The Teal Group announced today today the publication of its new Near-term Outlook during the Satellite 2005 conference. "The study highlights Hughes' Spaceway dedicated broadband satellite system and SpaceX's Falcon partly-reusable rocket as two programs that could have noticeable impact on the market."
I first met Elon Musk the founder of SpaceX in the summer of 2001 at a space conference and have had the opportunity to talk him on several occasions since then about space exploration and in particular his company SpaceX. I'm a big supporter of SpaceX because Elon is attacking the biggest problem we have with space exploration in a creative and inivative way.
The problem I'm talking about is the cost to launch anything into space. So what separates SpaceX from the pack? And why do I believe in them? It all starts with Elon. Here's a young entrepreneur who made a good deal of money building Internet applications before he was 30. In 2001 when I first met him he was in the process of evaluating what it would cost to have someone else send a payload to Mars. Besides a strong business acumen, Elon has a degree in physics so he has a good grounding for the research he was undertaking. After he had spent a considerable amount of time researching his project and after funding a study on the feasibility of the mission he decided to go it alone. Instead of relying on anyone else to launch his payload his vision had changed into building his own rockets to get his own and other enterprises payloads into space. No small undertaking, and very costly to boot.
So in June of 2002 he founded SpaceX. The vision was to build a launch platform that would cut the cost of launching by a significant factor. To accomplish this he privately financed his venture and started a campaign to recruit the best possible people he could. He even had NASA Administrator nominee Mike Griffin consulting early on. By the way Mike Griffin is the co-author of the updated and well respected book Space Vehicle Design, a must read for anyone wanting to build a space vehicle.
Elon decided that to succeed he needed to build a new rocket from the ground up, something which had not been done for some time. Innovation was the key, create new technology and systems and improve on tried and true methods. Today, nearly three years after the company was founded SpaceX offers the "world’s lowest cost per pound/kilogram to orbit" according their web site. It must be noted that they have yet to launch a rocket although they have several customers lined up. The first launch should happen within 2 to 3 months after they complete a hotfire in the next couple of weeks. This is well past the timeframe Elon had orginally set to launch his first rocket. Technical challenges have slowed their progess but this is hardly surprising considering what it is they are trying to accomplish. And unlike the software or Internet sector, there is no beta test period. When that first rocket launches it has to succeed.
I believe Elon can succeed because he is smart, is very driven, has great people working with him, is running on his own timetable, is testing, testing and doing more testing before launch and I think he may just have inovated enough to make it work.