Final frontier creating tantalizing market for area firms

Whether the mission is helping America return to pre-eminence in manned spaceflight, sending commercial trips to the moon or protecting the planet from a catastrophic collision with an asteroid, companies in the Boulder Valley are keeping the dream alive.

The Boulder-area is home to the offices of a number of important aerospace companies, including industry giants Lockheed Martin and Northrup Grumman. But the most interesting activity is taking place in companies focused on sending astronauts and satellites into space. Companies in the area especially are active in commercial spaceflight, a potentially fast-growing segment of the market now that NASA has stopped manned missions.

One of the marquee projects is the Dream Chaser, a spacecraft being developed by Sierra Nevada Corp. in Louisville.

The Dream Chaser’s purpose is to carry astronauts, cargo and equipment on missions into low-earth orbit and to the International Space Station. The Dream Chaser will be much like the now-retired space shuttles, as they will take off on a rocket, land like a plane and will be reusable.

The Dream Chaser will be smaller — for example, it will lack the shuttle’s giant cargo bay used for taking satellites into orbit — but it shares a kinship with NASA’s workhorse.

“We’re the emotional and symbolic successor to the space shuttle. We look like it, we fly like it. We’re a lot smaller, but the mission is different,” said Mark Sirangelo, corporate vice president and head of Sierra Nevada Corp. Space Systems.

The Dream Chaser and the space shuttle programs differ in another major way. While space shuttles were owned and operated by NASA, the Dream Chaser is a private program. NASA, civilian and military agencies and commercial customers would be SNC’s clients.

SNC, a privately held company based in Sparks, Nevada, will not disclose what it has invested in the Dream Chaser, but it is north of $100 million, Sirangelo said. The total price to get a fully operational vehicle in space will be hundreds of millions.

SNC has a partner in NASA, which has set up programs to encourage private aerospace companies to build new spacecraft and rockets as the agency reconfigures its mission. NASA has committed around $330 million to Dream Chaser, provided it can hit milestones established by the agency and company.

The Dream Chaser cleared one milestone in May, when a helicopter carried it over Boulder and Broomfield counties in a “captive carry” test to demonstrate the vehicle’s airworthiness. The test took it over the Boulder’s Scott Carpenter Park, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Boulderite’s spaceflight.

The Dream Chaser soon will be shipped to Edwards Air Force Base in California for further flight testing.

Patriotism helps drive the nearly 150 local employees working on Dream Chaser in Louisville. They believe the United States should be the leader of and reap the benefits from space exploration.

“Right now, the U.S. doesn’t have a way to take humans into space,” Sirangelo said. The United States instead books flights on Russian-built and operated rockets.

“It’s a very expensive proposition, and it puts money and jobs in Russia, not here.”

And here could mean right here, in Colorado.

“We could be the home, not only symbolically but actually, of America’s spaceflight program,” Sirangelo said.

Sierra Nevada Corp. isn’t alone in trying to get a foothold in the new space race. In fact, it is not even the most ambitions.

Moon trips

On Dec. 6, Boulder-based startup Golden Spike Co. announced it has plans to build a lunar lander and begin flying commercial missions to the moon by 2020.

The private project will be expensive. Golden Spike projected it will cost between $7 billion and $8 billion to get the first mission to the moon. Subsequent “turn-key human expeditions” will cost between $1.4 billion and $1.6 billion.

Golden Spike is led by president and chief executive Alan Stern, former chief of NASA’s space and earth science programs. The company has spent the past two years putting together a business model and assembling what Stern calls a “dream team” of NASA and aerospace veterans.

Golden Spike has not disclosed its financial backers or gone into depth publically about how it will cover startup costs, but Stern is adamant the technical and financial models are sound.

The company’s forecast believes there is sufficient demand for 20 to 30 lunar missions by 2030. Stern said 15 to 25 nations are interested in missions, and the company expects a $20 billion to $30 billion market for lunar expeditions.

“We’re excited about bringing human exploration of other worlds to the forefront, and we’re excited to be doing it in Colorado,” Stern said.

Tracking asteroids

Meanwhile, Boulder-based Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. is doing the humdrum work of developing satellites and sensors that could detect asteroids on a collision course with earth.

Ball is working with a nonprofit named the B612 Foundation to develop a satellite named the Sentinel that would give scientists an early warning about potential strikes, said Carl Gelderloos, director of new business operations for civil and operational space.

Ball will build the satellite and important sensors on the Sentinel. The satellite would be launched into a Venus-like orbit, where it would create a map of the inner solar system and be able to find objects about 10 meters across.

Those asteroids are “the smaller things that would be incredibly devastating, but not necessarily civilization ending. …The types that could collide with the earth and cause catastrophic damage,” Gelderloos said.

The goal is to launch the Sentinel in 2016, and B612 is trying to raise money. If it launches, the foundation says it will be the first ever privately funded deep space mission, and B612’s approach is a completely new way of getting into space.

“The idea of doing a philanthropic mission for the benefit of mankind is a really new idea,” Gelderloos said.

The Sentinel would be built in Boulder, and its operational center would be at the University of Colorado.

If the companies fulfill their ambitions, the Boulder area could reap financial rewards. Needless to say, it would gain the area a place in history.

At the very least, it could reawaken a passion for space exploration that has diminished.

“There’s magic here. We’re trying to rekindle the spark and get people interested again,” Sirangelo said.

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