Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!floyd!harpo!seismo!hao!hplabs!sri-unix!Hans.Moravec@cmu-ri-rover From: Hans.Moravec%cmu-ri-rover@sri-unix.UUCP 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 Lines: 80 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 ***************