Achieving the holy grail of low-cost launch.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew
• Position: Technology Tomorrow

If there were one dollar for every time a government official at an industry conference said: "We have to reduce the cost of space launch," then there would be enough money to--well--send a small bag of flour to the international space station--or maybe a jar of Tang.

Lofting objects into orbit is wildly expensive. Estimates are anywhere from $5,000 to $15,000 per pound depending how far up the payload is going. Government officials once stated that lowering that figure to under $1,000 per pound would be ideal.

That was back in the beginning of the 2000s, when a newly made millionaire named Elon Musk had just sold his stake in PayPal. Only 31 years old, he could have taken his big pot of money and lived comfortably off it for the rest of his life on a private beach. Instead, he jumped into the highly risky business of building rockets.

Musk is a dreamer. And he dreamed of a day when mankind would colonize Mars. To make it there, the cost of space launch had to be reduced.

He founded SpaceX, and quickly began producing rockets that were indeed less expensive than the big competitors. He did so by building almost all the subcomponents in his Hawthorne, California, factory and cutting out the subcontractors.

That was more of a unique business plan than a technological breakthrough. What was needed were reusable rockets, he believed.

That was the original vision for the space shuttle: a space plane that would take off and land, then be ready to be used again after a short amount of time. The boosters that lofted the shuttle during its first two minutes parachuted into the ocean where they were recovered by NASA ships, then refurbished. The original vision for the program never came to pass. It took months to ready them for a follow-on mission and the cost of launching them skyrocketed.

The space launch business has undergone major disruption since the end of the shuttle program.

SpaceX and its rival Blue Origin, owned by Amazon.com billionaire Jeff Bezos, emerged from the private sector to develop their own engines. The space tourism industry spearheaded by Virgin Galactic is developing spacecraft as well. Composite materials and additive manufacturing promise to help reduce rocket manufacturing costs further.

Rather than operate another fleet of space planes, NASA has decided to turn this task over to the private sector, which is competing for launch services to the international space station with multi-stage rockets.

Meanwhile, the Air Force...