DEDUCED RECKONING: Elon Musk is the real deal in race to space – Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Joan Lappin| Sarasota Herald-Tribune

This week, Amazon founderJeff Bezos took a 9-minute joyride into space on a vertically launched Blue Origin rocket named New Shepard that took off from and landed in a field in Texas. This followed Sir Richard Bransons space trip last week on a Virgin Galactic flight that reached an altitude of 52 miles above the earth, just on the edge of space. Both flights carried just four passengers in a precursor to commercial suborbital flight. The Blue Origin flight reached a momentary altitude of 59 miles above the earth, just sufficient to qualify its crew as astronauts.

The broadcast of the New Shepard launch was a bit anticlimactic. Driving to the launch pad took as long as the flight. Several minutes were spent climbing the gantry to reach the boarding level. Wally Funk, now 82, was the only female crew member. She is a former NASA astronaut who never got to fly in the Apollo program simply because she was a woman. She couldnt stop smiling over her luck that Bezos had chosen her to be there at all. Then there was a 15-minute countdown plus an unexplained hold for 7.5 minutes until the rocket finally ignited and away they went.

No sooner than the altimeter reported apogee, New Shepard began to display its descent. Before you could drink your coffee, the spaceship was on its way back down to earth and had landed. It was happily uneventful. What was unique was that it was a flight without a pilot on board, flown on a rocket that had been reused 15 times. Reusing rockets is a must for economical space travel.

As I wrote last week, Soviet astronaut Yuri Gagarin was the first human to actually reach space in the Soviet spacecraft Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961. Gagarins low earth orbit (LEO) mission lasted 1 hour, 48 minutes and reached 91 nautical miles as he orbited the Earth. He repeatedly asked for landing instructions and got no reply because Soviet communications systems were too primitive to hear him. On reentry, as his module descended to 26,000 feet, Gagarin was ejected. He (not his capsule) parachuted into a field near a farmer and her granddaughter.

As he told it: The citizens were frightened to see me in my spacesuit and the parachute dragging alongside … I told them dont be afraid. I am a Soviet citizen like you, who has descended from space, and I must find a telephone to call Moscow. It was Yuri, not ET, who needed to phone home.

Alan Shepards 1961 space flight followed that of Gagarin by less than a month. Shepards upward trajectory in his Mercury capsule named Freedom 7 lasted 5 minutes: 11 seconds to a maximum height of 116 miles before his descent began. Just like the New Shepard, a drogue deployed at 22,000 feet followed by a main parachute at 10,000 feet for landing. Freedom 7 touched down in the Atlantic Ocean just 4 miles from the principal recovery ship, and in contact with the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Lake Champlain. Christopher C. Kraft, the well-known Flight Director at Cape Canaveral, had designed a control center to enable constant communication to monitor every aspect of those NASA flights. Thats why within 20 minutes of his landing, Shepard was retrieved from the Atlantic Ocean.

Thus far, neither Branson nor Bezos has truly shown they can transport people to the moon or beyond. Only Elon Musks Space X has already ferried men and supplies to the International Space Station and has received billions in contracts from NASA making it appear to be the real deal in this race to space.

Joan Lappin CFA has been called an investment guru by Business Week and a top manager by the Wall Street Journal. The Sarasota resident founded Gramercy Capital Management, a registered investment adviser, in 1986. Email her atJLappincfa@gmail.com. Follow her on twitter: @joanlappin. Her past columns appear atheraldtribune.com/business/columns.

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DEDUCED RECKONING: Elon Musk is the real deal in race to space - Sarasota Herald-Tribune