SPACEX LANDS 1ST LAUNCH ORDERS
Daily Breeze
11/19/2004
By Muhammed El-Hasan

Two years after its founding, El Segundo-based Space Exploration Technologies has secured orders for four rocket launches worth $35 million, although the company has yet to launch its first rocket.

The private rocket developer, founded in 2002 by Internet entrepreneur Elon Musk, plans the maiden flight of its Falcon I in February 2005.

The Falcon I -- named after the Millennium Falcon in "Star Wars" - - will launch a $30 million Defense Department communications satellite called TacSat-1 into orbit from Vandenberg Air Force Base.

The El Segundo company, dubbed SpaceX for short, is developing bare-bones rockets that are much more inexpensive than rockets made by Orbital Sciences Corp. or Boeing Co..

Last month, SpaceX transferred the rocket to Vandenberg to undergo a series of pre-launch tests.

"It's definitely been challenging to obtain those orders," Musk said. "But I think that when customers have come in and done their due diligence and looked at our design and technology, they've generally come away with a positive impression."

Bigelow Aerospace in Las Vegas plans to send up a payload on SpaceX's larger Falcon V in November 2005. It will be the first launch of the larger Falcon model.

Mike Gold, Bigelow Aerospace's corporate counsel, acknowledged that his company is taking a risk by ordering an untested rocket.

"While the rocket is untested, certainly the quality of their staff isn't," Gold said. "We've been impressed by Elon and his staff and his company." Gold added that the rocket's price is "extraordinarily competitive."

Like SpaceX, Bigelow Aerospace is also somewhat of a maverick company. The Las Vegas firm's payload will test the viability of inflatable space habitats that could function as private-sector versions of the International Space Station.

Bigelow Aerospace is financed by hotel magnate Robert Bigelow, who is offering a $50 million prize to any team that sends the first privately funded manned spacecraft into orbit.

At age 33, Musk is a nontraditional aerospace executive. The South Africa-born Musk is best known for co-founding PayPal, an electronic payment system that was sold to online auction giant eBay for $1.5 billion.

Before PayPal, Musk co-founded a dot-com called Zip2 Corp. that allowed media companies to place content on the Internet. Compaq Computer Corp. bought that company for $300 million.

SpaceX started out with 20 employees and now has 80. It has expanded its El Segundo real estate to 65,000 square feet from 25,000, said SpaceX marketing manager Dianne Molina. "I thought it would grow at about this rate," Musk said.

The Falcon I can carry a 1,500-pound payload, and costs $6 million, about a quarter of what other companies charge.

SpaceX is expanding its original Falcon V design to carry a 6- ton payload, up from 4 tons, at a cost to the customer of $16 million, also a steep discount compared with competing rockets.

Musk attributes the lower cost to a lean corporate structure that keeps down costs and a simple two-stage rocket design that uses liquid fuel.

While lowering the cost, the simple design surrenders some performance.

"Everything about our vehicle from engines to structure to avionics is designed with cost in mind," Musk said. "The simplicity also means fewer things can go wrong."

Indeed, the Falcon V has the "highest level of design reliability" when considering the industry's average failure rates, according to a study conducted by research firm Futron Corp. of Bethesda, Md.

Even with testing and theoretical analyses, SpaceX must still perform a successful launch to prove itself to customers and the industry.

< More Media