SpaceX explosion raises questions on entrepreneurial exploration
When SpaceX successfully resumed flight operations with its Falcon 9 rocket last December, it seemed the space technology company founded by Elon Musk might have decisively consigned major failure to the past.
In June last year, a Falcon 9 blew up minutes after take-off, destroying cargo bound for the International Space Station in the process. The return-to-flight mission six months later not only put a satellite into orbit but also managed the most complex ever return of a spent booster rocket to Earth.
Yet that triumph, and the company’s subsequent retrieval of a further six booster rockets, only make the explosion of a Falcon 9 rocket on a launch pad in Florida on Thursday all the more infuriating for SpaceX.
Video shows that oxygen tanks in the space vehicle’s upper stage ignited during preparations for a test-firing of the rocket’s engine. The fireball that quickly engulfed the Falcon 9 destroyed its payload — a communications satellite due to be used by Facebook to provide internet access in Africa.
Mr Musk, SpaceX’s chief executive whose entrepreneurial career also includes co-founding Tesla Motors and PayPal, has said only where the explosion occurred and that the causes are unknown.
The many questions surrounding the explosion will reverberate well beyond SpaceX, which was established in 2002 by Mr Musk with encouragement from the US administration, so as to inject competition into the expensive and risky business of launching government and commercial satellites.
Any serious blow to SpaceX not only harms Washington’s efforts to reduce the cost of space launches, and maintain a choice of companies for launching satellites. It also raises questions about efforts by several entrepreneurs — including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Virgin Group’s Sir Richard Branson — to shake-up the space industry’s established powers. In the US, the rocket launch sector has been led by Boeing and Lockheed Martin for decades.
SpaceX suffers a major setback
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SpaceX suffers a major setback
Luigi Peluso of AlixPartners, the consultancy, says the industry accepts that mishaps are unavoidable, but that failures should run in only the “small single digits”.
“The fact of the matter now is that SpaceX has had two of these [incidents], which is the high water mark for the industry,” he adds. “It’s going to cause customers to reflect on whether or not the incremental cost reduction that they realise through a SpaceX choice is worth the potential risk of total loss.”
However, Marco Caceres of the Teal Group, another consultancy, expects SpaceX’s big advantages in lower costs and nimbleness to carry it through the latest explosion.
SpaceX offers satellite launches to the US government for less than $100m. The average price of launches by United Launch Alliance, jointly owned by Boeing and Lockheed, is about $164m.
This is borne out by how Tom Enders, chief executive of Airbus, described SpaceX as a “serious challenge” in 2014. The European aerospace group announced the formation of a space launch joint venture with France’s Safran, aimed at competing more effectively.
But SpaceX now has some pressing issues to attend to. Thursday’s explosion raises questions about whether the company will be able to meet its commitment to test its new Falcon Heavy rocket, which will be able to dispatch the heaviest satellites from Earth, before the end of the year.
ULA currently has a stranglehold on sending the heaviest payloads into space with its Delta IV Heavy rocket, which costs as much as $400m per launch.
The explosion could also force the postponement of the first flight of a previously-used SpaceX booster rocket, also scheduled for this year.
The idea of reusing booster rockets is central to SpaceX’s efforts to cut the costs of space launches. Mr Carceres says the company “has to go” in the direction of reuseability to cut expenses further from the $60m to $70m per launch that SpaceX currently offers commercial customers.
Yet the explosion is only likely to do serious harm to SpaceX if it persuades customers to switch to rivals led by ULA.
Loren Thompson, an analyst who has worked closely with Boeing and Lockheed, says ULA’s main selling point is its remarkable reliability record. It has never suffered a complete failure in 110 launches since its formation in 2006.
Falcon 9 had been launched 28 times before Thursday’s explosion. As well as last year’s failure, SpaceX’s rocket in 2012 failed to deploy two communications satellites for a customer, although the same flight successfully delivered cargo to the International Space Station.
“SpaceX’s main competitor has never had a launch failure, which is going to be a fact that will be highlighted now that SpaceX has had two major failures in two years,” says Mr Thompson.
However, ULA’s reliability record may be challenged by a significant looming upheaval facing its main rocket, the Atlas V.
The company is redesigning the vehicle to satisfy the US administration’s demands that it replace the Russian-built RD180 engine. The new rocket — called the Vulcan — will have reusable, US-built engines developed by Blue Origin, Mr Bezos’s space launch company. The switch to Vulcan will “raise the level of scrutiny” that ULA faces, says Mr Peluso.
That big shift, along with SpaceX’s cost advantages, encourages many followers of the space industry to conclude the balance of power has shifted firmly towards entrepreneurial companies like those involving Mr Musk and Mr Bezos, regardless of short-term setbacks.
“You’re starting a new era where commercial, private companies are leading the way, not only in terms of providing launch services to the US government but also in terms of getting cargo up to the space station and people up to the space station,” says Mr Carceres.
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