Ray F. Johnson, a Principal Director of the Aerospace Corporation, El Segundo, California, says his company's study of the capital needs of the Lockheed Martin vehicle indicates that it's commercial development costs would exceed all of the Wall Street financing that us expected to be available for investment in commercial space projects.

"It won't be possible for Lockheed Martin alone to make this work," Johnson told SpaceCast at an FAA space launch conference in Washington, DC last week. "The six or eight billion that would be needed is about all of the money [available through investors] that's out there," Johnson said. "They will need help from NASA, or this just won't fly. One billion (from the U.S.) isn't enough."

Under terms of the July, 1996 Memorandum of Agreement between NASA and Lockheed Martin, the U.S. civil space agency will fund flight development of a research test craft called the X-33 up to $900 million in taxpayer funds.

The X-33 is an exact scaled version of a full-sized reusable space vehicle design that would be capable of inserting payloads in low Earth orbit up to 50,000 pounds in weight, approximately the current lift capability of the medium class U.S. expendable rockets, as well as the fleet of NASA Space Shuttles.

Lockheed Martin is to conduct 15 suborbital test flights of the X-33 beginning next summer. During the test program and for a fixed period thereafter, NASA has granted Lockheed Martin exclusive access to the test data, which would indicate whether or not such a vehicle could be made to work.

In December, 1999 at the close of the X-33 test program, the firm would then make a corporate decision as to whether or not to proceed with the development of a full-scale, orbital version of the test craft, which it has called VentureStar.

Should the aerospace firm decide to develop the VentureStar, a trade name which Lockheed Martin has registered, the firm has said it would raise the capital needed and develop and operate the space vehicle itself, much as Boeing develops commercial aircraft such as the 777 but then sells the planes to commercial airlines.

Lockheed Martin executives have been saying since winning the July 1996 NASA test contract that if the tests prove the design workable, it would operate a space transportation company itself. It would mark the first time a private corporation operated a reusable, single staged space vehicle on a for-profit basis.

While Lockheed officials have declined to discuss how the business plan for the VentureStar RLV is being designed, space industry sources have said that it would take raising funds in the range of $6 billion dollars or more for a minimal commercial fleet of vehicles. At the point Lockheed Martin would make the decision on commercial development, NASA and possibly other U.S. government customers would be expected to make certain contract guarantees to Lockheed on specific payloads that it would transfer from the Shuttles to the new, commercial vehicle.

If Johnson's analysis is correct, the U.S. government may have to either underwrite part of that $6 billion in development costs, or provide direct cash or other subsidies for the project to be commercially viable.

Such an action would come close to having NASA remain owner of or involved in the operation of a space transportation system, a process that NASA administrator Daniel S. Goldin has said repeatedly he wants the space agency to end with the replacement system to the Shuttles. VentureStar has been considered the prime candidate to replace the Shuttle, but only in terms of a space vehicle that NASA can utilize, not own and operate.

For their part, at least publicly, Lockheed Martin officials have remained positive about a commercial follow-on to the X-33. At the same FAA conference attended by Johnson, Lockheed Martin's President and CEO for its Space and Strategic Missiles Sector, Mel Brashears, expressed confidence in both the X-33 development program, and the research now underway on the VentureStar business plan. "We feel very confident about these programs," Brashears said.