Jim Muncy's policy and politics update

04/30/05 00:00:00    

By Michael Mealling

Jim Muncy (t/space and polispace) is giving us an update on various policy issues. He has a handout concerning some policy issues that readers may be interested in helping out with. Here is an HTML version of it.

Right now he's doing an ad for t/space: Airlaunch, t/Space, & a Fast Prototyping Path to Prompt Global Strike, Orbital Tourism and Maybe Even the Moon

or

Jim Muncy is working with Gary Hudson, NASA, Burt Rutan, & DARPA t odo WHAT?!

Airlaunch is a Falcon participant that does a drop from a back of a C-5 and does an air start under parachute.

t/space was setup directly in response to the President's Vision for Space Exploration. Currently includes David Gump, Bret Alexander, Jim Muncy, Gary Hudson, James Voss.

t/space Goal: create a true lunar frontier. Commercial delivery of crew, cargo and fuel to LEO. CEVs launch on non-human rated vehicles. boosted without crew on EELV or new commercial vehicle) You turn over the job of getting to LEO to hte private sector.

t/space's CEV is an upscaled airlaunch vehicle that uses either a 747 on stilts or Burt's WhiteNight on steriods that would also be used for Virgin Galactic.

Now talking about NASA:

NASA publicly discussing ETO “non-traditional approach”. Means Rapid Prototyping, Hardware milestones, Fixed-price contracts.

NASA wants safe, reliable and responsive delivery of people to orbit at less than $20 million per flight

Near-term milestones tha timplement and sustain Vision

Eliminates the gap in US human spacefilight.

Avoids human rating a new vehicle, and Reduces risk to NASA.

It seems that Griffin is accelerates things to get rid of the gap by spinning stuff back in and not doing competitive multi-vendor bids. Jim doesn't think its a bad thing but has no special knowledge to back that up.