John Kelly: Atlas V rising to occasion

From Florida Today: John Kelly: Atlas V rising to occasion
America may have its next human spaceflight launch vehicle, and it's one we know well on Florida's Space Coast.

The Atlas V, designed and built by Lockheed Martin and flown now by United Launch Alliance, appears to be the rocket of choice for no fewer than three of the piloted space vehicles being pitched by private operators.

Just this week, Boeing announced that the capsule spacecraft it hopes will become a space taxi for NASA would launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station aboard an Atlas V.

Two other promising entrants in the private space race -- Sierra Nevada Corp.'s Dream Chaser and Blue Origin's New Shepherd -- also are targeting Atlas V as their launch vehicles.

The Atlas launch complex at the air force station is being modified to accommodate astronauts boarding and escaping any of a variety of vehicles under consideration.

All this is good news for the Cape, yet another sign that the spaceport in the northern part of Brevard County has not seen its last manned missions off the planet.

Not far from Pad 41, SpaceX continues to drive toward manned flights aboard its Dragon space capsule, launching on the company's own Falcon rockets.

And, activity at the Kennedy Space Center has not slowed either with a variety of private space operators vying to get use of the center's unique spacecraft processing facilities.

The activity shows the possibilities of a post-shuttle world at Kennedy and the Cape, though promising and on-paper spaceflight systems don't always pan out.

Yet, it certainly seems as though a large number of serious players are in the mix. Some are vying for big NASA contracts down the road, but others are banking on all-private deals. The competition itself is good, and the fact that so many of the competitors see still see our community as "the place for space" is refreshing in difficult times for the local aerospace industry.

So what did all the news about the Atlas V announcement really mean?

Well, U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson was right in noting that the growing number of entrants and the ongoing efforts to diversify the launch industry and spacecraft processing sector on the Space Coast was going to drive down the costs of human spaceflight in the long term.

Innovators will find ways to overcome technical hurdles and keep costs lower as they compete against one another for the biggest prizes in the new space race -- the multibillion-dollar NASA contracts that could come from being among the first to offer a reliable, simple and safe transportation system to Earth orbit (and maybe even beyond).