Industry, space agencies seek ways to lower launch costs.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew
• Position: Space

Escaping Earths gravity does not come cheap.

In an age of austere federal budgets, the Air Force and National Reconnaissance Office are looking to reduce the spiraling cost of placing their heaviest satellites into space. And rocket manufacturers--faced by overcapacity--are making adjustments to the way they do business.

While the approximately $140 million to $180 million per launch the two national security space agencies pay to loft space-craft is costly, the price of losing a $500 million to $1 billion satellite can add up to more than the money spent. The shards of the destroyed spacecraft that took years to build fall uselessly into the sea--and more importantly--military personnel are deprived of their critical, sometimes life-saving, capabilities for years to come.

Gen. William Shelton, Air Force Space Command commander, made it clear that the Air Force won't be making any compromises when it comes to assuring that rockets don't blow up with critical payloads on hoard.

"There has been a lot of talk about mission assurance and maybe we're paying too much ... Maybe we can look at mission assurance and dial it back," he told reporters on the sidelines of the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colo.

"The difficulty here is how much is enough? How much of a cut is too much?"

After a string of launch failures in the 1980s and 1990s, the Air Force conducted a broad area review of the launch enterprise and concluded that it had to get hack to the basics of quality control, Shelton said.

"Nov there are people that are saying, 'Well, you probably need to dial that back a bit [in order to save funding].' Well, there will be tire treads over me if that comes to pass," he said.

The Air Force and NRO carried out the reforms, and began the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle Program to upgrade the heavy lift rockets. It is hard to argue with their success. Since its maiden voyage in 2002, the Atlas 5 has not lost a payload. The Delta 4 rockets have not had a blemish since the fourth launch was declared a "partial success" in December 2004. As of April, that makes 48 consecutive launches between the two rockets without losing a spacecraft.

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"We've got to have mission assurance in the launch business. Period," Shelton said.

Some of the cost pressures, critics say, stem from the fact that there is currently a monopoly in the U.S. launch service business. There are numerous companies throughout the world that can loft heavy satellites, but...