Antelope Valley Hitches Hopes to Shuttle’s Heir

Nowhere is the battle for the future of the aerospace industry in California being waged with more intensity than in this wind-swept desert town.

With a long history of boom and bust cycles tied to the fortunes of the aerospace contractors that put this place on the map, Palmdale and its twin Antelope Valley city of Lancaster are hoping to climb to new heights of prosperity. The craft they hope to ride on is called the X-33.

It’s a Buck Rogers name, but proponents see this experimental version of a reusable launch vehicle as a cheap, reliable successor to the space shuttle and the key to the future commercialization of space.

They envision space launches as routine as airplane flights out of LAX. Rockets would blast off regularly, laden with satellites, equipment for orbiting labs, manufacturing materials, cargo for delivery halfway around the world in a few hours--even tourists bound for space hotels.

And civic leaders here see the Antelope Valley as the hub of this emergent industry.

They picture the reusable launch vehicles, or RLVs, being manufactured at Plant 42 in Palmdale, a government facility where the B-2 stealth bomber is assembled and top-secret military planes are designed. The vehicles could be tested at the Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base and launched from a “spaceport” at Edwards.

As launches become more frequent, it’s believed, the spinoff benefit to businesses throughout Southern California would blossom with the need for technology, services and components. Billions of dollars would be pumped into the economy, and tens of thousands of jobs would spring forth.

Just as railroads spurred industrialization in the 19th century, the RLV program of the 21st century “will create cities and industries and opportunities and jobs,” said David Urie, a Lockheed Martin consultant.

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It all starts with the X-33, the prototype for what is hoped will be an eventual production RLV. The program is seen as the nation’s best hope to regain its dominant position in the launch market that it has largely surrendered to foreign competitors in recent years.

Current estimates to develop a workable RLV run from $5 billion to $12 billion. Three aerospace concerns--Lockheed Martin, Rockwell International and McDonnell Douglas--are vying for the X-33 contract. In late June, NASA will choose one of them to produce the experimental, single-stage-to-orbit spacecraft. The prototype will be tested in 1999, and if all systems are go, RLV production would begin in 2000. The rocket would replace the space shuttle by 2012.

“It’s not pie-in-the-sky stuff,” says NASA spokesman Jim Cast. “Sooner or later, we’re going to have to focus on getting into space affordably.”

So Antelope Valley is hoping to persuade the winning contractor to make and test the X-33 here. The number of jobs generated by the prototype would probably be a few thousand at most. But it would make the region a front-runner in the contest to be the manufacturing and launch site for a full-scale RLV.

“I think our chances are excellent,” said Palmdale Mayor James Ledford. “We have the facilities. We have the ability to flight-test. More important, we have the work force.”

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But it’s a long way from the drawing boards for an experimental spacecraft to the launch pad of a space-based industry. The challenges are of the “giant leap for mankind” variety, and any of the inevitable obstacles along the way could doom the program.

The technical hurdles alone could be enough to kill the RLV before it gets off the ground. Though the needed technologies already exist for the most part, the X-33 would employ them in ways that would stretch the boundaries of scientific knowledge.

“This is a pretty big leap technically,” says Jerry Rising, Lockheed Martin’s RLV program manager. “I would say a large segment of the technical community is pretty skeptical about our ability to accomplish this.”

The RLV would use the space shuttle’s flight-control and air-dynamics technology. The design from McDonnell Douglas and its partner, Boeing Co., calls for a vertical-takeoff, vertical-landing machine. The Lockheed Martin and Rockwell X-33s would launch vertically and land horizontally like an airplane, as the space shuttle does.

But similarities to the space shuttle largely end there.

The space shuttle discards its fuel tank and solid rocket boosters during launch. And the expendable launch vehicles, or ELVs, currently used to put satellites into orbit are used only once.

But with the RLV, everything that goes into orbit would come back down again, which has never been done before. The rocket could operate with a three-person crew, or it could be pilotless. After returning from a mission, the RLV would be serviced by a small ground-support crew and sent back into space with a new payload in less than a week.

NASA wants the program to be patterned after the airline industry. By reusing the same vehicle again and again and keeping maintenance relatively simple, as commercial airliners do, proponents say the cost of launching payloads could be slashed to $1,000 per pound, about 10% of the current cost.

Among the immediate challenges will be creating a spacecraft that is lightweight yet durable enough to survive multiple launches and re-entries. Cryogenic tanks must be developed that could withstand the immense heat of reentering Earth’s atmosphere.

“No one has built a 32-foot-diameter, cryogenic liquid-hydrogen tank made out of composites. Not even close,” says Charles A. Scottoline, director of Rockwell’s RLV program. “The basic material exists, but in this application it’s a major, major technical challenge.”

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And that’s the easy part. As difficult as the technical problems are, people involved with the X-33 say they pale beside the political and economic issues. This is partly because of the unusual public-private partnership that is a hallmark of the program.

In most NASA programs, the agency sets design requirements, picks a contractor, then doles out the money.

But in this case, the government has given the contractors a free hand in the design and has committed only about $1 billion of the estimated $5 billion to $12 billion it will cost to develop a workable RLV. The contractors, and their investors, will shoulder most of the financial burden.

NASA says it would be the biggest RLV customer initially, using the vehicle to shuttle people and equipment to and from a planned space station. But it has not committed to a specific number of launches. Without a government-guaranteed market, the contractors argue, it will be difficult to convince the financial community to back an RLV venture.

This issue has led to friction between the contractors and NASA. The companies complain that they need more money from the agency upfront and a promise that the agency will use the RLV regularly. NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin recently lashed back at the contractors’ perceived timidity in striving to reduce launch costs, saying they “lack the courage to step up to the plate and make it happen.”

Many observers believe the vastly reduced launch costs envisioned in the X-33 program--considered the key to stimulating new markets for space launches--aren’t realistic anytime soon.

“I think it will take longer and the job will be a whole lot tougher than anybody thinks today,” says Ray Williamson, senior research scientist at George Washington University’s Space Policy Institute.

But therein lies the Catch-22: The huge expense of developing and producing an RLV must be amortized over a number of launches--the more launches, the lower the cost of each. But if the launch costs aren’t low enough in the beginning, it could be difficult to win customers, particularly since the cost of expendable launch vehicles has been dropping.

Insurance is another thorny issue. Commercial launch insurance premiums are now about 18% to 20% of the estimated replacement value. It’s not clear who would shoulder the cost of coverage for an RLV, and an insurer would probably require far greater reliability and safety than existing launchers require.

Critics also point to the lofty expectations of past programs that became boondoggles, such as the National Aero Space Plane, a $12-billion effort to build a supersonic plane capable of flying into orbit. They note that the space shuttle hasn’t fulfilled the vaunted claims of two decades ago. And last month, Rockwell cited unspecified “business reasons” in withdrawing from another experimental program, the X-34, which was supposed to produce a small, mostly reusable robotic launcher.

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Despite the hurdles, Antelope Valley officials see new hope at a time when optimism has been in short supply.

Throughout its history, this valley has lived and died by swings in aerospace. In the 1980s, Palmdale and Lancaster were boom towns. Buyers camped overnight to buy new houses. The populations of both cities surged to about 100,000.

But in 1992, the aerospace downturn hit with a vengeance. Thousands of jobs were lost. The housing market plunged into a depression, leading one national newspaper recently to dub Palmdale “the foreclosure capital of California.”

Though a recovery began about a year ago, the area recently received more bad news when President Clinton called for an end to the B-2 program.

Local officials, while acknowledging they’ve come late to the X-33 race, say they’re now as aggressive as New Mexico and Florida--Antelope Valley’s main rivals for the program. Palmdale and Lancaster have formed a joint marketing team, and area politicians are pushing the state to create an “aerospace district” that would offer tax breaks and other incentives to contractors.

In a rare show of unanimity, the entire California congressional delegation last fall signed a letter drafted by Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-Santa Clarita) urging the contractors to base their X-33 operations here.

Although none of the contractors have committed to an X-33 manufacturing site, Antelope Valley probably stands the best chance with Lockheed Martin. The company says it might design and assemble the vehicle at its Skunk Works facility in Palmdale.

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Edwards Air Force Base is on the short list for Lockheed Martin’s prospective launch site, along with Vandenberg Air Force Base, the Army’s White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico and the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Rockwell’s Downey-based space systems unit is overseeing its X-33 program, but there’s a good chance that it would also build the craft in Palmdale, where it now does modification work on the B-1 bomber and space shuttle. Even if it’s not the prime contractor, Rockwell is destined to get some X-33 jobs. Its Rocketdyne division in Canoga Park, which makes space shuttle engines, would produce the propulsion system for the eventual X-33 contractor.

The McDonnell Douglas-Boeing team is a long shot for Antelope Valley, however. It’s more likely they would pick McDonnell Douglas’ space systems facilities in Huntington Beach and Pueblo, Colo., where Delta rockets are assembled. White Sands, N.M., where the Deltas are tested, is a possible X-33 launch site.

Many observers caution, though, that even under the best of circumstances, RLV production will start slowly. “You’re not going to build them by the hundreds, not even by the dozen,” said Wolfgang Demisch, an aerospace analyst at BT Securities in New York.

But even if just a few RLVs are produced initially, “that’s a pretty interesting business,” he said.

“There is a pot of gold there. Whether it’s at the end of [the Antelope Valley’s] particular rainbow, I don’t know.”