Mark Sirangelo, the head of Space Systems at Sierra Nevada, has dismissed claims in the US that handing over low earth orbit (LEO) transport to commercial companies is a mistake.
Sierra Nevada was the largest beneficiary of recent NASA funding for…
Mark Sirangelo, the head of Space Systems at Sierra Nevada, has dismissed claims in the US that handing over low earth orbit (LEO) transport to commercial companies is a mistake.
Sierra Nevada was the largest beneficiary of recent NASA funding for Commercial Crew Development, receiving US$20m towards the development of its LEO flight vehicle Dream Chaser.
The US government has received heavy criticism in some quarters for abandoning the Constellation Moon project and tasking the commercial sector to ferry astronauts and supplies on LEO missions.
In an interview with SatelliteFinance, Sirangelo expressed bemusement at the concerns raised about the ability of commercial companies to meet schedules and safety standards.
“There is a tremendous amount of agitation going around about this concept of commercial space,” he said. “The interesting thing is that these companies saying commercial companies will never work are themselves commercial.”
Sirangelo outlined two major differences in what could be termed the new commercial spaceflight sector as exemplified by Sierra Nevada and SpaceX and the old system of government space procurement.
“Number one – we do fixed-price contracts instead of fixed-cost contracts, which means when we cross milestones we get paid. That puts the onus on us to stick to our schedule, because if we don’t meet it we don’t get paid.”
“Number two – we are willing to co-invest money to make these projects happen, and it reduces the burden on the taxpayer. Those are really the only differences.”
Indeed, Sirangelo does not see “the commercial spaceflight industry” as something that is necessarily new at all. He pointed out that Boeing is a member of the team working with Sierra Nevada on its Dream Chaser crewed vehicle project, and that the whole Dream Chaser concept is reliant on the Atlas V rocket, a United Launch Alliance vehicle that has been around for years.
Sirangelo considers comments about safety issues “ridiculous”, stating that just as Boeing has to satisfy safety certifications for Airbus, so will spaceflight companies have to satisfy the standards laid down by NASA. He believes that the only reason this is even an issue is because these standards have yet to be finalised.
“What is going to happen is that in the future a safety committee panel will sit down and draw up a set of standards that will apply to everyone,” he said. He pointed out the irony that neither the Space Shuttle nor Soyuz, the mainstays of human spaceflight, met current safety standards when they first entered service.