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Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: Private space
Message-ID: <17480@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 12-Mar-84 20:35:33 EST
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.17480
Posted: Mon Mar 12 20:35:33 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 14-Mar-84 09:37:23 EST
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a211  1034  11 Mar 84
AM-Space-Business, Bjt,660
Government Launching Private Companies Into Space Business
Laserphoto WX3
By GENE GRABOWSKI
Associated Press Writer
    WASHINGTON (AP) - If you want to launch a weather satellite into
orbit or grow herpes vaccine in space you don't have to rely on the
federal government anymore.
    In fact, the government is helping companies get started in the
business of ferrying scientific experiments and communication relay
stations into space in competition with its own space shuttle program.
    By the end of the decade, scientific research firms, oil companies
and weather forecasters are expected to be hiring those companies,
instead of Uncle Sam's shuttle, to launch many of their payloads
skyward.
    President Reagan took the first step toward that goal on Feb. 24
when he created the Office of Commercial Space Transportation, the
only government agency with which a new space transport company must
deal.
    ''Without this office, a company would have to get clearance from as
many as 17 government agencies, like the Coast Guard, the Federal
Aviation Administration, and even the State Department before a
private sector launch,'' says Jennifer Dorn, the 33-year-old director
of the new 15-person office.
    ''That kind of red tape can be overwhelming to a private company and
it can send very bad signals to the investment community, which is
interested in these kinds of ventures,'' she said in a recent
interview.
    Specifically, Ms. Dorn's job is to help new companies take over
building and selling the kind of non-reusable rockets the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration once used in its Mercury, Gemini,
and Apollo space programs. That way, NASA can focus its resources on
developing the reusable shuttle for space exploration.
    But the first companies starting from scratch in the space business
in 1982 and 1983 were forced to hack through a thick jungle of
government red tape. Their calls for help resulted in the creation of
the space office, which is part of the Department of Transportation.
    ''We went to six different agencies and had to wait about six months
just to get preliminary approval for our first project,'' recalled
Charles Cheffer, vice president of Space Services Inc., a Houston
company that plans to launch sensory satellites for oil companies and
agricultural combines by next year.
    ''The government still has red tape because it must protect national
security, but the new space office streamlines the whole operation
and saves us time and aggravation,'' Cheffer said.
    One of the most potentially lucrative markets in space is the
manufacture of drugs that are expensive to make on Earth, but easy and
cheap to manufacture in zero gravity. Industry projections show that
space-made pharmaceutical products could generate annual sales of $20
billion by the 1990s.
    Two of the first drugs that will be produced in zero gravity in mass
quantities are beta cells, expected to be a single-injection cure for
diabetes; and interferon, used for treating viral infections, cancer
and sexually transmitted Type II herpes.
    Most space production of drugs will take place aboard space shuttle
flights, but new firms expect to be launching small orbital labs of
their own at a lower cost to drug companies.
    One of those companies is Starstruck Inc., of Redwood City, Calif.,
which has already advertised its ''Mack truck'' launching service as
an alternative to the space shuttle's ''Porsche'' quality
transportation.
    ''Our Dolphin rocket is still in the testing stages, but it's
designed to carry research payloads more than 100 miles up, where
medicines can be produced in micro-gravity,'' Starstruck Vice
President James Bennett said in a telephone interview.
    ''We're projecting there's going to be a healthy profit for somebody
who can produce reliable service,'' he said.
    Space Services' Cheffer even forsees cooperative ventures where
private companies rocket drug labs into orbit and the space shuttle -
on scheduled flights - retrieves batches of medicine from the labs,
leaving behind ingredients for more drugs.
    ''The possibilities in space transportation are limitless, we just
don't know what's out there yet,'' said Ms. Dorn. ''The potential
markets and the kinds of problems this industry is facing now are
similar to those the railroad industry faced when it was just
beginning.''
    
ap-ny-03-11 1333EST
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