Rick Raw: Virgin Galactic Trumps NASA with Much Cheaper Space Flights

By Rick Grant Commentary rickgrant01@comcast.net

My question for NASA is: If a flamboyant billionaire, Richard Branson and an aerospace engineering genius, Burt Rutan can design and build space vehicles and a spaceport in New Mexico hundreds of times cheaper than NASA can even fathom, why hasn’t the Space Administration formed an alliance with their company, Virgin Galactic?

Ah yes, Virgin Galactic is a private company that developed austaire economic polices as a mission statement. Ultimately, they intend to sell rides into space at 200 grand a pop to make money.

On the other hand, NASA is a bloated spendthrift government agency that never got over the carte blanche funding for the Space Race, driven by the cold war fear that the Soviet Union would beat us to the moon.

Using advanced carbon fiber technology and innovative design Branson and Rutan have set the new paradigm for future space flight. Last year, their prototype spacecraft flew into sub-orbit and flew back to earth, landing on the Virgin Galactic runway. This historic flight proved that Branson and Rutan are authentic pioneers in the future of space exploration.

In contrast, NASA’s heavy lumbering clunker, the Space Shuttle, with over a million parts–essentially a space truck-- is being phased out next year with nothing new with which to replace it. There is a tentative plan to return to the moon using a back to the future design to build a giant three stage rocket vehicle similar to the Saturn V, using decades old technology.

As independent thinkers, Brandson and Rutan have eclipsed NASA in imaginative ideas, leaving the suits at NASA far behind. Rutan’s technological development was cost effective by design. It was a simple idea of creating scaled down space-vehicles that could go into orbit and return to earth with paying passengers.

Virgin Galactic already has a waiting list of three hundred people who have put down deposits for the sub-orbital flights. This will give the passengers five minutes of weightless flight and a view of the Earth to die for–or to make the 200 grand they spent well worth the money.

Deep in the New Mexico desert, the Virgin Galactic spaceport America is being built with two WhiteKnights and two Space Ships which are tandem vehicles. Later space-vehicles are being developed that are similar to the latest space-plane designs that NASA had to temporarily cancel for lack of funds. The present vehicles will hold two pilots and six passengers on suborbital flights.

The next generation of Virgin Galactic space-vehicles will solve the problem of the intense heat of reentry after full orbital flights, while keeping the weight of the vehicle down to a practical level. Of course, Rutan’s outside-the-box advanced engineering ideas must be an embarrassment to NASA’s status as the predominant American space agency.

The remote New Mexico location is ideal for the Spaceport America. The weather is dry and clear year round, and at 4,500 ft above sea level, it’s a perfect location for the 70 mile trip to the edge of space. Another advantage is the location’s restricted airspace for the neighboring White Sands Missile Range and the Holloman Air Force Base, which means there is no commercial air traffic above the spaceport.

As an extra incentive to appease the tax payers of New Mexico, Branson plans to build a museum and hotel complex bringing a million visitors to the spaceport every year, which will have a positive economic impact on the nearby towns.

What started as a money making idea has evolved into a pathfinding engineering project for future space travel in vehicles that are lightweight and will withstand the rigors of space and reentry far cheaper than NASA’s dwindling budget.

The bureaucrats of NASA have their heads buried in the sand and will continue their expensive engineering development, while Branson and Rutan will move past them and emerge as the preeminent futurists of space exploration.