftoff was tentatively scheduled for this
coming Monday, and the project is months behind
its original schedule.
But its creator and engineers remain undaunted
about their plans and their ambitions.
NewsHour science correspondent Miles O'Brien
has our report.
MILES O BRIEN: At the SpaceX factory in Hawthorne,
California, they are going boldly where no
small company has ever gone before, building
spacecraft that are meant to open up the final
frontier in ways that are hard to fathom,
unless you are Elon Musk.
ELON MUSK, CEO, SpaceX: I'm talking about
sending ultimately tens of thousands, eventually
millions of people to Mars and then going
out there and exploring the stars.
MILES O BRIEN: Musk is the CEO and chief technology
officer of 10-year-old Space Exploration Technologies,
as it is more formally known.
He has staked $100 million of the fortune
he made founding PayPal to pursue a lofty
goal: to make access to space an order of
magnitude cheaper than it is right now.
Is there any doubt in your mind that this
is the way NASA and the country should go
as it looks towards the future in space?
ELON MUSK: No, not all.
This is -- it's not -- this is not a path;
it's the only path that will succeed.
If this doesn't succeed, nothing will.
MILES O BRIEN: The path to Musk's bold vision
is now taking him to the International Space
Station.
This Falcon 9 rocket at Cape Canaveral is
slated to launch a Dragon capsule to the station,
where SpaceX hopes it can safely orbit in
close formation and then, if all goes well,
berth, delivering a load of food, water and
clothing, and then about two weeks later return
to Earth.
It sounds pretty routine, but this is a mission
like no other in the history of space exploration.
SpaceX is building rockets for NASA like Boeing
would build an airplane for an airline.
The space agency is not directly involved
in the process.
It is an arms-length/fixed-price contract.
But why make this change?
LORI GARVER, deputy administrator, NASA: There
isn't that much new or unknown about launching
to low-Earth orbit anymore.
We have been doing it for 50 years, and NASA
wants to do those cutting-edge things that
are all about pushing the envelope farther.
So it's only natural that those things we
have done for 50 years should be taken over
by the private sector.
MILES O BRIEN: Lori Garver is NASA's deputy
administrator, and its most vocal advocate
for changing the way the agency does business
in low-Earth orbit now that the space shuttles
are prized museum pieces.
A lot of people view it as a retreat.
What do you say to them?
LORI GARVER: The opposite is true.
This is not a retreat.
In fact, this is acknowledging this is something
that we have been doing forever, and we need
to push that boundary farther.
A retreat would be doing the same thing over
and over.
MILES O BRIEN: SpaceX is one of a handful
of companies with contracts to fly missions
to the space station under NASA's $1 billion
Commercial Crew and Cargo Program.
All right.
So, what do we have here?
GWYNNE SHOTWELL, SpaceX: So, what were looking
at here, Miles, is mission control.
This is where we operate Dragon from.
MILES O BRIEN: Gwynne Shotwell, the president
at SpaceX, walked me through the factory.
Here, they are aiming for the Holy Grail,
a fully and rapidly reusable rocket.
It would revolutionize access to space.
GWYNNE SHOTWELL: These engines actually are
reusable.
MILES O BRIEN: They are?
How many flights can you get?
GWYNNE SHOTWELL: I know we have tested to
20.
MILES O BRIEN: Those engines are built here
from scratch, and that is typical.
More than two-thirds of Falcon and Dragon
parts are milled, made and mated right here.
ELON MUSK: We're trying to push the state-of-the-art
technology.
So, if we use suppliers that are just producing
the old technology, then we're not going to
have a revolutionary rocket.
MILES O BRIEN: The Falcon/Dragon combination
is obviously much simpler than a space shuttle,
no wings, wheels, or cargo compartments.
MAN: Liftoff of space shuttle Atlantis.
MILES O BRIEN: The cost of launching anything
into space on a shuttle was about $10,000
a pound.
Musk believes he can drive that number down
below a $1,000.
Veteran space journalist Steven Young believes
Musk can do it.
STEVEN YOUNG, Spaceflight Now: I think going
back to something a little more basic, sort
of capsule that SpaceX is going to fly, will
reduce costs dramatically and open up a lot
more opportunities for research in orbit.
MILES O BRIEN: But hauling underwear and food
to the space station is one thing; flying
astronauts is another, and SpaceX wants to
start doing that by 2015.
Turns out they have been thinking about flying
humans from the outset.
GWYNNE SHOTWELL: That's why the Falcon 9 was
designed with much higher factors of safety,
more than the standard expendable launch vehicle.
MILES O BRIEN: Unlike the shuttle, the man-rated
Dragon will be equipped with a crew escape
system.
And the capsule sits on top of the stack,
upstream of any falling debris, the cause
of the loss of Columbia and her crew in 2003.
The accident triggered then President George
Bush to announce the shuttles would be retired
after the space station was complete.
Mr. Bush proposed a new program called Constellation
that would aim for a return to the moon.
But the Bush White House never delivered the
promised funding, so President Obama canceled
stillborn Constellation, and now all that
remains of the program is this, a capsule
called Orion being built and tested by aerospace
giant Lockheed Martin.
JOHN KARAS, Lockheed Martin: So these would
be where propellant tanks would go.
So you have the actual attach points on the
vehicle, but these would simulate the mass
and the position of a propellant tank.
MILES O BRIEN: John Karas is vice president
and general manager of human spaceflight here.
Lockheed Martin and NASA are building Orion
the old-fashioned way, meaning the government
pays for all the costs, and all the changes,
plus a guaranteed fee to the contractor.
The testing is exhaustive to what engineers
call the corners of the flight envelope, meaning
the absolute edge of a vehicle's capability.
JOHN KARAS: You can rest assured that, on
a NASA-driven human spaceflight exploration
program, we will test in all the corners.
Right?
MILES O BRIEN: So it's -- this is what cost-plus
is all about, isn't it, doing -- when you
have to do all this, right?
JOHN KARAS: Exactly right.
MILES O BRIEN: Everyone agrees sending humans
to space will never get cheaper if this remains
the approach.
MAN: That went like clockwork, from what I
could see.
MILES O BRIEN: But the old guard is leery
of retooling.
Having a commercial player just build a rocket
and you use it or not, like it or not, you
don't see that as inherently more risky?
JOHN KARAS: So, I think it is inherently more
risky.
Now, the question is, what risk tolerance
are you willing to take?
And I don't think that question has been answered
yet, and I think it's going to take a while,
and it's going to be some trial and error,
just like in the airline industry, where what's
your level of tolerance to go build the airplanes,
and how much -- what do you think the revenues
are? MILES O BRIEN: Orion is designed to take
up seven astronauts to low-Earth orbit and
beyond, but where?
The destination has changed repeatedly.
It was going to be a lifeboat for the space
station.
It was going to take crew to the station.
It was going to go to the moon at one point.
Then it was going to go to Mars, and now it
might go to an asteroid.
Is this really the way to build a space program?
JOHN KARAS: Well, no.
(LAUGHTER) JOHN KARAS: No.
Is it any way to run a railroad?
No.
Okay.
MILES O BRIEN: And the political and budgetary
winds keep shifting.
When the Obama administration canceled the
family of rockets that would have lofted Orion
into space under the Constellation scheme,
Congress got into the act.
Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat who flew
on Columbia in 1986 with current NASA Administrator,
Charlie Bolden, insisted the agency build
a heavy-lift rocket that uses shuttle-derived
components, again, with no clear destination
in mind.
Is it a rocket to nowhere?
SEN.
BILL NELSON, D-Fla.: It's a rocket to Mars.
That's the goal.
The president has said that's the goal, and
that's where we're going.
MILES O BRIEN: Well, maybe one day.
The president did say that when he announced
the cancellation of Constellation, but NASA
doesn't have the money for a Mars program.
Still, Nelson says the space agency is doing
relatively well.
SEN.
BILL NELSON: First of all, look at NASA compared
to other agencies of the federal government.
NASA is being treated very well.
NASA is basically being flatlined.
MILES O BRIEN: So the agency is left with
Orion and an underfunded idea for a big rocket
that could take humans to Mars, but no concrete
plans to do so.
When or if it will ever fly is anyone's guess.
What is NASA's goal right now?
Do we know?
STEVEN YOUNG: That's a very good question.
I think that's the fundamental problem.
I think, for the first time in the space agency's
history, its mission is very uncertain.
There is no clear direction.
MILES O BRIEN: Which brings us back to SpaceX,
and the launchpad right next to the place
where the shuttles left Earth for three decades.
It is a lean, clean operation, filled with
a lot of people like launch engineer Mike
Sheehan, the boss at the tender age of 28.
This whole first part, first stage, is this
all reusable?
MIKE SHEEHAN, launch engineer, SpaceX: Yes.
MILES O BRIEN: So that will be -- this will
be fished out of the Atlantic?
MIKE SHEEHAN: This one won't, no.
MILES O BRIEN: This one -- but in the future,
it will?
Is that the -- is that the plan or.
. . MIKE SHEEHAN: Yes, yes.
MILES O BRIEN: Okay.
It's not unlike NASA in the 1960s.
Could this be a changing of the old guard?
Are we at an inflection point where that's
changing?
ELON MUSK: Yes, I think we really are at an
inflection point where space is increasingly
driven by the private sector.
Government still has a very important role
to play, but it's going to be a greater and
greater percentage of private enterprise.
MILES O BRIEN: SpaceX has flown Falcon 9 to
orbit twice before with great success, but
this will be the maiden voyage for a fully
equipped Dragon capsule and the first attempt
to reach the space station.
The SpaceX team is dotting I's and crossing
T's, but in this case, the goal is not to
ensure success at all costs.
JEFFREY BROWN: And it's Science Thursday on
our website.
There, you can take a test to see if you know
more than a 10th grader about climate change.
That's on our Science page.
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place JEFFREY BROWN: With the shuttle era
over, American spaceflight is on the verge
of going private for the immediate future
Normal Microsoft Office Word JEFFREY BROWN:
With the shuttle era over, American spaceflight
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