Rocketforge

As usual, Clark’s level of detail is way beyond what I get into. His review goes into detail on every single presentation, with links. So if you’re looking for details, go read the whole thing.

Update:

In A Legislative Breakthrough? Rand analyzes Jim Muncy’s legislative update which was extremely interesting since some of the proposed rule changes coming up are quite sane (assuming they make it through the sausage grinder intact).

Rand also comments on JP Aerospace’s progress, saying that “it’s not obvious that it won’t work”. Its things like this and space elevators that keep rocket propulsion guys awake at night.

I met Alan Boyle last week and I’ve added him (and others) to the new blog roll. Alan has an excellent review of last SA ‘04. Among other things he jumps into the fun speculation on when Scaled’s attempt will be:

I’ll throw in my totally unscientific guess, based more on the holiday calendar than on any inside information. Let’s say the first spaceflight comes on July 4, with a fireworks display worthy of the Fourth. Then the suspense could build as the two-week deadline ticks down to the second, prize-winning flight on July 17. That’s the anniversary of the 1962 X-15 flight that made Air Force pilot Robert White the first human to earn astronaut wings for a rocket plane flight. If that’s the way it happens, you heard it here first.

His suggestion makes me think that the date will be a complex negotiation between Scaled and the Xprize folks for maximum press impact and a reasonable test regime. The only problem with the 4th is that people will be distracted, so while the 17th might be correct, I’m not so sure about the 4th. But then again, Alan knows a lot more about the inner workings of the news cycle than I do.

Hmmm…. with no reported damage from the last set of tests I think we might be due for a new flight sometime within the next week or so.

This was my first time at a Space Access meeting. I tried the grand conference tour last year but was only able to get to ISDC. I must say that the difference is significant. ISDC participants simply aren’t in the thick of building businesses at the point that SA participants are. At this meeting the primary discussions were around regulations, insurance, updates on businesses plans, and actual flight hardware. Things that show that people are building real businesses for real markets with real risks and rewards.

But it also had its fair share of history and mythos. It has its curmudgeons, plenty of greybeards, and still some wild eyed dreamers. The similarities with my first IETF were downright spooky. I can easily correlate certain personalities and companies between the two communities. There is internal strife that disappears when presented with a common enemy. There are companies with practices that irk some others as the community tries to find a balance between enabling the industry to develop and succeed without directly enabling your own competition. Intellectual property regimes are starting to make some people nervous.

I was able to put names (and in some cases just email addresses) with faces. I was able to meet the heavy weights of the space policy blogosphere: Rand Simberg, Clark Lindsey, and Jeff Foust. All very nice guys. We were all lamenting the lack of network access. Jerry Pournelle is an excellent stand up comedian in addition to having been there for most of the history of non-traditional space access. Henry Spencer has forgotten more about orbital mechanics that I will ever know. Henry Vanderbilt and his cadre of volunteers held an excellent conference with an extremely reasonable price tag. About the only thing I’d change is making sure that the hotel offered wireless network access in the conference room.

The things that people were talking about at the meeting were XCor’s new little igniter, the amazing progress that JP Aerospace has made (and how scary it would be if, like space elevators, really big balloons made rockets almost irrelevant). The poor guy from NASA’s Office of Space Exploration was literally mobbed with people trying to tell him how to structure that program. You have to give that guy some considerable credit for presenting that program at this organization. Everyone agreed that Barbara Thompson is just a fun person to be around. XCor getting their license was the climax of the meeting and served to prove yet another data point along the trend line.

There was some discussion of holding more than one meeting per year since its becoming hard to fit a quickly evolving industry into a 3 day a year conference. The suggestion was to add an extra day to the Space Frontier Foundation’s yearly conference (in October this year) and have it be dedicated to Space Access Society.

During the ‘open mike’ session on the last night (equivalent to an IETF open plenary) there was considerable discussion about how to get the under 25 crowd involved. To start planting the seed corn to use a vastly overused phrase. I had to say that I felt there really wasn’t a problem. The number of startups being created by people in their late 20s and early 30s has quickly surpassed the number of companies run by the earlier generation. Those startups have the energy that will attract those kids. But more importantly, when people like XCor, Scaled and Space Adventures start showing consistent profits, the kids will show up. The same way they showed up in 1994 and created things like Google.

In addition to all of the above there were several developments that aren’t public yet so check back over the coming months for updates.

So, I have to say that I really enjoyed myself. The money spent generated an excellent return. If you can make it to future meetings I highly recommend it.

Brant Sponberg from NASA’s Office of Exploration is giving an Introduction to NASA’s Centennial Challenge Program. I have to say he’s a brave man for standing up in front of this crowd. Jerry Pournelle has already yelled at him. I hope to have some more insight into NASA’s view of the President’s vision and what the Aldridge Commission is up to. It does appear that at least this year’s budget is having political issues.

One of the interesting things at Space Access ‘04 is XCor’s new ‘pocket’ igniter. It operates with various inputs but typically its GOX and kerosene or alcohol. This particular unit has over 1000 starts with no detectable erosion. This is what the target that all of the arocket igniter projects have to get to. The nice thing is that the valves are actually built into the igniter body.

John Powell of JP Aerospace is giving an update on what JP Aerospace has been up to and is finally talking about their total vision for balloon based aerospace. It’s basically three ‘vehicles’. A ‘launcher’ that gets you to 100K feet, a ’station’ that is huge that permanently sits at 100K feet, and an orbital (yes, orbital!) balloon that is almost 6000 feet long and can attain orbit using lift from the upper atmosphere. Its an amazing amount of work that is generating short term ROI now.

JPA isn’t going to post the presentation for another month for various reasons. I asked and got permission to post pictures of the handouts. Check out the pictures wiki for the important pages.

Peter Diamandis gave an update on the Xprize but there were no new announcements. One of my thoughts about when Scaled might make their attempt was that there might be an announcement here. But sadly no, so I’m going to going back to my 2 month estimate.

I’m putting images from Space Access ‘04 up on the twiki here: SpaceAccessPictures.

Xcor was just granted their launch license! They’ve also released a press release.

The launch license is for a technology test vehicle; the license does not yet cover passenger operations though it does allow for revenue payload flights after initial tests are completed. Testing will be done at the Mojave Airport in Mojave, California, which is expected to become the first inland launch facility licensed for commercial launches. Mojave Airport is known for its safe, smooth coordination of general aviation activity and private aerospace development.

I’m having issues with the GPRS setup so I’m writing this from the Starbucks down the street. Its been really nice putting faces with names. So far I’ve been able to meet Clark Lindsey, Jeff Foust, Alan Boyle (yes, MSNBC is here), Jonathan Goff, Andrew Case, Al Differ and a whole host of other people I’ve talked to but never met in person. Nice folk.

So far no earth shattering news. Some hints though. Last night Jeff Greason reminded us that the 180 day “must grant” window that the AST has expires on April 23rd which is today. He wouldn’t give any specifics about what he might announce today but he did give a strong hint that he would be. His presentation on what it takes to get a launch license out of AST was exceptional. His main point was that AST is as much in the dark about how to do this as we are and that everyone should view a launch license application as more of a perpetual, close conversation with AST that starts about 24 hours after you decide you want to be in this business. One question from the audience was “Ok, I’ve bought my lathe and I’m about ready to start fabricating engines, when should I talk to AST”? Jeff’s response was that you should have been talking to AST long before you ever bought the lathe, much less after you’ve starting fabrication.

One interesting attendee is Andrew Knight who apparently has a new piston pump design. I’ll find out more when I can and post it here.

So far this is extremely interesting and fun. Simply based on yesterday’s half session I highly recommend coming if you can.