New Mission for American Aerospace Giants

From the New York Times: New Mission for American Aerospace Giants

NEW YORK — For Boeing, Lockheed Martin and the other aerospace giants that have been the backbone of the American space effort for decades, the shift in U.S. space policy announced by President Barack Obama means a major change in mission.

President Obama toured the commercial rocket processing facility of Space Exploration Technologies with Elon Musk, second right, in April.

Mr. Musk said that the successful launch of its Falcon 9 rocket was a major victory “for NASA’s plan to use commercial rockets for astronaut transport.”
After working for decades with largely one customer — the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration — to ferry astronauts and equipment into orbit, major players in the aerospace industry are facing a commercial market with a range of entrepreneurs who say they can do that work for less.

Under Mr. Obama’s ambitious initiative, NASA would rely on commercial companies to provide a kind of taxi service to the International Space Station, while focusing its efforts on missions into deep space with international partners.

How the aerospace industry establishment will fit into this new plan remains far from clear, analysts say.

“I see a certain analogy with what happened when computers went from being room-sized to being on the desktop,” said Louis D. Friedman, executive director for Planetary Society, a space exploration advocacy group.

“Some companies barely survived, while others adapted and thrived. I think we are going to see something like this in the aerospace industry.”

The most immediate effect of the proposed policy shift will be on jobs. Mr. Obama’s plan to cancel the Constellation program, started five years ago by President George W. Bush to send astronauts back to the moon, could mean the end of nearly 12,600 jobs, according to estimates by aerospace contractors. The cuts would fall most heavily on Alabama, California, Florida, Texas and Utah, and political opposition from those states has been vociferous.

The Constellation program has already cost American taxpayers about $9 billion.

The end of Constellation would largely stop work on the Ares I rocket, which was to replace the space shuttle for carrying astronauts into orbit and would scale back work on the Orion crew capsule, which was to ride atop the Ares I. Lockheed Martin said more than 2,000 jobs depended on the Orion program, while Boeing said 1,500 jobs would be affected by the retirement of the space shuttle and the canceling of Constellation. Alliant Techsystems, known as ATK, said the ending of Ares I would put 5,000 jobs at risk at its plants and those of its subcontractors.

Mr. Obama has said that the changes do not amount to a retreat from manned spaceflight and that adding private entrepreneurs to the mix will create a more vibrant industry with more astronauts in space and more business for established companies and newcomers alike.

One established player that appears to accept Mr. Obama’s plan is United Launch Alliance, a 50-50 joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin. The company, whose Atlas and Delta rockets have carried military and commercial satellites into space for decades, said it had no plans to cut any jobs.

“Just the opposite,” a U.L.A. spokesman said.

“The president’s new plan could have a significant increase in demand coming from NASA and could create new jobs at U.L.A.,” the spokesman said, adding that U.L.A.’s long record of successful launchings made it “very different from new entrants.”

One new entrant much on the minds of the aerospace community is Space Exploration Technologies, founded by Elon Musk, the Internet entrepreneur who helped found the payment system PayPal. The company, which did not exist a decade ago, has $2.5 billion in contracts, including $1.6 billion from NASA to provide a minimum of 12 flights to deliver cargo to the space station starting in 2011.

The company, known as SpaceX, bolstered the credibility of Mr. Obama’s plan by launching into orbit last month the Falcon 9, a rocket measuring 158 feet, or 48 meters, and weighing 735,000 pounds, or 335,000 kilograms. The rocket, which the company said cost about $50 million, put a model of its Dragon capsule into orbit about 160 miles, or 260 kilometers, above the Earth without a hitch — an unusual development for a maiden flight.

SpaceX, which plans to launch a fully operational rocket and capsule this summer before sending one to the International Space Station next year, said the successful June trial was a major victory “for NASA’s plan to use commercial rockets for astronaut transport.”

The part of Mr. Obama’s plan that calls for missions that leave the Earth’s orbit to explore deep space will probably not be spelled out for several years. Mr. Obama has said that NASA will start developing a heavy-lift rocket for deep-space missions by 2015.

That gap of several years between the planned end of the Constellation program and the start of work on a new heavy-lift vehicle does not please the aerospace contractors, who say they could shift at least some workers who might otherwise be laid off into a new deep-space program. It is also dangerous, some analysts say, because after canceling the Ares I, the United States would have no backup rocket if new commercial companies failed to deliver on their promises.

“It’s a risky strategy,” said Loren B. Thompson, an analyst at the Lexington Institute, a research group financed in part by military contractors. “Our capacity to send man-rated rockets into space is at risk.”

In a statement in response to Mr. Obama’s April 15 speech at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida outlining his new policy, Boeing emphasized the need for immediate development of a heavy-lift vehicle.

“We have the technology and the people to commence development of these vehicles now,” Boeing said. Accelerated development of a deep-space launching vehicle and capsule “could achieve maximum benefit for American tax dollars by drawing on the cutting-edge technology already being developed for the Constellation program,” Boeing said.

John M. Logsdon, the former director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, said he had no doubt that NASA would contract for a heavy-lift vehicle sometime in the next few years and that the traditional aerospace companies would get the bulk of this work.

“But in the short-term, they stand to lose the contracts for Constellation and all that goes with it,” he said “They are trading contracts in hand for some very uncertain contracts in the future.”