Rocketforge

(See our Update #102, at http://www.space-access.org/updates/sau102, for some background on Federal regulation of the promising new US private passenger-carrying spaceflight industry.)

A law usefully clarifying current Federal commercial launch regulations as they affect carrying commercial passengers, HR 3752, The Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004, has been working its way through the Congress since last winter. In brief, HR 3752 alters existing law to both allow and encourage the Federal Aviation Administration’s Advanced Space Transportation division (FAA AST) to license low-cost reusable commercial passenger-carrying space vehicles on an informed-consent-to-risk basis that gives the new industry a chance to grow, rather than strangling it in the cradle with unrealistically rigid standards that the new technology cannot yet support.

HR 3752 passed the House by a vote of 402-1 this summer, in a form that wasn’t perfect (it created considerable uncertainty via a too-narrow definition of “suborbital rocket” that excluded some serious current design approaches) but that with a bit of common sense from the FAA might have worked reasonably well.

The bill then went to the Senate Commerce Committee, where it ran into its first major snag – a Senator from a state hosting a reusable rocket company whose design fell outside the “suborbital rocket” definition put a hold on the bill. This part of the story has a happy ending; the FAA division that had previously refused to budge on that overly narrow definition eventually budged, and a new expanded definition was written into the Senate version of HR 3752.

By then though two more months had passed, the elections were close at hand, and the practical options for passing HR 3752 had narrowed down to Senate Commerce Committee staffers working out an acceptable version with their House counterparts, then both Senate and House passing identical new versions under fast-track “unanimous consent” rules. This should have been no problem; we’re told the House was (and is) happy with the revised more-inclusive definition of a suborbital rocket.

But someone, for whatever reason, threw a spanner in the works, altering another section of the bill that defined allowable levels of risk in a manner that would have killed the budding new industry stone dead. Briefly, HR 3752 said that risk to uninvolved members of the public had to be kept many-nines low, risk to crewmembers was a matter for FAA AST to work out with individual companies as part of the licensing process, while passengers simply had to be fully informed of the risks involved. The change was a simple one – FAA AST was to become responsible for ensuring the same many-nines level of safety for crew and passengers of the new vehicles as that required for uninvolved bystanders.

This may even have been well-intentioned; it could have sounded reasonable to someone not well-informed about the field. But the practical effect would be to require astronomical numbers of successful test flights of any new vehicle to statistically prove a many-nines reliability level, before either passengers or crew would be allowed on board. The relatively immature state of reusable rocket technology aside, no unpiloted or remote-piloted vehicle has ever come close to that reliability level. This change was an industry-killer.

The bill as fatally altered was set to move out of the Senate Commerce Committee for quick unanimous-consent passage by the Senate at the start of October. Only another hold by a Senator on the Committee stopped this at the last second, at which point the various parties agreed to sit down and work out differences over the election break, and if a version could be agreed on, pass it by unanimous consent in the final post-election session of this Congress. That’s where things stand now.

What To Do

If you’re a US citizen from one of the fifty states, you have two Senators. Fax or phone them in DC, or contact them back at home if the election campaign gives you a chance, and ask them to support a version of HR 3752 acceptable to the FAA and to the members of the new reusable rocket industry. If appropriate, go on to give a very brief supporting pitch, to the effect that this new industry has huge promise for the US, that it’s appropriate to have the FAA stringently regulate risk to the general public, but that industry participants have to be able to take some risks in these early days in order to learn enough so that rockets can eventually be as safe as airplanes only got after generations of accumulated aviation experience.

For contact info, go to http://www.vote-smart.org and enter your nine-digit zip code (look at one of your bills) in the Find Your Representatives box. Scan down to your two Senators, click on their names, and you should have all the info you need.

If you fax, be polite, brief, and straightforward – keep it well under one page of reasonably large and readable print (a paragraph that’s read is better than an essay that isn’t), make your basic point at the start, support it briefly, then sign it with your name, city, and state and send it. (No paper-mail letters – word is those currently are backed up for months by security checks – and email comes in such volumes that individual emails carry almost zero weight. If you want to write, fax it.)

If you phone, ask to speak to whoever handles commercial space matters for your Senator, then when you’re connected to that staffer (or more likely their voicemail) do the same as for a fax – make the basic support request, then if appropriate back it up briefly, thank them for their time, and ring off. If they have questions, do your best to answer them – briefly! – you might want to go over the background here and in SAU #102 before calling – then once done, thank them and ring off.

Don’t assume because you didn’t read this until a week or two after we sent it out that it’s no longer urgent. The window for effective action on this will likely be open well into November. Stay tuned for further word; we’ll report as soon as we know anything. Meanwhile – fax and call!

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Xprize Cup update: we just heard an update on the Xprize Cup that included some minor details on the look and feel. Its very much taking NASCAR as a model. And, if the sponsorships work out, at least some money for those of us who would like to win some of the prizes in order to fund some of our development. The layout of the event area put the viewing public very close to the launch pads. There were several comments along of the lines of “AST isn’t going to let you do that”. John Carmack said it best, “You want to do something that’s exciting. AST doesn’t like exciting.”

Now we’re hearing from Dr. Pascal Lee (Mars Institute) but this is mostly a science based discussion. He suggested that the Moon is scientifically explorable according to the Antarctica model which made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. I don’t think he ment the politico/economic aspect so I’m not going to pick that nit.

Now we’re hearing from Joe Landon about Yuri’s Night. Joe is with the Space Generation Foundation. Heh… Yuri’s Night is about bringing other communities and the space communities together. Specifically the art, music, dance and fashion oriented communities. No wonder ours didn’t do very well, none of us had any artistic or musical talent, rhythm or style!

Joe Horsting (Intrepid Digital Design Studios) is talking about MMORPGs. Nothing new here for those who know what MMORPGs are. The absolutely funniest thing just happened. Joe was making assertions about costs to deploy a game and John Carmack asked for details and then disagreed with his cost estimates (they were really talking about two vastly different market segments). But Joe had no idea who he was talking to. He asked, slightly incredulously, “So what part of the gaming industry do you work in?” The room immediately fell completely apart. The biggest “lol” I’ve seen in a while. You have to feel sorry for the guy, but that was just damn funny.

Life Lesson #23: Be careful what you say because you never know who is in the audience.

Now we’re hearing form Andre Bormanis who is the lead writer for “Enterprise”. I missed most of this because I was chatting with Carmack and Horsting in the back of the room about the gaming/internet entertainment industry.

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.

Jeff Krukin is moderating this session on Settlement and talking specifically talking about the Space Settlement Project. His main point is that ‘exploration’, ’science’, ‘projects’, or ‘programs’ don’t apply to the public on a personal nature whereas settlement does since its about individuals going some place else to live.

IMHO, settlement is still to esoteric for most of the public who, in Jeff’s words, “don’t get it”. You have to make it still more personal because very very few people are willing, able, or motivated to live some place else.

Now Steve Wolfe is up and is talking about how Jeff talked about how space is important to other people where as he wants to talk about why we are as motivated as we are so that we can communicate it better.

“You are unique in our global population because you have awakened to a particular vision and that is something you should cherish and hold as an extraordinary gift”.

The challenge is to keep ourselves motivated by discovering what our core motivating principles are. Now we’re doing a mental exercise to remember what our ‘emotional trigger’ was for getting into this business. He calls that the “evolutionary impulse” causing you to take action.

Now the crowd is relating their ‘moments’.

A little to ‘touchy feely’ for me but the room seems to be enjoying the mental “way back machine”.

John Powell is giving an update on JP Aerospace. Last time John gave a really interesting update so let’s see what they been doing for the past 6 months.

Two major things: yes, they have done Dark Station missions, first manned mission is 18 months from now.

They do intend on going for the Bigelow Prize. I think this is the first announcement of intent to go for that particular prize.

Henry Vanderbilt is currently stalling while a “surprise guest” shows up. Lance Bass is here! He’s been talking to kids about World Space Week and about Burt and the Xprize.

He’s talking about the international aspect of space and the youth component (very much in line with the Space Generation group that does Yuri’s Night).

I suspect we’re going to get alot of this since we are near Hollywood.

Question: when are you going into space?
Answer: whenever I can. Something is in the works to make it pretty soon.

Question: from a marketing standpoint, what should we be doing to market to the segment that N’Sync was targeted at?
Answer: Make it cool and don’t talk to the kids, talk with the kids. Its a conversation, not a lecture.

John Carmack is giving an update on Armadillo. Mostly its about finding launch sites and deciding where to go after the Xprize. He’s mostly focusing on the Xprize Cup and keeping things below the FAA license limits so he can find reasonable launch sites…

Interesting question: what is your business goal?

Tourism at the $100k price point. He’s fine with 500 people at $100K. But its other stuff too like a rocket sled ride for a couple grand (i.e the opposite of the Zero-G)

Next question: as you go forward and do develop something people can ride on, do you have a plan for turning Armadillo into a standard boring old service company with things like QA, maintenance, etc?

Carmack: No, we have no plans for turning Armadillo into a boring company.

The luncheon panel was mostly business and investment related. The good quotes came from Walt Anderson:

“European space companies are good to work with because they don’t have such a huge majority of their revenue form defense related contracts” (rough quote).

“Now is the time to be more institutional” (i.e. societal/legal/business institutions, not governmental

The fund that Golden Appel is part of is fully invested.

There was a short discussion on ’space branding’ and a “space chamber of commerce” but nothing conclusive. Andrew Olson says that the Colony Fund is getting significant interest and is taking investments.

Now we’re getting an update from John Carmack. Armadillo always has the best videos.

Jim Muncy is up to give us a legislative update (specifically on HR 3752). Right now he’s covering the breakthroughs over the past year. But you can hear the “but” that’s coming up. Jim is currently making the ubiquitous “politics is sausage” comment. “We have reached a crisis point in the legislation where passing no legislation at all ends up being a very good thing”. He’s now giving a bit of history about the first meetings with Dana Rohrabacher, FAA’s ruling changes, etc.

One thing that I didn’t know about was that the Transportation department was asked to excercize its power to give the entire launch industry the maximum amount of relief from EPA require environmental assessments (essenntially a FONSI).

Now he’s reviewing the whole Pioneer Rocketplane (now just Rocketplane, LTD) fiasco…

The language provided by the Senate back to the House for 3752 was “an abomination”. Apparently they said “we don’t want people dying like they did in the shuttle”. So, not knowing what they were doing, they added language that said the
“safety of crew and passengers” in the pre-amble of the bill, on equal footing as the “safety of the general public (i.e. third party)”.

Where we are is some very helpful senators have agreed to hold up the bill from being passed by unanimous consent. XCOR, who has been working so hard on this from the beginning, has said they asked for it to be stoppped. They didn’t say that if you pass this we will die. They said, if you do this we will do it but just not in this country.

The senate is not going to do anything this week.
They’re going to still try and get something done during the lame duck session. So Jim is asking everyone to contact their Senators and say “the house did a really good thing but the Senate language is wrong and that they should work with the industry on the right language”.

So call today if you can.

hehe.. “the poison meat is in the Senate sausage machine so we’re going to stop, clean out the machine, and start over”.

Hmmm… apparently there was more than just one poison pill but Jim couldn’t show the new language to anyone so we don’t know what the others were. Apparently the Senate just wrote something in a vacuum.

Call or fax your Senate: The Xprize has just been won. This is a great opportunity. Unfortunately the Congress is about to make really bad or no legislation that could kill this industry before it starts. You should contact your party leadership in the Senate Commerce Committee and say that they should work with the industry.”

Jim is going to write something up so we can send something more detailed before COB today.

I’m ‘back’ from vacation and now at Space Frontier Conference 13. Rick is giving the welcome address right now (and doing the Sagan/Von Braun/O’Neil bit. His von Braun impersonation seemed to meld into the Governator which cracked up the entire room).

The mood here is jubilant but very aware that there’s a lot more work to be done.

Update: We’re into the Space Access Society/Alt.Space session which is a session run by Henry Vanderbilt as a follow on to the Space Access Society conference earlier this year. Right now we’re getting an update from Rocketplane.

Next up is Jared Smith of Andrews Space and Technology. Andrews is a “Government approved Small Minority Woman Owned Disadvantaged Business”. Intereting to see how that helps with non-governmental payloads/contracts. Ahh… its founders came from Kistler. Focusing on “Government programs that can be leveraged into commercial services”. IMHO, that approach means that if you don’t win the contract you don’t enter the market at all. They’re involved in a lot of the government contract based efforts, like the Falcon project (can we stop using that name, please?), with others like Scaled and XCOR, but it doesn’t seem as though they’re trying to move that into non-governmental markets yet. IMHO, parallel is the way, not serial. The current slide is a complicated piece of eye-candy that shows an entire ecosystem of vehicles, systems, orbits and planets. I realize its probably fun to theorize about stuff like this but there’s just no way in hell anyone’s predictions about how the market will look in 2020 are remotely realistic. I’m not sure this is useful.

Jeff Greason from XCOR gave a brief update. The two take aways are 1) their phone has been ringing off the hook since Burt won the prize and 2) over half of their revenue is governmental and that, with work, you can get them to act sane.

Break for lunch….