Alt.Space session

10/08/04 00:00:00    

By Michael Mealling

Dennis Wingo is giving an overview and update on Orbital Recovery. Nothing new. But he is stressing the fact that most of the work they thought they had to do has already been done by several of the existing aerospace companies/organizations in Europe. Current status: customer acquisition phase in progress for first and second launches. Contracts with vendors (DLR, Dutch Space, Ariane, ESA) signed. First launch is scheduled in '07. They're funded through round 2.

David Anderman from Constellation Services is talking about a new CSI project for a manned lunar flyby mission in 2 years called “Lunar Express”. One paying customer makes it viable if the cost is low enough. They want to use the Soyuz taxi mission to provide the pressure vessel then they launch an TLI booster to get the Soyuz into lunar flyby orbit.

Now we're hearing from Bill Boland about a new Space Frontier Foundation project called “nexSpace”. Its a 'shadow' space program from a 'policy/legal/etc' standpoint. Providing the joint development of documentation/policy/legal frameworks, etc for the alt.space community to flourish. I'm curious how this relates to my CDSVN project. Its still not clear what the actual projects activities will be. So far Bill is just saying what we want to eventually happen, not how to get there or what the project will actually do and how.

The question of exactly what will be done is that the entire thing sounds like an open source/collaberative resource for policy development. More as soon as I find out what that means to those doing the work.