The competition to get back to the moon is heating up, and at least for now, it looks like commercial space firm and rocket maker SpaceX is leading the pack.
Shortly after SpaceX’s Feb. 27 announcement that it plans to send two private individuals to orbit the moon in 2018, tweets were flying about how funny it would be if SpaceX gets there before government agency NASA — which also wants to revisit the moon in the near future.
Hawthorne, Calif.-based SpaceX did acknowledge that the planned moon mission wouldn’t be possible without NASA’s support for the commercial crew program and its funding of SpaceX’s Dragon 2 space capsule.
But the pressure is on NASA and other space companies to shoot for the moon sooner — something that’s as exciting as the historic space race when the U.S. and Russia were competing for spaceflight capability.
That competition inspired engineers to work as fast and creatively as they could, and the U.S. won in 1969 when it landed a man on the moon.
Now, history is repeating itself, in a sense — this time between the government and commercial firms, said Dale Ketcham, chief of strategic alliance at Space Florida, the state’s economic development agency for aerospace.
“It’s a reflection of competition again driving a race for exploration,” Ketcham told Orlando Business Journal. “Competition with the Russians is what got us to the moon initially, and competition with the government will get us back to the moon sooner.”
NASA currently is working on its Space Launch System rocket — said to be its most powerful rocket ever built — and its Orion space capsule to conduct its own moon and Mars missions.
NASA tentatively scheduled its first unmanned launch in 2018 — but reports push it to 2019 — with manned missions by 2020 or 2021.
Big firms like Lockheed Martin Corp. (NYSE: LMT), Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA), United Launch Alliance, Orbital ATK (NYSE: OA) and Aerojet Rocketdyne (NYSE: AJRD) are helping develop NASA’s rocket and space capsule.
Even though NASA has those big names backing it, SpaceX — a company with about 5,000 employees — seems to be well ahead of the curve in practicing landing rockets to save money, as well as planning lunar and Mars missions.
All this is good news for Florida’s Space Coast and its surrounding businesses, since much of the activity takes place there. Both SpaceX and NASA plan to launch capsules from Cape Canaveral, which can bring business to local parts suppliers.
For instance, Lockheed Martin recruited Satellite Beach-based 3-D parts supplier Rapid Prototyping Services to develop drill tables for NASA’s Orion spacecraft.
NASA eventually will conduct lunar missions again, and SpaceX wants to land more private citizen missions to expand space tourism and add to its revenue stream.
Plus, Kent, Wash.-based Blue Origin, which is building a $205 million rocket plant in Merritt Island, and Cape Canaveral-based Moon Express, which is targeting this year for an unmanned mission to land a rover on the moon, also have goals to build up space tourism.
“This is the first step toward tourism for the moon,” Ketcham said. “People paid $20 million to go the International Space Station, but for orbit and beyond, we haven’t had reliable transportation to space for the public — until now,” Ketcham said.
Closer look: Rocket Comparison
While government space agency NASA and private commercial company SpaceX work alongside one another, both now are gunning for the moon, with each planning to launch a rocket from Florida’s Space Coast.
SpaceX expects to make a round trip there using its Falcon Heavy rocket, while NASA plans to do the same using its Space Launch System rocket. However, each have a different timeline to complete the mission, and SpaceX is planning to do so nearly two years before NASA.
Here’s a quick look at a few details for each rocket:
NASA Space Launch System rocket
- 154,000-286,000 pounds payload weight (carrying capacity)
- Height:: 322 feet to 365 feet
- Weight:: 5.5M-6.5M pounds
- Thrust:: 8.4M-9.2M pounds
SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket
- 48,000-119,930 pounds payload weight (carrying capacity)
- Height: 229.6 feet
- Weight: 3.1 million pounds
- Thrust: 5 million pounds
Sources: NASA, SpaceX
Military work
Nearly $1.5 billion worth of military work was awarded to companies with a Central Florida presence within the last week. Here’s a rundown of each contract awarded:
- Lockheed Martin Corp. (U.S. Navy): $1 billion
- Lockheed Martin Corp. (U.S. Army): $427.3 million
- Lockheed Martin Corp. (U.S. Navy): $20.6 million
- Northrop Grumman Corp. (U.S. Navy): $17.8 million
- Lockheed Martin Corp. (U.S. Navy): $11.6 million
- Northrop Grumman Corp. (U.S. Navy): $10.9 million