Posts tagged activities

Space Launch Vehicles: Government Activities, Commercial Competition, and Satellite Exports

Congressional Research Service Report for Congress

Launching satellites into orbit, once the
exclusive domain of the U.S. and Soviet governments,
today is an industry in which companies
in the United States, Europe, China, Russia,
Ukraine, Japan, and India compete. In the
United States, the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration (NASA) continues to be
responsible for launches of its space shuttle,
and the Air Force has responsibility for
launches associated with U.S. military and
intelligence satellites, but all other launches are
conducted by private sector companies. Since
the early 1980s, Congress and successive
Administrations have taken actions, including
passage of several laws, to facilitate the U.S.
commercial space launch services business.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)
regulates the industry.
During the mid-1990s, demand for
launching commercial communications satellites
was forecast to grow significantly through
the early 21st Century. Those forecasts sparked
plans to develop new launch vehicles here and
abroad. In the United States, NASA and the
Department of Defense (DOD) created
government-industry partnerships to develop
new reusable launch vehicles (RLVs) and
“evolved” expendable launch vehicles
(EELVs), respectively. The U.S. space shuttle
is the only operational RLV today. All other
operational launch vehicles are expendable
(i.e., they can only be used once). Some U.S.
private sector companies began developing
their own launch vehicles without direct government
financial involvement, although some
have sought government loan guarantees or tax
incentives. P.L. 107-248 (H.R. 5010), the
FY2003 DOD appropriations act, creates loan
guarantees for companies building in-orbit
commercial reusable space transportation
systems, but they are not launch vehicles.
Since 1999, projections for launch services
demand have declined dramatically, and
NASA’s efforts to develop a new RLV to
replace the shuttle have faltered. Most recently,
NASA announced plans to refocus its
latest RLV development program, the Space
Launch Initiative, towards building an Orbital
Space Plane to take crews to and from the
space station. It will be launched on an EELV
rather than a new RLV. NASA also said it no
longer had a near-term goal of lowering the
cost of launching spacecraft, and will continue
to rely on the shuttle until at least 2015, instead
of 2012. DOD’s new EELVs (Atlas 5
and Delta 4) were successfully launched in
2002, but the companies that built the vehicles
reportedly are seeking additional funding from
DOD to defray their costs in the wake of
diminished commercial demand.

Congressional Research Service

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