Bigelow Aerospace’s big day at the rodeo

The Space Review ^ | 07/24/06 | Jeff Foust

[KevinDavis]

The menagerie of entrepreneurial space, or “NewSpace”, companies, have taken vastly different approaches to public relations. At one extreme are the companies that have been very open about the status of their development efforts, sharing the latest news—good or bad—with the media and the public. Armadillo Aerospace, for example, blogs essentially all the details of their work, replete with video and photos, regardless of success or failure. SpaceX has also provided regular updates on their efforts direct from company founder Elon Musk, although those updates have been less frequent in recent months. At the other extreme are those companies who go to great efforts to stay out of the public eye. Scaled Composites kept the development of SpaceShipOne under tight wraps—an approach it is also using for SpaceShipTwo—while Blue Origin has disclosed virtually no details about their vehicle outside of a federally-mandated environmental assessment report.

For most of its history, Bigelow Aerospace has been in the same camp as those secretive companies. While the company was founded back in 1999, the company has shared few details of its work to develop inflatable orbital habitats based on technology developed but later abandoned by NASA. However, the company has been gradually warming to the media and the public, and those efforts accelerated this month with the successful launch of its first spacecraft, Genesis 1. (See “Genesis and the future space hotel”, The Space Review, July 17, 2006). Bigelow Aerospace and its founder, Robert Bigelow, are now very much in the public eye.

[KevinDavis]

[Shuttle Shucker]

Meanwhile, the feds are stifling entrepreneurial space:

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=21352

Senate Report 109-280 Departments of Commerce and Justice, Science and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill 2007

STATUS REPORT
Date Released: Friday, July 14, 2006
Source: Senate Appropriations Committee

"The Committee does not provide any funding in fiscal year 2007 for the Centennial Challenges program. Funding provided in previous fiscal years for this program is sufficient for NASA to run a prize based competition, as well as to verify that NASA will see tangential benefits from running such a program. Providing additional funds to a program based on prizes only creates a pot of unused funds while other aspects of NASA's mission are being cut or delayed due to a lack of funds."

For more information regarding why this decision seems outrageous:

http://www.spaceprojects.com/prizes

Surely there are easier ways to pressure NASA to create prizes that can actually be won, than to eliminate further funding for NASA prizes, causing existing ones to remain so tiny that nobody can be adequately incentivized to win them?

[Vaquero]

[af_vet_rr]

Mentioning the feds reminds me - one of the things I worry about, is some of the larger aerospace companies stand to lose a lot, and have a lot of money to lobby Congress with, and many in Congress can be easily bought, as we so often see (and they may not even have to lobby, they just have to whisper in some Congressman's ear "this might cause us to get rid of some of our work and jobs in your district".

The only thing that can be done to counter the lobbyists is to make sure these kinds of things are in the public's eyes. Bezos, Bigelow, Ruttan, etc., all know how to play the PR game, and have a lot of tools at their disposal, which helps.

[Shuttle Shucker]

Are you sure that well-funded space entrepreneurs really do want such prizes to materialize when that would level the playing field between them and others who could become more enabled to lure in investors?

[af_vet_rr]

Are you sure that well-funded space entrepreneurs really do want such prizes to materialize when that would level the playing field between them and others who could become more enabled to lure in investors?

It's an interesting question.

On the one hand, you'd think they'd want to have the field to themselves.

On the other hand, these kinds of competitions can get the kind of PR that would be hard to buy, as well as demonstrate just how far advanced you maybe in comparison to others in the field (on the other hand, it could expose your weakness as well).

Would Scaled Composites have gotten the proverbial blank check from Branson, and would they have attracted Paul Allen, had there been no competition?

Granted, Scaled Composites didn't have the kind of resources available to it that the well-funded space entrepreneurs have.

I don't know what I would want if I was one of the well-funded space entrepreneurs - a win at a competition generates a helluva lot of public interest, as well as potential mindshare amongst potential customers.

[Shuttle Shucker]

Paul Allen's company Microsoft isn't known for paving the way for potential competitors. Has Scaled composites been preaching the virtues of prizes since he got involved?

[af_vet_rr]

I've heard Rutan say that he would love to go after more prizes - if you are one of the companies looking for funding, you can tout these competitions as "if you fund us, we might be able to make back some of your investment a lot quicker through a competition". Of course, with Rutan, he's not big on government bureacracy and he has an ego, so I don't think he's doing it for the money - I think he believes NASA and our government have let us down (and in a way I think they have).

That said - Scale Composites did preach the virtues of the prizes/competitions, but more because, IMO, of the publicity it brings them. They turn this publicity into revenue generation, which is what Allen and Branson both want. People can say what they will about Allen and Branson, but both are very sharp, and it may look like they throw money around willy-nilly, but in actuality, they've studied most of their investments carefully, or hired experts to do so.