SpaceX has beaten Blue Origin in the tender to find a US launcher to occupy a historic launchpad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The 20-year deal will see SpaceX using Launch Complex 39A, which launched Apollo 11 for the first manned Moon…
SpaceX has beaten Blue Origin in the tender to find a US launcher to occupy a historic launchpad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The 20-year deal will see SpaceX using Launch Complex 39A, which launched Apollo 11 for the first manned Moon landing and also saw the first and the last Space Shuttle missions.
The company will maintain the pad at its own expense, estimated to save NASA US$100,000 a month, while the space agency retains pad 39B about a mile away for its deep space and asteroid missions.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said: “The parallel pads at Kennedy perfectly exemplify NASA’s parallel path for human spaceflight exploration – US commercial companies providing access to low-Earth orbit and NASA deep space exploration missions at the same time.”
Whereas SpaceX plans to use pad 39A for commercial activities with its own Falcon 9 and soon-to-be-built Falcon Heavy rockets, Blue Origin had proposed running the site as a multi-user facility while it prepares to carry out its first orbital operations from 2018.
Blue Origin had seen NASA’s original solicitation for proposals to run the pad back in May 2013 as favouring a multi-user arrangement, and protested to the US Government Accountability Office when the space agency later indicated otherwise.
But the watchdog agency last week rejected that protest in a move that tipped the balance further in SpaceX’s favour.
Blue Origin carries out test flights in West Texas on land owned by its founder Jeff Bezos, who is also CEO of online retailer Amazon.
Meanwhile SpaceX, whose CEO Elon Musk co-founded internet payment giant PayPal, has been looking for additional sites for years to deal with an increasingly crowded manifest that now holds nearly 50 missions.
It already has government-owned launch sites in Florida’s Cape Canaveral and the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The launcher has been eyeing additional sites in Puerto Rico, Texas, Hawaii and Florida to set up a new commercial launch facility without government control.
The group has also been cited saying it would welcome other commercial providers at pad 39A, if they are able to produce a vehicle that is qualified to NASA’s human rating standards, and can dock with the International Space Station.
The group is currently counting down to another attempt to carry out what will be its third commercial ISS cargo resupply mission on Friday.
Its first attempt on Monday was scrubbed when pre-flight checks found that a helium valve on the rocket was not holding the right pressure.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, SpaceX spent US$1.12m on lobbying in 2013, which is around double what it was spending three years earlier. Its main US rival United Launch Alliance spent US$671,881 in 2013, compared with US$120,000 in 2010.
The increase comes as the US looks to further open up its EELV government satellite launch programme to private alternatives.
