Civilian Space Programs

 Civilian Space Programs

By the Numbers

Beck, Bezos, Branson and Musk (in alphabetical order).  These men have created amazing technological machines for advancing mankind into space.  

There have been much criticism of the narcissistic nature of their endeavors, or complaints about how the money could have been better spent on <place your favorite charity here>, but lets give these men their due.  They had the focus and drive spanning decades to make these achievements.  Something you or I couldn't do if we had a hundred years.

And you know it.  It may take a maniacal narcissist to make these accomplishments.  Could you say the same thing about Ford, Edison, or Siemens?  

Lets look at the effort.

Beck (again in alphabetical order) is the CEO of Rocket Lab.  You probably haven't heard of him or his company. They are based in New Zealand.  Rocket Labs goal is to create rockets that are not  manufactured, but printed.  Everything except the electronics.  Which is Commercial of the Self (COTS). Founded in 2006, their first launch was in 2017.  They have had 17 launches with only 3 failures, and a price tag of around 100 million.  Their total expenditures so far seems to be about 250 million.  As such, they are the cheapest way right now to put hardware into space.   They are currently capitalized at around 4 billion, and are looking to build new facilities in the USA.  

Rocket Lab's 3D printed "Electron" Rocket

Rocket Lab may be the dark horse in this race.  The reuse of their boosters is still unproven, but planned, but the production costs are also very low, and they are already doing practical work.

Bezos launched Blue Origin in the year 2000.  Other than it's existence and intention, not much was known about it until 2015.  That is a long time to invest outside the limelight.  How much money was spent is uncertain as well.  Bezos said he was "investing" a billion dollars a year into the company.  Lets take him at his word and he was spending that from 2015 onward.  I am sure it was quite a bit less in the earlier days.  But if you calculate using some descending sliding from 2015 to 2000, I can see 11 billion dollars having been spent.  

The "New Shepard" reusable rocket.  And yes, Jeff Bezos is compensating for something.

Probably a few billion less, Bezos didn't have all that much money in the early 2000's :) *  But he probably could have scrapped together 10-20 million to start this pie in the sky dream.

And he stuck with it.  I am sure he thought he would be riding into space in 5 years.  Any reasonable person would think that.  And it didn't happen, but year after year, the he continued to invest into this project.  So 2 decades and 11 billion dollars later, he finally rode his rocket, "New Shepard",  into space.  

Branson registered Virgin Galactic in 1999, but didn't launch the company until 2004.  At that point he had been managing companies for over 20 years.  So his efforts were more orientated by the realities of accounting, then dreams of the technology.  As such, he picked a design that looked most economical.  And possibly influenced by the TV show, "UFO", which had a similar system for putting space shuttles into orbit.  Drop a rocket from a mother ship.  The US air-force had done the same thing in the 50's with their X-15's being dropped by B-52s.  He probably also expected to fly into space in about 5 years.  

IMHO, the most elegant solution flying.  Branson's SpaceShipTwo being carried aloft by WhiteKnightTwo

And, like Bezos, found out first hand that the term "rocket scientist" was not just a word.   Years went by, but he had the drive and determination to see it through.  17 years and by my estimate**, 2 billion dollars later, he rode SpaceShipTwo into sub orbit.

Musk founded SpaceEx in 2001.  But his goal was to expand the practical nature of space travel.  I know from personal experience that they had a system for monitoring trash trucks from space.  Using satellite up-links to determine optimal routes and assessing when the truck needed to be emptied.

The company only had 170 employees in 2004, but this was before they started producing their own rockets.  Musks determination was to drive the cost of access to space down through reusable boosters and Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) products.

The company expanded to 3,500 by 2010, and peaked around 9,700 in 2019.  Estimated costs for all of SpaceX so far is around 6 billion dollars.

SpaceX's Starship launches into the sky.  The picture does not provide the proper scale at 160 feet tall, and can carry over 100 tons of cargo.

So what do we have?  Rocket Lab's printable rockets ("Electron") have proven themselves for light loads, in low orbits, at the lowest cost. They recovered their last booster, and plan on establishing reusability.  Driving their costs lower still.  A larger, 3D printed rocket ("Neutron") is currently being designed.

Bezo's rocket seems to be just a single purpose, a joyride for the rich.  We know that reusable rockets can be up-scaled, as Musk's "Spaceship" has demonstrated.  But will Bezos's ego and deep pockets allow that?  Blue Origin is working on a new reusable rocket, named "New Glenn", to take satellites into orbit.   So the tech demonstrated by Blue Origin is being carried forward to do useful work.  Also the fuel being burned is environmentally clean, as the only fuel is hydrogen, and the exhaust is water.****

Branson's design has so much potential.  But the system seems to be self limiting.  The maximum size of his rocket is determined by the size of the mothership aircraft, "White Knight Two".  Both will have to be up sized to do practical work.  And aircraft do not up size so easily.  Doubling the wing span would involve increasing the weight squared.  And White Knight Two is already at the limits of it's state of the art materials.  As joyrides go, The Virgin Galactic craft doesn't get as high, or experience zero gee as long as Bezos.  But I suspect it's refurbishing cost is lower, because the rocket is overall smaller, and Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo carries 8 passengers, vice Blue Origin's  4.

But Branson didn't spend nearly the amount of money Bezos did, and won their private space race.

It looks like Musk's SpaceX is going to be the dominant civilian space company.  Rather than shooting for the panache goal of space tourism, he was working on infrastructure from practical engineering point of view.  He already has reusable boosters, put satellites into orbit and has sent both automated supply ships and then astronauts to the International Space Station.  His "Starship", can put over a 100 tons into orbit.   Literally, you could put both Bezos and  Branson's rockets inside of Starship, and still pack a dozen Tesla's for the ride.

And Musk has already shot a Tesla automobile towards Mars***.  

How do we evaluate these men?  They have their flaws but have accomplished great things.  

        Ego         Risk     Charisma       Humor

Beck     1           1           1            4

Bezos    2           2           2            1

Branson  4           3           4            2

Musk     3           4           3            3

Evaluated as rating between themselves.   

All of them have drive and ambition beyond normal men.  All of them have put at least 15 years into these rockets.  All are willing to accept great risks.

For ego, I am giving Branson the highest rating.  For over 20 years before Virgin Galactic, he had run numerous companies, and was a noted dare devil.   Flying around the world in a balloon was one of his feats.  Musk over Bezos because Musk has been setting up a number of futuristic projects for his brand.  Beck at the bottom, because he does not seem to have the desire to be famous.

For risk.  All these men are risk takers.  They have all invested many years and treasure into these projects.  Far beyond what Wall Street investors are willing to take.  Two of them put their lives on the line flying in their machines.  But I put Musk first.  You only have to look at this montage of crashes SpaceX experienced to know that his mantra is "Failure is not an option, it is a requirement".  Also, of these four, his businesses are the most kept afloat by the faith of his investors that he will succeed.  If he fails somewhere, that faith would collapse all his enterprises.  Economically, he has put the most at risk.

Because of his daredevil nature, I am giving Branson second place.  But if Virgin Galactic fails, it would not affect his other businesses.  I am putting Bezos next, after all, he took his brother on the first manned flight of his rocket.  It could have been a very bad day for Mama Bezos.  But personal risk aside, Bezos has nothing really at stake here.  If he doubled his investment, and doubled again, and lost it all, it would just be a footnote on his tax forms.

Beck also has his company on the line, but Rocket Lab is already a successful business.  Even if it should fail, he has clearly shown himself to be an extremely competent CEO, with long range vision.

For charisma.  Defiantly Branson, he was the face of daring business enterprises for decades before this.  Musk an obvious next.  No one has accused Bezos of excessive charisma, but I'll give him the 3rd place due to the relative anonymity of Beck.

For humor.  Hands down Beck.   Just look at Rocket Lab's mission names.  From "It's a test", "Look Ma, No Hands", "They go up so Fast",  and the last one, number 17, "Running Out of Toes".  Musk is next, he did a cameo on Big Bang Theory, probably signed off on the crash montage mentioned before, and as a test weight for his rockets, launched one of his Tesla cars towards Mars, while playing "Major Tom" to the space suited crash dummy.  

Ground control to Major Tom.

 

*He was  worth only around 1.5 billion in 2001, most of it tied up in Amazon stock.

**AKA a broad ass guess based on 873 current employees

*** Yes, I know, he missed that target. 

**** I know, most hydrogen is derived from cracking natural gas, so that part is not clean, but as solar/wind/fusion comes on line, electrolysis will be the method to break apart water and then it will be clean.