Rocketforge

I’m sure I could come up with some huge list of recent events and comments coming from the Space Access ‘03 conference but since I wasn’t there I couldn’t give you anything that Clark Lindsey hasn’t already done on Hobby Space.

But what I can give you is my view on it all by telling you a little story. I’ve been going to the IETF since ‘92 which means I’ve seen the Internet change a hell of a lot over the past 12 years. The one thing that sticks in my mind is the Houston meeting (November ‘93). I was in the terminal room when the guys from UIUC came in and started to demo their new web browser (at the time this wasn’t a big deal because gopher had a much higher adoption rate). The one thing that caught my eye was the fact that it had pictures. And then Tim Berners-Lee came into the room and proceeded to watch the demo (he didn’t like the IMG tag very much). It was at that moment that I felt something. It wasn’t buzz or hype or anything like that. It was just a quiet, but very rapid build up of human potential energy. I told myself to remember that feeling.

I got that same feeling hearing about the things that happened this past weekend. And I don’t intend on missing out on it again.

Its to much of a coincedence that the same day the Space Access conference was going on was also the 10th Birthday for the Mosaic browser.

From Report on Top-Level Assessment of Use of Apollo Systems for ISS (SpaceRef.com)

“A small team… was chartered by NASA to make a top-level assessment of the viability of using
the Apollo Command and Service Modules the basis for a Crew Return Vehicle, and potentially
for a Crew Transfer Vehicle, for the International Space Station. This assessment was conducted
13-14 March 2003.”

If NASA really does this, it sounds great to me. Apollo wasn’t a bad system, in fact it seemed pretty robust considering Apollo 13, Schirra’s lightning strike (Apollo 12?), etc. Assuming that it really can be resurrected, using design docs in existence and some of the old staff, it could bring back some common sense and experience to counter NASA’s “Brain Drain” of the recent years.

Newsweek’s latest issue has an excellent article on the private space race going on right now; a lot of it in some secrecy and funded by internet billionaires – the scoop there is that Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com seems to have his own venture, Blue Origin, which is planning its own X-prize style vehicle; about 2 years away from launch. More discussion of this over at slashdot.

Get ‘em here.

A second letter writing campaign has been started to shore up and win additional support from members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Senate Bill S724 is currently being reviewed by members and staff of the committee.

People are welcome to write from all 50 states, but those people in the states of committee members will have the most impact on the members. We strongly urge all people in committee member states to write to their respective Senators.

Committee member states are Alabama, Arizona, California, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Wisconsin.

You can obtain more information and discussion points for your letter by going to the following link.

http://www.space-rockets.com/congress.html

This letter campaign has been cleared with Senator Enzi’s staff.

You may repost this message to any forum.

John Wickman
Amateur Rocketry Society of America

[ reposted here by iz ]

Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites rolled out its full up two stage suborbital transportation system today. HobbySpace has the best coverage. With the actual Scaled Composites site here.

Update 13:15:It looks as though Burt has two companies competing for who gets to make his motor. SpaceDev is one. We don’t know who the other is. Possibly Armadillo?

Update 14:02:Associated Press story, SpaceRef Story

In Beyond Buck and Wernher John Carter McKnight suggests that space organizations should move away from their “Buck Rogers dreams and Wernher von Braun tactics for a spacefaring 21st Century” and on to new methods of leadership and management. His suggestion is to use the power of the web of members and their resources to implement concrete projects (not letter writing campaigns or street corner leafletting) in cooperation with universities, local industry, local governmental resources, etc to build out local community of not activism but actual building of space hardware, systems and resources.

From my point of view it appears that what he is attempting to articulate is to apply Open Source community and resource management techniques to the space industry. His ideal ‘SpaceFaring Web’ is essentially identical to the open source communities surrounding projects such as Linux, Apache and myriad other projects that supply almost all of the software that the Internet runs on. The best treatise on Open Source and its rather non-intuitive economics is found in Eric Raymond’s The Cathedral and the Bazaar. What McKnight is suggesting is that space groups move the entire concept of space out of the cathedral and firmly into the bazaar.

While this is an excellent idea (and the original concept behind Rocketforge as an aerospace equivalent to SourceForge and Freshmeat), there are problems to overcome. Open Source works when raw materials are cheap or free. The bazaar is very close to a gift economy. The problem to solve is how to drive down the costs of some of the raw materials that the nascent space bazaar would need. Obviously you can’t provide free 6061-T6 aluminum but providing a user friendly and accessible means of finding cheap materials (i.e. things like Online Metals but with better prices). For many the issue isn’t materials or time, its lack of real plans. Making components for rocket engines is well within the realm of many vocational school machine shops, what isn’t are the plans for building one.

The other data point that I have personal experience with is the attempt to do some of this within the Moon Society itself. Within the society we have several teams with specific projects. The In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) team is one example that is very close to what McKnight is talking about. That team is currently moribund due to a) organizer/leader burnout and b) lack of any existing plans to start from. While a few have resource they can apply, a majority simply participate by talking things to death. In order for McKnight’s grand Spacefaring Web to emerge there is going to have to be some in depth analysis why it isn’t working now, what resources it needs and what parts of the ‘bazaar’ model apply and which ones don’t.

One area that would be worth investigating is the various non-traditional aerospace groups such as the Am/Ex rocketry groups (IEAS, ERPS, Armadillo, etc). In many cases these groups are following many Open Source techniques. Most use publicly available plans, enable physically distributed teams using group communications tools, teams with very loose boundaries between projects, etc. In most cases there is a maximum leader (in the bazaar sense, not in the sense that McKnight uses the term). Perhaps something can be bootstrapped by pairing space organizations with local rocketry groups. The combination would probably be a lot more effective. There’s nothing like the swoosh of a large rocket to get an space nut’s motivation pumping.

This is not going to be an easy task. Its a rare thing when Open Source techniques can be applied to something that isn’t already a gift economy. But it is worth trying. The Open Source software community is currently building one of the best operating systems around, and is challenging the ‘Boeing’ of that industry in a way that could shake the entire software industry to its foundations. Its time to shake the aerospace industry the same way.

XCOR Aerospace announced today it has successfully acquired an additional $187,500 in equity investments. This round of investment qualifies the company for a Department of Defense program that matches private capital four to one up to $750,000. The funds will be used for development of rocket engine pump technology.

Wired has a pretty thorough review of upcoming lunar missions, both private and public. The two private companies in volved are LunaCorp and TransOrbital – more on their missions and the others is in the article, and in the missions list from the Moon Society.

Jeff Taylor of Loki Research posted an update on the JAMSTAR launch next weekend. Apparently the normal FAA waffling has lead to a night launch. The first 100,000 foot waiver is from 2am – 3am Sunday, April 20th. The video will be awesome!