Sputnik was launched when I was a kid. I have always been fascinated with space exploration and read a lot of science fiction. As I grew up, I watched the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union. We landed on the moon in 1969 but we have not been back since. NASA has done a great job of exploring the solar system on a limited budget and participated in the creation and maintenance of the International Space Station. I always knew that unless space exploration could be commercialized and excite the interest of for-profit enterprises, it would remain a minor program of national governments. In the past ten years, there have been a rising interest in the commercial possibilities of space. Some countries with heavy lift capacity have been renting out launch capability to put satellites in orbit for other countries. Telecommunication has been a major driver of commercial space development. Major federal contractors have provided research and development of space technologies for years including the Boeing company in Seattle.
In the past few years, a number of companies have been created to actually launch satellites on their own space craft. SpaceX, a company founded by Elon Musk, recently announced that it was opening a major office in the Seattle, Washington area. SpaceX has been launching missions to the International Space Station. Also recently announced was the establishment of the Space Trade Association which will be based in Seattle. With the announcement of Vulcan Aerospace by Paul Allen to be headquartered in Seattle, it appears that the Puget Sound area has become a major battleground in the new billionaire entrepreneur space race.
A representative of the new company said, "Vulcan Aerospace is the company within Vulcan that plans and executes projects to shift how the world conceptualizes space travel through cost reduction and on‐demand access." "Vulcan Aerospace has its heritage in SpaceShipOne and oversees the Stratolaunch Systems project."
SpaceShipOne was a project that won the Ansari X Prize of ten million dollars in 2004. The project was a joint undertaking of Paul Allen and Scaled Composites run by Burt Rutan. It won the prize for being the first privately funded manned vehicle to be launched into space twice within two weeks.
Allen and Rutan formed Stratolaunch Systems in 2011 to launch satellites from a huge carrier aircraft. The carrier airplane will be developed by Scaled Composites and Vulcan Aerospace will create the launch vehicle. It is hoped that the Stratolaunch carrier airplane will be ready to make its first test flight in 2016.
With the ability to launch from a plane, Stratolaunch will be able to launch the satellites out over the ocean and away from populated areas. It will also allow launches to be optimized in a way that a land based launch system cannot. The Stratolaunch system will eventually be adapted so that it will be able to carry a variety of different types of launch vehicles.
I have to say that I am pleased that Seattle, the city that has been my home for decades, is on its way to becoming a major center for the nascent private space industry.
