Jeff Bezos brings his rockets to Cape Canaveral

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — As Elon Musk and SpaceX work to resolve problems that caused a Falcon 9 rocket explosion in June, another tycoon’s company is getting ready to step into the limelight at Cape Canaveral.

Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, is like Musk in that he made billions of dollars from Internet companies and then started a rocket company.

Bezos is expected to be at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Sept. 15 to announce his Blue Origin company will launch its New Shepard rockets there. He possibly also will reveal plans for rocket processing, assembly or even manufacturing for the Space Coast.

The New Shepard, twice test-launched from Blue Origin’s private launch complex in west Texas, is designed as a reusable, suborbital vehicle that one day could carry tourist passengers.

If Blue Origin enters the Cape Canaveral arena, it would have three private rocket companies, including SpaceX and United Launch Alliance.

But Blue Origin may be years from launching. So for now, that leaves just ULA, which just launched an Atlas V on Wednesday to carry a Navy satellite into space. It has three more launches scheduled this year.

It’s unclear long it will be before SpaceX launches again, though company officials say it will be a matter of months. SpaceX once had plans for up to eight more launches this year, including the debut of its new rocket, the Falcon Heavy. But all are on indefinite hold.

SpaceX was fast becoming the busiest rocket company at the Cape until the June 28 explosion about 2 minutes after the Falcon 9 cleared the launch pad. Less than four weeks later, Musk announced the probable cause of the blast, blaming it on a strut that broke inside the booster.

At his July 20 news conference, he offered the possibility the company could resume launching again as early as September.

But during a business conference in California on Tuesday, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said the company now has pushed back launches for at least the next couple of months.

The proposed fix appears simple: Musk said his company would buy better struts from a different supplier and improve inspection routines.

“If that’s all it is, that shouldn’t be much,” said Dale Ketcham, chief of strategic alliances for Space Florida. “The nature of this business is complicated, but he has talented people who are very good.”

But others, starting with U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, who chairs the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, still wonder whether that’s all there is to the accident.

On Aug. 4, Smith sent a letter to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden expressing concern that NASA plans to use the Falcon 9 to send astronauts to the International Space Station. Smith urged NASA to run an independent investigation, with recommendations for the company it hired.

Bolden replied three weeks later that NASA is independently investigating, revealing a probe the agency had not previously announced. He suggested NASA has the legal authority to demand changes it might find prudent before it puts any more payloads on the unmanned Dragon 9.

George Abbey, a former NASA official and now a senior fellow in space policy at Rice University, said SpaceX’s private-satellite customers likely are patient. But they want to make certain the cause of the explosion is found and that quality-control programs are improved, he said.

Abbey noted the underwater-salvage operations SpaceX has done to look for debris of the Falcon 9 in the Atlantic Ocean.

“That would indicate they really want to get some confirmation of the strut, or they are possibly looking at other possible causes the accident,” he said. “That uncertainty is probably causing some unease with their customers. It ought to. And it is probably causing some unease with NASA as well.”

Eric Stallmer, president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, said most SpaceX customers likely are more interested in making sure that the company addresses all concerns than in the time it takes. He also noted at least one potential customer has taken a satellite to a European rocket.

As long as SpaceX is not launching, “understandably, that will happen. It’s a two-way street. A lot of these folks, they have timelines. They have investors, and investment requirements they have to meet,” Stallmer said.