Entrepreneur Addresses Lawsuit, Launch

"If you see a rocket ship on the way to Mars, honey, it'll be me." -- Jerry Lee Lewis

Elon Musk of Space Exploration Technologies, as no one calls it, SpaceX as it's called by everyone from him down, might be singing that line from an old Sun Records rocker to himself. But if so, he's singing it in the full knowledge that first he has to get to orbit, and he has a great deal of opposition.

Musk has been in the news lately, if you know where to look; he issued a statement on the 24th on the latest postponement of SpaceX's Falcon 1 launch at Kwajalein, and a couple of days before that he spoke to a college audience at Virginia Tech.

If you're tuning in late to this story, Musk is the South-African-born entrepreneur that earned a fortune by building up the PayPal online payments system into a trusted brand in four years and selling it to eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002. He previously founded another company, Zip2, which he sold to Compaq for $307 million after four years.

Since the sale of PayPal, he's been trying to make another success with SpaceX, and applying the same kind of imagination that's served him well before. But what drives him, like what drives other space entrepreneurs including Paul Allen and Burt Rutan, is the sense that those of us living in this time inherit a historic calling, and a historic opportunity, for exploration.

"I said I wanted to take a large fortune and make it a small one, so I started a rocket business, but the ultimate goal is to make life multi-planetary," Musk (below) said at the lecture, according to Virginia Tech's independent Collegiate Times. "As life's agents, it's on our shoulders," to carry life into space where now -- all science so far indicates -- it is not.

As if the environment of space wasn't harsh enough, SpaceX's model has it launching from launch pads operated by its principal competitors for heavy space launch services -- competitors that SpaceX says have conspired to cheat it of any opportunity to compete for payloads.

The Lawsuit

Musk discussed the SpaceX Lawsuit against Boeing and Lockheed-Martin. SpaceX filed the suit on October 18, 2005, saying that the proposed merger of the two giants' space operations into the one single operation that would be granted a monopoly on Air Force, DARPA and NASA launches, was an unfair restraint of trade. The Boeing/Lockheed-Martin operation is called the United Launch Alliance, and it's pretty clear whom they're uniting and allying against.

The terms of the "agreement" by Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, and the USAF divide coming launches between Boeing's Delta 4 (right) and Lockheed-Martin's Atlas 5 launch vehicles -- freezing out other competitors. One irony in this is that the technology for Delta and Atlas was developed entirely with government -- i.e. taxpayer -- money, making this one of the largest corporate welfare bills in world history.

Boeing spokesman Dan Beck reacted at the time the suit was filed: ""SpaceX? They've yet to even launch one of these rockets," Beck sneered -- on the record.  

In Virginia, Musk recognized what motivates the giants to try to lock in the launch schedule now. "They can't compete with us on a level playing field . . . If I were them, I would be trying to tilt the playing field. The jury is out on whether that will happen," Musk said.

He indicated that it would be a bad thing indeed, "If you've got a great rocket and the Air Force can't buy it from you." -- which is indeed the deal that Boeing and Lockheed-Martin have been trying to cut with the AIr Force. The defense giants have the ear of many in Washington, including plenty of "friends" in Congress. But what would you say about anybody who has to buy his friends?

Why This Matters

The Falcon 1 launch, when it occurs, is going to be a very important event -- as important for commercial spaceflight, if perhaps not as splashy, as the SpaceShipOne manned flights in 2004.

Every significant element of Falcon 1, except the satellite which it launches for DARPA and the US Air Force Academy, was conceived, designed and developed in-house by SpaceX.

It will be the first privately developed liquid-fueled rocket to reach orbit -- its technical forebears all depended on government technology or funding in some way.

It will be the first all-new boost vehicle in over a decade.

The next items needs a direct quote from SpaceX to illustrate the degree to which the big aerospace/defense prime contractors have been dogging it in space: "The main engine of Falcon 1 (Merlin) will be the first all new American hydrocarbon engine for an orbital booster to be flown in forty years and only the second new American booster engine of any kind in twenty-five years."

It will be the first vehicle to deploy low-cost, low-power-budget 21st century avionics.

It will be one of only two orbital booster systems that is even in part reusable. The other is the embattled Space Shuttle Transportation System.

It will provide the lowest cost per flight to orbit in the world, despite a reliability rating as good as any American booster... $6.7 million. That's a fraction of the prices the Boeing/Lockheed-Martin monopoly is hoping to charge its captive customers.

FMI: www.spacex.com