Blue Origin

The secretive private space program of Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos divulged perhaps the most details of its progress to date. Blue Origin president Rob Meyerson boasted that his was the only company of the four to conduct a flight demonstration for NASA's Commercial Crew Development program (CCDev). While that is technically true, it ignores SpaceX's recent flights to the International Space Station with a cargo version of its planned crew vehicle.

Nevertheless, Meyerson outlined the 2012 milestones in Blue Origin's attempt to build suborbital vertical-takeoff/vertical-landing rockets with the goal of scaling up to orbital flight and eventually reaching the International Space Station.

In a flight test at Blue Origin's West Texas launch facility in 2012, the company tried out the launch-abort system. A full-scale model of the company's planned crew capsule blasted off, deployed parachutes, and drifted to a gentle touchdown within 7 feet of its planned target, Meyerson said. He compared the launch-abort system to the airbags in a car, saying that the reusable capsule would be able to fly multiple times with no maintenance to the safety system, as long as no mishap required them to be used.

Perhaps more impressive was Blue Origin's test of a new hydrogen/liquid-oxygen-powered rocket engine with 100,000 pounds of thrust. Blue Origin designed the engine, called the BE-3, for the company's planned orbital rocket and tested it at NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi in October. The engine, along with a Blue Origin–designed rocket and so-called biconic capsule, which uses its shape to provide some lift on reentry, is designed to be fully reusable.

It's clear that Blue Origin is serious about reaching orbit, using its own money if necessary. Meyerson said that the NASA seed money the company received has sped its development process, but he also made it clear that Blue Origin would continue no matter what, with the help of Bezos's private fortune.

Boeing

The aerospace giant is busy building a capsule called the CST-100. Boeing's John Mulholland, Commercial Programs Space Exploration vice president and program manager, said Wednesday that the company has completed a series of parachute drop tests of a full-scale space capsule mockup, with a landing system that consists of parachutes and airbags. The team building the capsule also tested potential control and display layouts over the course of three days with NASA astronauts, conducted simulated micrometeoroid-impact tests, and tested automated rendezvous and docking software.

However, while Boeing seems to have the financial and technical wherewithal to accomplish the ISS mission, at least one Boeing executive has stated that Boeing's commitment to building the ship is limited. For Boeing execs to justify completing the ship, they will have to see NASA commit not only to funding CST-100's development, but also to actually using it to reach the space station.

Sierra Nevada Corporation

Sierra Nevada Corporation's Dream Chaser spacecraft is the only one of the bunch with wings, which are incorporated into the vehicle in what's called a lifting-body configuration. The ship is designed to return to Earth on a runway, like the space shuttle did.

SNC's main achievement to date is construction of a full-size engineering test article. The mockup underwent unmanned drop tests from a helicopter near the company's headquarters in Colorado in 2013. Head of space systems Mark Sirangelo said Sierra Nevada also completed a docking simulator and conducted rocket-engine tests for the Dream Chaser's on-orbit maneuvering system. The company plans an autonomous landing test sometime in 2013.

SpaceX

SpaceX is the clear frontrunner in the race: It's the only contender that has reached the International Space Station. In two flights so far, the SpaceX Dragon has successfully docked with the station and delivered cargo.

SpaceX's Garrett Reisman said that his company spent the NASA seed money it has received thus far to determine what the engineers must do to let the Dragon cargo capsule carry humans, which has been SpaceX's goal from the outset.

Although the Dragon has carried only cargo to the ISS so far, the capsule already has windows. And like Boeing, SpaceX has been working on cabin layouts with the help of NASA astronauts (Reisman himself is a former astronaut). The main order of business, then, is an escape system for the crew in case something were to go wrong during a launch. The company tested a new engine, called the Super Draco, for that purpose in 2012. The crew-rated Dragon will use eight Super Dracos with 17,000 pounds of thrust each to escape from a launch gone awry.

In 2013, SpaceX plans to launch a Dragon from the Kennedy Space Center to test the launch-abort system, building up to an in-flight abort test in 2014 in which the capsule will blast away from a rocket that is already in the air.

Reisman said SpaceX was on track to send its first crew to the International Space Station by the end of 2015.

Michael Belfiore is the author of Rocketeers: How a Visionary Band of Business Leaders, Engineers, and Pilots Is Boldly Privatizing Space.

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