[Satellite News 09-08-09] Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) successfully sold its Falcon 1 launch vehicle services twice this week. On Sept. 3, it won a four-year long-term commitment with Orbcomm to launch its new satellite constellation from 2010 to 2014, and on Sept. 8, won a contract with Astrium to launch its SSTL-designed Earth observation satellite, the Hawthorne, Calif.-based company announced.
    While the contracts provide an image boost to SpaceX’s light class launch vehicle as a commercial option, the company has yet to announce a commercial partner for its heavy launcher, Falcon-9 – a goal that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk established for his company in a speech at Satellite 2009 in March. “We do feel that the commercial launch market is important. We are in negotiations with some significant players on the commercial side. I expect us to sign some Falcon 9 commercial contracts this year,” said Musk.
    The Falcon 9 rocket, which is currently in testing phase, is far from unemployed with a lengthy list of government and civil space customers including NASA, as part of the $1.9 billion COTS program, and Argentina’s National Commission on Space Activity, to send the Saocom 1A and 1B Earth observation satellites into sun-synchronous orbits in 2010. But, the commercial sector has held out.
     SpaceX has had teething problems with its Falcon 1 vehicle, which suffered three launch failures until its first successful flight in September 2008 and its second this past July by orbiting RazakSat. However, Musk is confident that the company can have a huge impact in the space arena. He said, “I started SpaceX because I believed some good could be done in terms of space transportation. We are going to stagnate in space if we don’t bring these costs down. It is incredibly important to make space transportation much, much cheaper. We started off with a small vehicle, Falcon 1. We have scaled up with Falcon 9, which is called that because it has nine engines.”
    The company, in efforts to provide openness to its development phase, has well-publicized every step of Falcon 9’s testing with live video segments featured on their Web site and a much more public Musk.
    SpaceX also finds itself in a much more opportunistic position than it did in March, with the fall of one of its only U.S. commercial launch competitors, Sea Launch and its aggressive hiring campaign of launch industry veterans, including former United Launch Alliance Vice President Marv Vander Weg to lead its EELV customer office and former Sea Launch president Rob Peckham as its new vice president of business development.
    In December, the company appointed Gwynne Shotwell as its president to take on executive management responsibilities and clear the plate for Musk to focus on the development of its Falcon and Dragon products. Shotwell, who worked at Aerospace Corp. for 10 years before joining SpaceX in 2002, has been aggressively pushing a message of reliability – the magic word for SpaceX, in interviews and press statements.
    Despite its stronger position, SpaceX is still working to meet the ambitious 12-month course set by Musk’s speech at Satellite 2009. “In the short term, we want to continue to launch Falcon 1. We want to do two to three Falcon 9 flights this year, and then another four to five next year,” said Musk.
    For SpaceX, whose mantra is to provide low-cost launch services, ambitious goals may be necessary to stake a commercial claim in a business that has long been dominated by Arianespace and International Launch Services – both with established histories and extensive backlogs. The company is not even alone in its discount launch service business model as the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced in August that it received $213 million in government funding to develop H2-A, a small launch vehicle in 2010 to reduce satellite launch costs by two-thirds.
    While JAXA’s H2-A will be cheap at $32 million per launch, SpaceX’s small launch vehicle is still cheaper at $8 to $10 million. The H2-A will not, however, compete with the heavy-class Falcon 9 and is more interested in competition in Asia’s launch vehicle market, as China is also looking to provide cheaper launch services through its Long-March vehicle.
    For Musk, Falcon 9 commercial success is important. But, it is equally as important to successfully launch its Falcon 9 launch vehicle and Musk is extremely confident. “I started SpaceX because I believed some good could be done in terms of space transportation. We are going to stagnate in space if we don’t bring these costs down,” said Musk.