O.C. Backing 2 Contenders in Next Space Race

A new space race is brewing, and two Orange County aerospace giants are hot at it.

The latest contest doesn’t involve sovereign nations, as did the Space Race of the 1960s and ‘70s, when the United States and Soviet Union regularly duked it out to be the first to deliver the most out where gravity is zero and the Earth is just another heavenly body.

This new race pits three giant corporate aerospace teams in a winner-takes-all bid to build the next generation of spacecraft: a reusable launch vehicle, or RLV, that will serve as successor to the space shuttle and a key to the future commercialization of space.

Proponents envision space launches as routine as airplane flights out of LAX or John Wayne Airport. 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.

In July, NASA is scheduled to award a contract for the prototype, called the X-33, to one of three competitors--Rockwell International Corp., McDonnell Douglas Corp. or Lockheed Martin.

Seal Beach-based Rockwell is showing off its RLV technology at its Space Systems Division facility in Downey at a symposium that ends today.

In ceremonies Friday at its Huntington-Beach-based Space and Defense Systems headquarters, McDonnell Douglas unveiled its entry, which has already undergone eight flight tests.

The third contestant, Lockheed Martin Corp.’s Skunk Works in Palmdale, plans soon to begin testing a scale model of its engine--built by Rockwell subsidiary Rocketdyne Corp.

If Lockheed gets the nod, the benefits of the prototype contract are likely to go to the high-desert community famous for being the home base of the hot-shot Air Force test pilots who helped launch the nation into space in the early 1960s.

But Orange County could be in the winner’s seat if Rockwell or McDonnell Douglas is selected.

Current estimates to develop a workable RLV run from $5 billion to $12 billion over the next five years. Although the prototype program won’t mean much in the way of new jobs for the prime contractor, the expected cost is sure to provide a needed boost to legions of aerospace subcontractors who will be asked to provide parts.

And the company that wins the prototype contract is likely to become the front-runner in the competition for the full-production contract, which could create hundreds of jobs and pump billions more into areas where the manufacturing and launch facilities are.

“We regard the X-33 as nothing less than a must-win program for McDonnell Douglas,” said Bill Olson, senior vice president of the company’s space and defense division.

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If McDonnell Douglas wins, the giant space contractor plans to use its Huntington Beach facility for engineering, project management and some of the construction.

If the contract goes to Rockwell, the county’s economy would benefit from the paychecks that scores of workers at the Space Systems plant in Downey would bring back to their hometowns in Orange County.

In both cases, dozens of county-based subcontractors would likely get pieces of the action as well.

A Lockheed victory would have little direct economic impact this far south of the high desert, although local aerospace subcontractors do work for the company on occasion.

Civic leaders in the Antelope Valley see Palmdale and Lancaster as the logical site for manufacturing the prototype.

They picture the reusable launch vehicles being manufactured at Palmdale’s Plant 42, a government facility where the last of the B-2 stealth bombers are being 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 there.

It’s believed that as launches become more frequent, the benefit to businesses throughout Southern California would grow 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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In Huntington Beach, city officials voiced support of McDonnell Douglas’ efforts to win the contract but have stopped short of the overt marketing efforts of the Palmdale-Lancaster boosters.

A launch site would be out of the question in Orange County, where talk of expanding regular commercial jet service can trigger outrage.

The high desert can pursue a launch site with Huntington Beach’s blessing, said Richard Barnard, assistant city administrator. But Huntington Beach, he said, “would love it if the manufacturing contract came here.”

The prototype will be tested in 1999, and RLV production could begin in 2000. The rocket could replace the space shuttle by 2012.

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

The number of jobs generated by the prototype would probably be a few thousand at most, industry sources say. But it would make whoever gets it--and whichever region of Southern California becomes the prototype manufacturing site--a front-runner in the contest to be the manufacturing and launch site for a full-scale RLV.

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.

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

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

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--something out of a Buck Rogers episode. The Lockheed Martin and Rockwell X-33s would launch vertically and land horizontally, as the space shuttle does.

Similarities to the space shuttle largely end there, however.

The 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 flight crew, or it could be pilotless. McDonnell Douglas’ model is flown from the ground by former astronaut Pete Conrad, who sits in a trailer stuffed with elaborate electronic gear and uses the mouse attachment on a personal computer to operate the craft with a point-and-click software program.

Among the immediate challenges will be creating a spacecraft that is lightweight yet durable enough to survive multiple launches and reentries. The fuel tanks will account for most of the vehicle’s bulk and cryogenic tanks must be developed that can hold liquid hydrogen at minus 423 degrees Fahrenheit and withstand the immense heat of reentering Earth’s atmosphere.

For its newly modified craft, McDonnell Douglas is using a Russian-built liquid oxygen tank made of an exotic aluminum-lithium alloy. The company also has made its own liquid hydrogen tank of a graphite composite. But the tanks that fit into the 43-foot-by-13 1/2-foot prototype are a far cry from what is needed for a full-sized, 120-foot X-33 ship.

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 committed only about $1 billion to develop a workable RLV. The contractors and their investors will shoulder most of the financial burden.

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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 persuade investors to back an RLV venture.

This issue has led to friction between the contractors and NASA. The companies say 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.”

Despite the hurdles, proponents of the X-33 program see hope at a time when optimism about the future of Southern California’s aerospace industry has been in short supply.

Since 1988, Southern California has lost more than 350,000 aerospace jobs, including 30,000 from Orange County contractors’ payrolls. Those job losses in turn affected the housing market and hastened the region’s plunge into a recession from which recovery has been painfully slow.

However, many observers caution 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” for whatever region lands the contract.