Rocketforge

Glenn Reynods of Instapundit writes about space in his Tech Central Station column called The Stronger Horse. In the column he laments the lack of big government space projects over the past few years as he throws out all of his old space advocacy junk from his blue pill days. One item is a “poster of Ron Jones’ roadmap to space settlement” which, disappointingly has never been realized. The main reason it hasn’t is that, while I haven’t seen the poster, I’m willing to bet it had nothing on it about building products for markets that would pay for the effort.

He does spend one paragraph talking about the good news from folks like LunaCorp (no mention of TransOrbital?), Rutan, and Bezos (no mention of Carmack). But he seems almost shocked that the real work is getting done in the commercial realm:

Old-fashioned science fiction stories from the 1940s and early 1950s – Robert Heinlein’s Rocket Ship Galileo is a good example – saw commercial space activity taking place in low earth orbit before anyone bothered to go to the moon. This seemed silly when I read it as a kid in the 1970s. But it may be an accurate view of how things will go if the main drivers are commercial, rather than governmental.

To me it seems equally silly that anyone would expect government programs were going to build our space faring civilization when its been private enterprise that created them in the past. Sure, Columbus had the backing of a queen but that was because she thought she could make money off the trade routes, not because it would increase re-election prospects.

He even goes on to grab at small straws by arguing that a space faring civilization will be saved due to the space arms race between India and China or by the US dominating space so as to intimidate Osama bin Laden (like Osama even cares). Why is Glenn so disappointed that the government isn’t doing the massive space projects he so longed for when the likes of XCOR, Armadillo and Bigelow will probably get around to it long before the governments procurement process could even figure out how much paper to buy to print the bid.

Come on Glenn, take the red pill…

From John Wickman via izzy:

We have a couple of incidents scattered throughout the US of the ATFE telling people that APCP reloads/motors under 62.5 grams need to be put in an explosive magazine. This has happened in every case after the person either called the ATFE and asked or an ATFE visited the person and was shown the reloads or motors.

As best as I can determine this is spotty enforcement as one ATFE office is not requiring it. Typical ATFE inconsistancy.

I explained this situation to Senator Enzi’s office and they are going to get an official position on APCP storage for under 62.5 grams APCP from ATFE HQ. As soon as we know, I will post it.

John Wickman

for now you may not need a LEUP for F & small G APCP motors, but you still may need an explosive magazine meeting distance requirements

http://www.space-rockets.com/arsanews#625%20storage

The latest Spacefaring Web article from John Carter McKnight is entitled The Blue Pill Choice. John applies the pop psychology of the Matrix plus a little dojo wisdom to the current state of space advocacy. He suggests that most space advocates (indeed, most of America) has happily opted for accepting the Matrix as is by taking the blue pill while the realists have opted for the hard work, sacrifice, and eventual success of the red pill.

I’m normally not one to talk about some other volunteer’s efforts since I’ve been involved with volunteer organizations for a long time (I was an LP activist for years) and I know how much damage just a little of John’s opinion can do to a volunteer. But there’s a difference between something like the LP and an organization like the Artemis Society, namely that Artemis has a very clearly defined economic goal and the means to get there. We’re not the least bit delusional about the hard work it takes to do it. Its building businesses and markets from the ground up. And that takes time, sweat, pain and money. Something like the LP is pure politics and thus is very much served by its grassroots, voluteer base.

I was definitely struck by the red pill vs blue pill view this past weekend. Many of the prototypical NSS members were definitely blue pill type people. There were notable exceptions, of course. But just about all of the participants in the Enterprise Track had become addicted to the red pills. People like Peter Diamandis and the XCOR guys probably have it fed in from a main line.

But I do have to take issue with one thing John discusses: whether or not property rights issues are red pill or blue pill. What brought the discussion home to me was the discussion with Loretta Hidalgo (Yuri’s Night) during the banquet Sunday night. Her background is with NASA and the Space Generation Foundation is very much aligned with the United Nations. As we’ve all observed, the UN has a dim view of property rights in space. So while I agree that predicating your property rights discussion with “assuming we’re all already in orbit making millions” is probably a blue-pill type discussion, ignoring the issue completely and leaving it to the policy wonks at the UN to define those issues before we even get into orbit is taking a blue pill when it comes to international politics. I would certainly hope those discussing space property rights would at least be a little more ‘reality’ based. Making a claim to the State Department for one of the asteroids based on the idea that “posession is nine tenths of the law so what’s that last one tenth?” is not going to be helpful. Having a cogent legal discussion among property rights lawyers in law reviews is probably much more productive. But ignoring the issue completely is also just as bad.

My main challenge back to John is that the issue is not the large numbers of blue-pill people but that we have done a poor job of attracting the types of people who are naturally attracted to the red pills. If you remember the first movie, once someone takes the blue pill they never get offered the red pill again. Red pill people need to be shown the reward for their sweat equity. So far we haven’t shown that…

Authors Note: Thanks for the apology, John. We plan on policing releases that mention us a bit closer than we did before. Bad press isn’t better than no press…

I’m a little late on the 2nd half due to networking issues in San Jose (I think I’m going to ditch Mandrake and go back to RedHat) and the general lack of motivation I get after the third beer. Sunday was equally interesting with more reports from launch systems startups, presentations from the Colony Fund and Liftport. I also met one of the happiest, most energetic people in the business but more on that latter (they call that a teaser .

The day started out with reports on Microcosm’s Scorpius launch family. Its an iterative launch development process that is focusing on making the “expendable” part of the process as low cost as possible. The analogy they used was that of a milk bottle 50 years ago (recycled, expensive, etc) with a cardboard milk carton of today (built to be thrown away). For example, the only part of their engine that isn’t ablative is the injector plate. They have chamber construction down to the $5000 range and will be using economies of scale to drive down costs. Their funding is mostly governmental though so I’m sure they could drive down costs further by not having to deal with that procurement overhead.

Others reported that day including XCOR (nothing knew other than some pictures of their 1800 lb engine and that I finally met Rich Pournelle (Jerry’s son) who handles Investor Relations), JP Aerospace (balloons!), and High Speed Launch Platforms (horizontal maglev rails that use rockets instead of magnetic attraction for thrust).

The meetings that dominated the Enterprise Track were the presentation by the Colony Fund and Liftport. The Colony Fund gave us details on fund structure, goals and requirements. The Colony Fund 1 will be a 30 year, closed end fund driven by VC principles with a target capitalization of $500 million. Shares will cost $100 with a 10 share minimum purchase. The portfolio will contain a 25% conventional debt/equity component that is typical of most balanced funds, 5% for the ‘Adventure Fund’ which is extremely high risk, with the balance in the “Venture Portfolio” targeting the entire spectrum of space related opportunities (for obvious reasons they will be targeting ‘dual use’ products since their short term ROI is much better).

Liftport spent a large amount of time answering the typical ’space elevator’ questions such as meteor impact, lightning, balance, failure modes, etc. He did spend some time talking about the construction of the needed capital markets which was interesting since most ventures simply assume that is something they can’t build. Michael Laine did point out that this venture was one of the few in the space business that had huge economies of scale, price elasticities, and short term ROI from the carbon nanotube developments. Between this and the balloon stuff from JP Aerospace, I’m wondering if chemical rockets really are as big a component of the future as we thought.

The one session that wasn’t high on my priority list was the Yuri’s Night presentation. But you could tell that Loretta Hidalgo had to be one of the happiest people in the industry so it seemed to be much more ‘fun’ than the rest of the sessions. Her goal is to put the ‘cool’ back into space for the GenX/Y crowd (18-35 year olds). I just turned 34 so I guess that makes me an old fart. Besides Yuri’s Night, Loretta is also involved in something called Space Generation which is an organization of “active young (minded) people that strive to enhance the quality of life on a global scale by utilising space, in all its aspects.” What’s interesting is the United Nations origins of Space Generation. We had a rather interesting discussion at dinner over that. Especially with the number of libertarians at the table.

I attempted to find a Yuri’s Night party in Atlanta back in April but was disappointed not to find anyone who had even heard of it. The closest one was in Macon (!). So Loretta may have inspired me to set one up here for next year. Anyway, during the discussion I raised the question about the role of private enterprise with Yuri’s Night and with Space Generation and was assured that there was a role. Apparently at the previous Yuri’s Night folks like XCOR came out and test fired some engines. Loretta’s association with The Space Frontier Foundation also helps.

My overall impression of the weekend was a good one, well worth the money spent on getting there. The Hyatt’s food choices could have been better for the money but that’s just me being the dot-com travel snob. I was struck though by the split-brain aspect of the weekend. The Enterprise Track was run primarily by Bob Hillhouse from the Space Frontier Foundation while the rest of the tracks were typical NSS members. There was very little crossing between the two which was sad. The technology for getting into space has been around since 1969. Any future mankind may have in space isn’t going to be solved with technology, but with the one single thing that has improved the position of manking better than any other: capitalism.

The one little item that illustrated this to me were the badges. They rarely had your affiliation on them. And the print was small. We’ll know we’re actually capable of something when we have trade show style badges (with mag stripes for swiping at booths and our company names in huge 50 point type). A very good weekend. You should go to the next one!

I’m at the International Space Development Conference in San Jose and we’ve just wrapped up todays presentations. I’ve focused on the Enterprise and Lunar tracks so I’m sure there are things I’ve missed. The presentation last night was by Jill Tarter on SETI. The major takeaway from that presentation was the Allen Telescope Array which is a SETI project consisting of approximately 350 6.1-meter offset Gregorian dishes that is capable of simultaneous SETI and astronomical observations.

The Space Frontier Foundation sponsored the Enterprise Panel that was interesting from a purely networking point of view (about 75% of the people in the room were either in a startup or had already done a startup). What was disappointing was the fact that the session was sparsely attended. The discussions between the panel didn’t really open any new ground. They mostly covered the current conventional wisdom (incremental development, multi-market products, immediate ROI, etc). While most of the people in the room who understood business knew this stuff, I think the ‘typical’ attendee probably hasn’t heard this stuff.

As far as buzz, everyone is paying attention to people like XCOR, Zero-G, etc. But as far as something new, the buzz is about the Colony Fund which is an attempt to build a space investment community that is accessible to the small investor. This is something many organizations have discussed for several years: some way for the non-qualified investor to help support the companies that are pushing the frontier. If they execute I think this will rank as more of the more enabling accomlishments of the year.

The other buzz is around the space elevator work being done by Liftport. They have been paying close attention to the business needs and are focused on building the investment environment that can handle their capital requirements.

Now I’m off to this evenings banquet. More to come latter tonight!

Update: The speaker at dinner was Erik Drexler (the guy who wrote Engines of Creation and who is responsible for the term ‘nanotechnology’). The main thrust of his comments was in introduction to the background and issues behind his open letter to Richard Smalley who is the primary mover behind the current ‘nanotechnology’ bill that’s in Congress. Drexler is basically saying that the bill is a bait and switch since it actually contains no money for molecular manufacturing which is what the congress-critters think it actually is. There were multiple comments from people in the room that we’ve had the same problems and our solution is to simply forego the government route and figure out how to build businesses around it.

Pat Gordzelik of Potrocs forwarded this to the Thunderflame list and I thought it was just to perfect not to post:

>> Since the “small stuff” may become the future of the hobby
>
> Not on our watch it won’t.
>
I’ll second that. Small stuff is what got us in the hobby. Its not what brought us back. Small stuff doesn’t hold interest very long for most kids, let alone adults. Small stuff doesn’t create mfgs/vendors, it only benefits Estes, etc. Small stuff does not ignite the imagination of future Aerospace engineers, etc in our youth either, if thats the future, then our youth will find another hobby, like cars….or girls/boys, etc. And small stuff, while necessary, is not what I’m fighting for, because small stuff don’t have a dog in this fight.

And while I’m on the subject, this fight isn’t entirely about rockets. Its about freedom. Its about resentment of being treated like a criminal. Its the denial of a govt not allowing their citizens to expand their minds in a safe and legal environment. Its about refusing to participate in the “Dumbing down of America”, all in the name of keeping us safe from ourselves. I don’t want to live in a future where I drive a car that only does 15 MPH, where my kitchen knifes are dull, and my house is padded. I want to make the decision of acceptable risk, based on what “I” find acceptable, based on “my” perceived capabilities. All in a framework of my peers, not some outsider that don’t know squat about our area of expertise.

– Pat G

1 comment

It looks as though Dave Triano of Shadow Composites has gotten into electronics with the XTime highly rugged, USB capable timer.

John Wickman has posted the following:

“WARNING: Based on multiple sources of information it is believed that the ATFE will make a major national enforcement effort on hobby rocketry on May 24th or shortly there after. The objective will be to arrest hobbyists in clear violation of the Homeland Security Act. The people arrested will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. ”

You may want to forward this to the clubs you are affilated with.

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., and five of his Senate colleagues have asked the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) to delay for 90 days the implementation of regulations concerning hobby rockets.

The regulations would require federal explosive permits for people who purchase or transport ammonium perchlorate composite propellant (APCP), which is used by hobby rocketeers to fuel their model rockets. Enzi said the regulations, which are set to take effect May 24, needlessly threaten a safe, harmless and productive hobby.

—————————————————

the full press release and the text of the letter is available online at

http://enzi.senate.gov/delay.htm

- iz

Andrew Case has been working on a bi-prop igniter that is engineered to be able to handle multiple propellant types (GOX/Propane, NO2/Isopropanol, even Ethane if he can find it). In response to a discussion on ARocket about a ‘group project’, Andrew volunteered to ‘donate’ the information that he had developed so far. Duncan McDonald has begun using the Rocket WorkBench project on Sourceforge as a project repository. He is also blogging the project as well. While the project’s main goal is to build an input-flexible bi-prop igniter/gas generator; a much more important secondary goal is to figure out what it takes to really use Open Source techniques for rocketry hardware.