On May 3rd, I attended a fascinating “Emerging Commercial Suborbital Science Workshop” in Los Angeles.  The “Commercial Suborbital” refers to the “personal spaceflight” companies that will soon be transporting paying customers to the edge of space and are very interested in supporting those who also want to do research.  The broader the range of these space plane customers, including those traveling with science “cargo”, the greater the number of flights, and the lower the cost per flight.  The more experience that can be gained by commercial entities from suborbital flights, the sooner they can consider developing capabilities for orbital flights and beyond.  For those who want to understand the path that has led us to suborbital space, I recommend Clark Lindsey’s history on HobbySpace.com, his extraordinarily comprehensive site.

It’s important to recognize that other NewSpace companies, like SpaceX are heading directly for the commercial orbital launch market, and are also interested in flying automated payloads, especially bioscience, to gain similar experience.  The SpaceX Dragon capsule will have pressurized environmental life support, and will fly as “DragonLab” with no crew, but with science payloads. Subsequently, a fully human-rated version will be developed to meet NASA standards.  Flying biological payloads will help demonstrate systems readiness for the human-rated capsule and open the door to obtaining the full funding and investment capital to do so. NASA announced recently that it intends to contribute funds toward development of commercial human spaceflight capabilities – a truly major milestone.   

This workshop was the second such event I’ve attended and I came away with a clearer appreciation of the potential science value of having relatively easy access to 3-4 minutes of microgravity (micro-g).  Suborbital space planes could provide this access frequently, reliably, at much lower cost than orbital flight providers, and fly research payloads that are in the exploratory phase, with a “human-in-the-loop” option.  

Workshop attendees represented NASA Headquarters and several field centers (Ames Research Center, Johnson Space Center, Kennedy Space Center) including the ARC Commercial Suborbital Research Program , The Personal Spaceflight Federation , various space plane companies, and the Universities Space Research Association .  The workshop was held just prior to the 80th Annual Scientific Meeting of the Aerospace Medical Association at the same facility, and focused on research of interest to the biological/biomedical/aeromedical community.  Researchers and space experts from various universities, laboratories, government organizations, and the consultant community participated.  A workshop report is planned.   

What really makes suborbital spaceflight a potential game-changer for space research and why the micro-g focus?  Micro-g research in life sciences and physical sciences has been a key element of NASA’s R&D efforts since the Agency’s inception, because only during orbital spaceflight (or an approximation) can the effective influence of gravity be removed.  The International Space Station (ISS) was developed in large part to accommodate this kind of research over long-durations but unfortunately the costs to get there, transport experiment payload resources, and fully utilize the ISS National Laboratory, remain high.  

NASA has several ongoing programs in suborbital science that provide microgravity including a Sounding Rocket Program and an Airborne Science Program .  Sounding rockets can provide up to 20 minutes of micro-g and the parabolic flight element of the Airborne Science Program provides repeated 20-30 sec periods.  A key research value of commercial suborbital space plane flights is that the few minutes of micro-g is sufficiently long to actually see significant changes during appropriately selected and designed experiments.  Also key to their value is that they can provide the frequent, reliable, low-cost access to space for passengers, some of whom can be dedicated to conduct and/or participate as subjects in flight research.  

If the relatively brief micro-g duration with suborbital flight is considered by some as a “con” there are several “pros” that can help to compensate.  Many micro-g studies, especially bioscience, ideally require loading of the experiment within a few hours of launch, inflight handling and sampling, eventual exposure to micro-g of no more than a few days duration, access to the experiment payload shortly after landing, and the ability to make experiment adjustments based on the initial results, followed soon after by a reflight.  This set of requirements has been difficult to meet using large, complex launchers that need to be fueled and “closed-out” many hours pre-launch, often have multiple launch aborts on the pad, may have little-to-no crew time available inflight, and may provide no access to payloads postflight for several hours.  Thus the comparative flexibility of human-tended suborbital flight operations for prototype experiments that are still evolving, could be invaluable.  This process can also ultimately produce more robust, streamlined and proven payloads that can be utilized in a more constrained environment like the ISS or fully automated on a DragonLab type platform.  

Planning appears to be underway by some space plane companies (one being Masten Space Systems) to accommodate remote interaction with science payloads either from an onboard seat or from the ground during repeated experiment cycles.  This flexibility can provide options for innovative R&D that can be conducted by researchers ranging from students and teachers to entrepreneurs and Nobel Prize winners.  Commercially-provided suborbital micro-g R&D can be part of a renewed NASA commitment to advancing safe, innovative, affordable and sustainable micro-g research that also provides hands-on education and training for a new generation of students and space researchers.       

The roughly ten-fold increase in micro-g duration provided by suborbital flights, compared to parabolic flights, makes a big difference to experiment accommodation.  The ability to have the researcher accompany the payload, not possible on sounding rockets, can greatly reduce payload development costs and increase the data return – a major increased return on investment.  This new brand of suborbital research can be a badly-needed bridge between the prototype bench-top experiment and the very costly, complex long-duration, flight-qualified payload.  It opens the door to higher-risk, lower-cost, more innovative research to ensure that future more costly experiments have the best chance of success when they are conducted on-orbit or on another planet.      

Why do the “NewSpace” companies now developing space planes for personal spaceflight, want to provide this related service for researchers and engineers to conduct experiments?  Having automated payloads that don’t require human intervention can provide them funding to support their initial flights to prove space plane reliability.  Science payloads that accompany passengers can help fill available space, increase income per flight, and drive the need for future flights for follow-on studies.  In answer to my query, research payload flight costs were projected to be about $2000/kg.     

Several researchers from NASA, academia and industry presented and brainstormed on research concepts, technology verification studies, and inflight process assessments that could be performed under these conditions.  New opportunities were discussed on how to use the access to suborbital micro-g as a way to a) test experiment hypotheses, b) verify procedures, c) assess new technologies, d) educate and provide hands-on training of experimenters, astronauts and students, and e) develop new research payloads without many of the limitations and major costs that exist for longer-duration missions.  

What generally needs to be done to develop these suborbital research capabilities and make progress towards their implementation?  This was addressed at the workshop by informal sub-groups and results will be in the workshop report.  One task was to list opportunities and capabilities offered by suborbital research, both with and without people onboard.  Another task was to list barriers to be overcome, challenges to be met, and propose strategies for effectively pursuing new suborbital research opportunities.  The interest by space plane companies in interacting directly with research payload developers will likely range from none to considerable.  This should be anticipated and could be provided for by third-party entities, or NewSpace companies who want to support development of common standards, interfaces and procedures as part of their business.  Funding for researchers would appropriately come from several government agencies, in addition to NÅSA, and could include international space research agencies.  Commercially-driven research will likely be funded by company investors, or by the company itself.  

It would be logical to review other suborbital research flight organizations to capture their lessons learned.  Candidates might include; NASA JSC’s parabolic flight project,  Zero G Corporation, ARC’s Airborne Science Platforms, and staff of the former ARC Space Life Sciences Payloads Office.  They could all provide guidelines, procedures and suggestions for simplifying the process of payload development, aircraft integration, inflight operations and procedures and postflight data sharing and analysis.   The innovative, international CubeSat Project is a potential source for valuable common hardware, software and data solutions as well as potential low-cost payload developers and customers for testing flight prototypes.  

These new options for lower-cost, automated or human-tended, reliable and flexible space research are arriving just in time for the minimally-funded micro-g research community.  The commercial space community will be both a major provider of these new research opportunities and a beneficiary from this significantly increased access to space.