Rocketforge

Read and enjoy! Not a whole heck of a lot of meat there but enough for people to see progress and act accordingly.

The Space Frontier Foundations annual conference is this weekend in Los Angeles. The keynote speaker this morning is Pete Worden and he is discussing commercial lunar opportunities. Some of his notional concepts are:

Government builds infrastructure well
The moon is a good place to do dangerous things

He asserts that there are two models for building lunar infrastructure: the use of private property to insentivize private companies to build it and the GPS model where the government just builds the entire thing.

Lunar infrastructure needs include:

Communications
Positioning, Navigation, Timing (PNT) (i.e. GPS)
Situational Awareness (maps)
Power systems

A first step is some established standards. The standards around navigation and weights and measures in the 17th century are a good example. (Ed. but there is an issue to be discussed around innovation vs standardization). He is currently suggesting that a good short term example is for all of the various proposed lunar probes should use the same comms standards (good luck getting the Chinese to agree on that one!).

The discussions now turns to private lunar activities that may not be exactly profit driven such as lunar observatories. He discusses a mercury liquid mirror telescope on the moon for very very deep field sky surveys.

Now he has moved on to using the moon as a place to do nanotech development in order to quarantine and asuage fears about gray goo scenarios.

Now he’s discussing using the moon as a quarantine point for Mars exploration in order to ensure that either either Earth or Martian live doesn’t contaminate and exterminate the other.

Heh. “Lunar Real Estate Prospectus“. He keeps mentioning the role of private property rights on the moon and is now discussing the areas on the moon that are valuable enough to warant the desire.

Ever since NASA released the Exploration Systems Architecture Study there has been a semantic laziness among pundits in the community that confuses the Architecture with the Vision. Without going into specifics many habitually refer to the SDHLV, CEV and lunar return architectures as “The Vision” when they are only one suggestion by NASA for just one part of what the President articulated in his Vision for Space Exploration speech.

This confusion is potentially very dangerous for the community because it minimizes the importance of the other components of the Vision, indiscriminately lumps good programs in with the questionable ones, and creates a vacuum of clarity that causes the transition to a future administration/administrator a very dangerous time.

The Vision as articulated by the White House was rich with direction such as the use of in situ resource utilization, using the moon as a resources to build from, and the desire for cislunar infrastructure. But the President never said how those things were to be accomplished, just that they should be. The Exploration Systems Architecture Study (ESAS) outlined just one aspect of how NASA proposes to implement the transportation part of that Vision. It does not provide details on what might happen after 2020, alternate methods of implementing the Vision’s goals using private industry, or any detail on what will be done on the moon or cislunar space to create infrastructure. Pundits who criticize the the Architecture but refer to it as “The Vision” run the risk of giving the reader the impression that they are against the entire Vision when in fact they may only be quibbling with using Shuttle derived technology or have issues with the reliance on HLVs.

In light of the desire for budget controls in the aftermath of Katrina and Rita, Congress is possibly in the mood to cut budgets either now or in the future. If the space community is misunderstood by Congress to be against the Vision itself then Congress may not have any qualms about forcing the Architecture to be indiscriminately cut. Currently the Centennial Challenges program is part of the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate which is the part of NASA in charge of the Architecture as well. If ESMD’s budget is cut and money has to be moved around to support large contracts with the primes then that money will in all likelihood come from programs like Centennial Challenges. Ambiguous punditry that confuse the Vision with the Architecture now would most likely result in future cries of “That’s not what we meant!”

In 2008 there will be a new President and possibly a change in the political party in control of the Whitehouse. As we have seen with the changes in NASA between O’Keefe and Griffin, the way NASA implements the Vision is greatly dependent on the Administrator. If the next President is intent on wiping out all things Bush, including his NASA Administrator, and there is enough criticism of the Architecture to give them political cover, then all the work the community has done could be for naught. The usual response to this is that there is no alternative to the Vision so the next President and NASA Administrator will have to adopt it or else spend money on doing nothing. But as we’ve already seen with two Republican administrators the way the Vision is implemented can change radically. In essence the “alternative” to the vision IS the Architecture. And its that Architecture that changes with each administration and with each Administrator. We run the danger of letting our focus and criticism of the Architecture turn into the same “design by Congress” that doomed the Shuttle while the importance of the direction articulated in the Vision is left to wither and die.

The point of all this is a warning to pundits, myself included, to be clear about whether or not you are talking about the Architecture as articulated by NASA or the Vision as articulated by the President. They are not the same. We should all be very clear and vocal in our support for the Innovative Programs Office even as we may (or may not) support the various bits of hardware that NASA proposes to build. If you have a problem with Shuttle derived heavy lift then say so. But don’t call it part of the “VSE” because the Vision didn’t say anything about using Shuttle derived hardware.

If we are unclear in our language about what we do or don’t support then we give Congress and NASA the political cover to create something none of us want.

At Return to the Moon 2005 I ran a panel where entreprenurial companies or projects that weren’t on the formal agenda could each have five minutes to outline who they were, what they were up to and if there was anything they needed from the audience. Each participant could then take 2 questions from the audience. By the end of the conference we had 17 presentations.

Now I’m going to be doing the same thing at the Space Frontier Foundation’s Conference in Los Angeles on October 21st – 23rd. So, if you are a space entrepreneur, your company is doing the work it takes to be a real company, and you are not on the regular agenda, please drop me a note so I can schedule your 5 minute presentation. Unlike RTTM this one is not limited to lunar businesses. Anyone who is doing business in or with the space industry is encouraged to participate. Feel free to contact me at michael@rocketforge.org.

As many of your know I am the VP for Business Development at Masten Space Systems. We decided to do a bit of marketing at the XPRIZE CUP EXPO this year by becoming a sponsor and having a booth where we could talk about our products and where we were in the development process. There is more about the company and the announcements we made on the MSS blog so I won’t really go into that here. This is more about my personal observations and place to post links to pictures.

The Masten Space Systems booth

My overall impression is that it was very well run and was a very big success. I was impressed with everyone at the XPRIZE and with MC2 which was the show logistics company. I was particularly impressed by and grateful to Ian Murphy and Ryan Wilson, the two main PR guys with the XPRIZE CUP organization. They helped us out where they could and probably sacrificed a few years off of their lifespan due to the stress and general insanity of trying to manage the press at such an event.

I was also impressed with Mike Kelly’s ability to manage launch operations. Between the weather, regulatory turf wars, safety issues and the inevitable delays inherent in making a rocket perform on cue, Mike was able to keep the show relatively on schedule and safe.

John Carmack at the Saturday Flight Ops meeting

An arial shot of the same meeting

Everyone else at the show was amazing and did their absolute best to make everything work. I especially wanted to thank Audrey Weedon with XPRIZE and Anne Phillips with MC2. The help with the logistics was greatly appreciated.

This being the first time a show like this has ever been held there were may learning experiences to go around. Most of them are minor and I list them here simply to get them out there.

1) Traffic flow. The flow of people at shows like this is a black voodoo art and something that usually is solved through simple trial and error. It was also limited by available space and safety issues. I think it can be improved upon. I’m also not sure the segregation of participants from everyone else helped since it seemed to confuse the attendees about where everything was supposed to happen.

2) Participants vs Sponsors vs Exhibitors. I think that once we get into the real competitions and get beyond trying to shove everything into a single day there should be a way for up and coming competitors to be showcased separately from other Sponsors in order to give them the extra boost needed to eventually become a full Participant. I’m sure developing the criteria for that will be difficult but it will be needed anyway.

3) Weather contingencies. That wind was murderous. I hope someone does an analysis of historical weather patterns in Las Cruces so we can find out if that weekend is truly the best time for that event. Everyone in New Mexico said this wasn’t normal but I sure hope someone makes sure that’s the case. My face still feels like its been sand blasted off. And I swear that inflatable planet Earth had it in for me personally.

4) Viewing. With no viewing stands or clear lines of sight the regular attendee was hard pressed to see anything interesting. If it weren’t for XCOR’s EZ Rocket most wouldn’t have seen anything. Showing it on the Jumbotron is good but the attendee is there to see it in person. Watching it on a Really Big TV is still watching it on TV. I’m sure the liability and costs associated with large reviewing stands would be an issue so I’m not sure if I have a solution to this one.

5) Regulatory issues. Without getting into specifics about why, someone really needs to get a handle on the aviation parts of the FAA and educate them about this event and why its different than other air shows. There might even be room for legislative changes but completely ignorant on what the politics of that might be. Maybe holding at the spaceport instead of a general aviation airport will help.

6) Sun screen, lip balm, and water. In large quantities. Lots of water. Did I mention that you need a lot of water?

If the entire goal of this event was to make everyone look forward to next year then it accomplished its goal. Stretching it out to several days and having competitions with several participants will make the event much more fun and productive. I plan on being there and I plan on winning!