Space Access ’11: Jeff Greason

XCOR CEO Jeff Greason

Jeff Greason
XCOR Aerospace

Observations on Status of Commercial Space

• We have not won yet
• What does winning mean? When we have a space transport industry that gets people and materials into space inexpensively enough so we can do something useful up there
• $100 to $500 per pound to LEO
• No suborbital passengers have flown yet
• Big question — is there a large enough market to support commercial orbital transportation — I don’t know — thinks that it will…

• Need intelligent government action “which is not a surplus commodity right now.”
• Discretionary government spending will decline gradually or suddenly…
• Our problems are not over
• SpaceX can be very proud of their accomplishments, but they have not changed the fundamentals of the launch market
• Military will do what it’s going to do — probably won’t serve as anchor tenant to make market work
• Reality that NASA cannot have manned space program in traditional model will become evident over the next several years
• NASA needs to buy a lot of bulk commodities from private space companies
• Won’t need NASA if you get prices to LEO low enough….in the meantime, need close collaboration
• “We are close, we are closer than we have ever been.”
• “For if we do not all together, we shall surely hang separately.”
• Don’t paint NASA with a broad brush. Get tired of NASA is evil. Space agency is not monolithic.