COLORADO SPRINGS — Elon Musk stood Tuesday in front of the Dragon crew capsule, scorched from its December re-entry through Earth’s atmosphere.
“This is the real thing,” said Musk, chief executive of SpaceX, the first private company to put a spacecraft into orbit and retrieve it.
Sometime in late September or early October, Dragon will fly again. Musk envisions 20 low-Earth-orbit missions a year, though currently the focus is on getting to the international space station.
The Dragon — displayed through Thursday at the 27th annual National Space Symposium at the Broadmoor — is a symbol of the future of space.
It is a future, industry and government leaders say, that requires more commercial involvement like SpaceX, more international collaboration and better use of scarcer dollars.
When the space shuttles are retired this year, the United States will have to rely on Russia to get astronauts to the space station, unless private companies step up, said U.S. Rep. C.A. Ruppersberger, D-Md.
Twenty years ago, U.S. companies controlled 70 percent of the commercial space industry; today, it’s 27 percent, said Ruppersberger, a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Armed Services Committee.
The United States spends more money per rocket launch than any other country, Ruppersberger said, adding, “We need competition in certain areas to drive down costs.”
Space-industry leaders expressed concern over uncertain budgets — though they acknowledged funding will probably drop in the face of global economic woes and American concern over the national debt.
Government-funded missions must answer to taxpayers, so cost overruns and delays won’t be tolerated, said Wes Bush, CEO of Northrop Grumman Corp.
“Space is too convenient of a target for budget-cutting — it looks expensive,” Bush said.
The answers lie with companies and government finding new ways to respond and not relying on old strategies.
Boeing CEO Roger Krone said the space industry needs to trim down.
“Military, civil and commercial space has grown in an unprecedented way, and the bureaucracy and infrastructure exceeds our ability to sustain them,” Krone said.
The marketplace will help wring out the excess, with Krone predicting that the future is in small and medium satellites.
Ann Schrader: 303-954-1967 or aschrader@denverpost.com
Final missions
NASA’s three remaining space shuttles have found homes for when the program ends this summer,the space agency said Tuesday:
Atlantis: Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex at Cape Canaveral, Fla., just miles from the pair of launch pads where it was shot into space.
Endeavour: California Science Center, near the plant where the shuttle was built.
Discovery: Smithsonian’s branch in northern Virginia, which is giving up the prototype Enterprise to New York’s Intrepid museum.
The other 18 museums and visitor centers across the country that bid for the spaceships will get shuttle simulators and other parts.
The Associated Press
