I think Astronaut James Lovell defined “commercial” space best a few years ago when he said:

“Commercial space is only ‘commercial’ when an entrepreneur designs, builds, human rates and successfully demonstrates a launch system … and finds a market for his or her product.”

For an in depth analysis of what constitutes “commercial” transportation systems, I suggest you take the time to listen to my appearance on The Space Show three years ago:

http://www.thespaceshow.com/detail.asp?q=1702

In particular, listen to the second hour.

As I mentioned in that hour, space is still in the “Lewis and Clark phase.” Exploring space beyond Low Earth Orbit is still the province of government-sponsored projects because there is little or nothing beyond LEO that will pay a respectable return on the investment for commercial ventures in a reasonable period of time. Listen to caller Craig Horton’s comments about this around the 1:28:00 mark.

You might also want to listen to my earlier comparison between the supersonic transport (SST) projects of the 1960s (including Concorde) and today’s so-called “commercial” space projects. Billions of taxpayer dollars were spent on developing airplanes that would only serve the wealthy. Sort of like the space tourism enterprises that some people advocate today. Concorde was a technical success. But it was a commercial failure. The SST projects, including Concorde, did little or nothing to advance the growth of commercial aviation. Which is why there are no SSTs flying today. The real revolution in commercial aviation came with the development of the “jumbo jets” that made air travel more affordable to the masses.

There simply is no “commercial” market to support “commercial” space. There is some limited potential for space tourism, although even that could be a difficult challenge as Virgin Galactic learned a few months ago. Assuming everything works perfectly for SpaceShipTwo, the market is still a tiny niche … limited to people who can afford a quarter million dollar joy ride.

But beyond LEO, there is no genuine “commercial” market in space tdoay.

That is not to say that there will never be a genuine commercial market in deep space. However, it will require government exploration of various deep space destinations to determine whether or not there is any value to undertaking commercial ventures to those places. I would suggest that the Moon offers the greatest short-term potential.

Too often, NewSpace enthusiasts compare “commercial” space to commercial aviation. They totally ignore the fact that commercial aviation had an existing market for the transport of people and goods. The airplane simply supplemented or replaced existing forms of transportation (rail, ship, bus, etc.). Moreover, the NewSpace enthusiasts do not understand what the early Air Mail contracts were all about. They were nothing like the contracts that SpaceX has been getting, for example. Listen to my comments on The Space Show around the 37-minute mark for a description of the early commercial aviation industry and the mass market that existed for the transportation of people and goods from Point A to Point B. There is NO such mass market for space, other than commercial satellites.

And there is nothing “Stalinist” about saying that space exploration is still the province of government. On the contrary, efforts such as the late, great Constellation Program could be described more accurately as “Jeffersonian.” Because Thomas Jefferson realized that in order to open the American West (the frontier) to commerce and settlement, he needed to send explorers into that region to assess its resources and their commercial potential. That process continued for many decades. And that is why President Kennedy so accurately referred to space as the “New Frontier.”

Vladislaw, you don’t seem to understand basic commerce and free enterprise. Of course, most people don’t seem to understand basic commerce and free enterprise these days, including our current President.

BTW, I was a market analyst and public relations representative for Fokker Aircraft USA, studying the commercial potential of our airplanes on various airline route systems. I was also a marketing representative for Ozark Airlines and a marketing consultant to Midway Airlines. My byline has appeared on hundreds of aviation and space articles in respected aerospace journals around the globe, as well as on two books, FAMOUS AIRLINERS and MOON MISSIONS (both now out of print). Look for my article about my father’s role in the Surveyor lunar project in the next issue of the Smithsonian AIR & SPACE magazine. I mention these things simply to establish some credentials for my comments about commercial transportation.

It is easy to parrot NewSpace propaganda. It is not so easy to develop genuine “commercial” space. Unfortunately, too many NewSpace advocates prefer to live in Fantasyland rather than dealing with Reality.

Is that the ONLY way you can define Space? By adding a big government “program” behind it?

You can PRETEND that LEO is not space, but you would be totally alone in characterizing it that way. Why don’t round up some PHD’s that say the ISS is not located in space.

Gosh how can we get an astronaut that is sitting in califonia to florida? I know an “AIR program” we have NASA build a plane in florida, fly the astronaut to the cape and have them parachute out of the plane and crash the plane in the ocean.

Commercial handles every form of transportation an astronaut uses, from bicycles, to motorcycles. Automobiles, Trains, airplanes, boats, hell NASA couldn not even survive without commercial transportation services. You can keep your fantasy about space transportation as a government only endevor but every President since Nixon disagrees with you and has tried to bring space transportation into the real world.

Lets see who’s prediction comes to pass. Space transportation as a government only from of transportation or that it moves into the mainstream as just another transportation system.

“Are American aerospace workers and engineers REALLY so ignorant, so stupid that is impossible for them to create a lower cost transportation system?”

There is no cheap. You get what you pay for and a mediocre kerosene burning hobby rocket will not support a real space program.

LEO is not space.

Not much crazier than the current “plans”,

Marcel

But I do consider some objects in the solar system as– natural wonders– that either should be not exploited or should only endure very limited exploitation. So I admit to being a conservationist!

For instance, I’d hate for future industrialist to completely destroy the moons of Mars in order to use the material to build several O’Neill type space colonies in orbit around Mars. However, I think limiting the exploitation of resources on the surface of the moons of Mars to a maximum of 1% of the surface area up to 500 meters deep wouldn’t be unreasonable in order to preserve their aesthetic beauty.

And if the industrialist want more material for orbiting colonies then they can start importing asteroids from the asteroid belt: but only asteroids less than 1 kilometer in diameter (more rules!). I would consider asteroids over one kilometer in diameter as– natural wonders– that shouldn’t be moved!

A similar rule on the Moon would preserve 99% of the natural beauty of lunar surface for scientist and tourist while still allowing nearly 400,000 square kilometers of the lunar surface to be exploited (I doubt if even 40,000 square kilometers of the Moon will ever be settled and exploited over the next 1000 years).

I’d like to see a similar law applied on Earth to Antarctica which currently, by treaty, cannot be mined. A maximum 1% territorial surface exploitation limit would allow 140,000 square kilometers of Antarctica to be colonized or mined while still preserving at least 99% of the last continent’s natural beauty.

I live on an island in the beautiful San Francisco Bay. Can you believe that there were industrialist in the Bay area in the 20th century who actually wanted to drain the bay, pave it over, for more urbanization. Guess we wouldn’t need a– Golden Gate Bridge– out here anymore if that had happened:-)

Marcel

Space transportation is just ANOTHER form of transportation. Something the American private sector has handled pretty well over the last century and a half.

Are American aerospace workers and engineers REALLY so ignorant, so stupid that is impossible for them to create a lower cost transportation system? Is everyone involved in the aerospace industry, outside of NASA really that stupid?

Just cave dwelling knuckledraggers that can not turn a wrench?

What is it with you that you have such little faith in the American worker? The American Engineer? The American Entreprenuer?

Why is every solution you propose a Stalinist, big government, command economy answer? Never one of the true strengths of the Nation, the American entrepreneur.

Why is there never room for both in space transportation? Only Stalinist big government?

That assessment was based on analysis done for the Side Mount configuration SDHLV of which the Block I SLS is an in-line version. At the time of the analysis (2007) fixed cost was set at $2B with the additional cost per flight in the $10’s of Millions range. At the nearest “Billion dollars” used for congressional debates that means total cost would be assessed as still being $2B. That would make the average cost (for 8 flights per year) $250M

Those numbers were generated by the people who worked the shuttle hardware for decades and nothing has happened to invalidate them. About the most you can do to try and make it look worse is to adjust the figures for inflation.

But again the main point is that once you are paying the fixed cost to be able to fly at all the added cost per flight is vanishingly small.

The same basic point is true for any other booster, aircraft or (for that matter) trains, trucks.

Somewhere along the way this simple view of improved productivity AND absolute yearly cost to NASA was lost. Orion project by way of example is more PER YEAR than orbiter project adjusted for inflation. And the ET/MAF, SRB’s/SRM’s/Utah and SSME-like engines? Those were all mostly fixed costs back in the Shuttle’s day and have all been transferred to the new expendable SLS/Orion approach. And we are still missing that larger upper stage. Savings from labor on orbiter? See prior Orion observation. The only YEARLY budget reduction has come about by diverting what was Shuttle upgrades money over to other things. The matter being, once SLS/Orion is flying, they will have little non-operational leeway. Adding SLS/Orion flights much beyond a zero-base of 1 a year (or every two or three years, there is uncertainty in the numbers) quickly gets a response back from the contractor for ADDED budget amounts in the hundreds of millions per flight (meaning per budget YEAR). The killer then being the mods (unfunded) as we learn from flight to flight.

At the end of the day a basic launcher system was needed (if having a new beyond Earth orbit exploration focus) that could run on much LESS than the Shuttle operational budget (only) at a good flight rate (delivering a range of 200 to 400 tons cumulative to orbit a year) (sans the Shuttle upgrades budget, which had to go to other things like supporting the logistics flights to ISS). The difference would be for payloads, space vehicles, landers and such.

There is nothing un-doable about this, except entrenched interests that might not have fared well in such a change.

No matter how much we tried to convey this since even before Columbia-managers especially never seemed to get the math.