Rocketforge

AST has released Human Space Flight Requirements for Crew and Space Flight Participants Proposed Rule. There seem to be several significant changes from the guidelines that were published last year. One in particular is that they seem to back away from publishing medical requirements for passengers and allowing a 2nd class medical certificate for “crew”. Its fairly dense so a more thorough review will have to wait until next week.

Here’s an AP article on the NPRM.

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Before you leave to do your last minute shopping or head to the airport for the trip to see the relatives read this letter written by Walt Anderson on the back of a piece of used legal document. This Christmas put a few dollars toward Walt’s legal defense since much of where this industry is at today is a direct result of the work that Walt has done. Regardless of what you think of his case (read the documents) it is imperative that Walt receive a just trial and that’s not possible given the conditions he’s in or the lack of access he has to his lawyers.

Walt deserves better…

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My copy of Return to the Moon just arrived. I’ll read it tonight and post a review when I’m done.

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I have created a new blog called “COTSWatch.org” specifically for tracking articles and news about NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) announcements. I’m looking for authoritative submissions so if you’re interested in writing for it please let me know.

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For my day job I get an in depth view into what the entrepreneurial space industry looks like. And I see gaps that need to be filled. If you or anyone you know is qualified to do or is already doing the following, please let me know:

• Space Education K-12 Fundraiser
  There are large numbers of space related educational opportunities out there as well as a large number of sources for educational funds. Sadly finding funds to match a project is an extremely manual process that is often left to the educator.
• Space Media Channel Consultancy
  There are growing numbers of media products that have a specific space theme. But figuring out who to market it to, how and in what package is difficult.Especially if you’re targeting non-traditional venues such as science centers, IMAX theatres, art houses, etc. Having someone who understands the various market segments (educational, scientific, scifi, etc) and how they’re changing would help all of us.

I’ll post more as I can identify specific tasks that someone can wrap a business around. If you have any ideas or suggestions please forward them and I’ll add it to the list.

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NASA’s Commercial Crew/Cargo Project Office has released the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services Demonstrations (247k Word Document) announcement and is holding an industry biefing on it this Thursday and Friday (your’s truly will be there). The list of interested companies is interesting due to its mixture of traditional and “New Space” companies.

Past attempts at “alternate access to station” started just as optimistic but were deep sixed due to lobbying, politics, and budgets. As with all NASA contracts, this one also includes the ability for NASA to cancel the contract at any moment. The difference here is that NASA will be bound to pay up to the next milestone if it does cancel. The key will be to ensure that clauses like that stay in throughout this process. Anyone interested in the progress of commercial space should pay very close attention to this process. Let’s keep NASA’s feet to the fire on this one.

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I spend about an hour each morning checking everyone’s blogs and other space related punditry. Every few weeks the combination of several unrelated articles twigs something in my own mind. This week it was a combination of Jon Goff’s Stopped Clock Alert and A Modest Proposal, Rand Simberg’s The Innovator’s Dilemma, and Rick Tumlinson’s Do We Go to Play? Or Do We Go to Stay?.

If you read anything in the Innovator’s Dilemma series one of the points Clayton makes (and backs up with considerable evidence) is that it is extremely rare for an organization to change itself to take advantage of disruptive technology/business models. Either the enterprise fails completely and goes out of business or, in the case of very large organizations such as IBM, the company can survive but that particular line of business fails. Those organizations that do take advantage of it usually do so by creating physically seperate organizations that intentionally cannibalize the original enterprise.

The point of all that background is this: while I agree with Rick and Jon that NASA and Congress could do a lot better, the odds of being able to convince the existing organizations to change is so slim that its hard to justify spending your time attempting to change it. The political reality is that the various Shuttle derived systems exist because no other plan pays the political bribe that gives NASA the budgets it needs to do other things. Any suggestion that causes the standing army to stand down is dead on arrival. It sucks but its just the nature of our system of politics. Its the nature of any large organization.

Does that mean you give up and start cheerleading for the Architecture as the only show in town? No. Did Jobs and Wozniak become cheerleaders for mainframe computing? No. They simply ignored the current way of doing things. While their products did eventually disrupt the computing industry rather radically, they didn’t set out with that goal. They did it by finding new markets and routing around adoption barriers.

I’m not suggesting we completely ignore NASA and the Federal Government either. Just don’t focus on trying to change the fundamental laws of political physics. Use the bits that are useful and route around the rest. If your business plan can take advantage of NASA’s need to supply ISS cost effectively then do so. If it can take advantage of a Centennial Challenge, then do that. But we should all also be looking beyond NASA. Orbital Recovery has had great success working with European companies. The stem cell research community accomplished a great deal by routing around the Federal Government and going directly to the state legislatures. There is enough going on in other places that you could effectively build an alternate space program out of those scattered pieces. Yes, NASA will be building various bits of the CEV and other shuttle derived hardware at the same time but so what? In the end did it really matter that there were business units at IBM that were still attempting to sell mainframes during the microcomputer revolution?

Yes, it sucks that politics is illogical and that it dictates that NASA will end up deploying a flawed system. But our system of government is simply incapable of the kind of radical change that doing the right thing would require. Congress will never vote to disturb the standing army. It will disappear only when everyone has retired or been hired off by other concerns. When you’re presented with a brick wall like that don’t beat your head against it attempting to knock it down. Figure out a way to climb over it or go around it.

UPDATE: I should be clear here that I’m talking mostly about the Architecture, not all of NASA or the Federal Government. Over the past few months of market analysis I’ve been doing for my day job I have been learning how large NASA is. There are some bits of it that are useful such as Centennial Challenges, Sounding Rockets Program Office, and even COTS. And outside NASA there is AFRL, and Dod’s Space Test Program.

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