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For those Hobbyspace readers who have been waiting for the SpaceX update summary, there's some good news and some not as good news. Good news is that the firing went off without a hitch according to spaceflightnow.com, and I do have some eye-candy for that. The bad news is that the update hasn't been sent out, and I'm not sure if it'll come out before Tuesday since Monday is Memorial Day. We'll see. If it comes out today I'll post a summary as soon as reasonably possible. Otherwise, check back on Monday or Tuesday. In the meantime, here is some eye-candy from the test (courtesy of spaceflightnow.com):

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It seems comment spammers have found postnuke finally so I've had to turn off anonymous comments. Sorry 'bout that….

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I have succumbed to the borg that is Flickr and posted my ISDC pics, with comments on who certain people are. There aren't very many though, the lighting was horrible and my photography skills blow chunks. One of my favorites is when Burt received the von Braun award:

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In the early nineties I was privileged to be at the IETF meeting where the NCSA Mosaic browser made its first public debut. A little over a year later Netscape took that browser and that team public, starting the land rush we know and love today. The IETF meetings that followed Netscape's IPO had that excitement and anticipation of things to come that was readily apparent at this past ISDC meeting in Washington, D.C.

The conference was extremely well run (if a bit pricey). The hotel could barely handle the crowd since original estimates were for 400-500. As of Saturday afternoon it had gone over 800. While I think being not on Memorial Day weekend helped, the speaker list and competency of the promotional material helped a great deal.The gala event on Saturday at the Udvar-Hazy Center was phenomenal. More on the gala later.

There were several important announcements such as the lunar ISRU Centennial Challenges prize and the Planetary Society's partnership with NSS on the 2006 ISDC (putting to rest the robots vs humans debate). Several sessions had tantalizing tidbits of information such as the name of WhiteNight version 2 (“Eve”), Victoria Principle will be one of Virgin Galactic's initial customers and spokesperson in the US, and the probability that the “Virgin Spaceship Enterprise” may top out at 400,000 feet.

There was a much greater focus on the business of space that left me feeling very hopeful. There were lawyers there discussing things other than property law. A few businesses were there snooping around to see when they might be able to sell to this nascent industry (I predicted the 1Q 2007).

There were some very historical moments: Konrad Dannenberg presenting the NSS Von Braun Award to Burt Rutan while Buzz Aldrin sits at the table directly in front. In the future I think the fact that George Whitesides was there as well will become more and more historic. The gala had Hugh Downs speak as the Chairman of NSS' Board of Governors. I had the distinct pleasure of receiving the special airport search treatment the same time Mr. Downs was receiving his. You'd think the process would be able to assume that making Hugh Downs take off his shoes isn't going to enhance national security.

My session went well, I would have liked a larger audience but dozen or so I had were motivated which is what I was after. The session before me was on the use of GPS in logistics, specifically trucking in the UK. Being related to what I do for my day job I found that to be useful as well.

The gala on Saturday night was well worth the price of admission. Even for the VIP bit. I still have to remind myself that I'm a lightweight when it comes to alcohol. I almost spilled by martini on Rich Pournelle which would not have been a good move. The ambiance. The people. The historic people and the historic vehicles. That much history side by side with that much future potential left me feeling like a baton had been passed, or is at least in the act of being passed. And yes, I think that making the affair “black tie” was appropriate.

The luncheon on Sunday with Peter Diamandis was even cool. The awarding of the Todd B. Hawley Award to Loreta Hidalgo, the short film about his life and Loreta's speech afterward really illustrated just how marvelous and tight the family of ISU graduates is. If I had my undergraduate I'm sure I would have applied for the Masters in Space Management by now.

Sure, there were some glitches with timing and the audiovisual setup, but over all I'd say the NSS has really come a loooong way over the past year or so. And I think that is pretty much all George Whitesides doing. NSS has better be careful, some company looking for a CEO is going to snag him with a job offer he can't refuse.

The Los Angeles team have a stretch goal in order to meet the expectations the DC guys set….

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The sessions for the Commerce track at ISDC is about to start. It only has two presentations. mine and one on using the GPS as a space technology that's used in various aspects of general commerce (supply chain management, asset tracking, etc).

I hope that next time the Commerce track, not the Benefits of Space track, is the one that has over 10 presentations and a room with over 200 peopl ein it.

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This session is about Virgin Galactic and their immediate plans.

SpaceShipTwo's altitude goal will be 360,000 feet and possibly 400,000 feet. And passengers will be able to leave their seat and have enough time to move about and look out the window. It will be called “Virgin SpaceShip Enterprise”. And the motherwhip (White Knight 2) will b identical to the Enterprise so that the next set of flight participants can ride up and watch the previous set actually take off. They even want to do parabolic flights using the White Knight 2 to train the fligh participants in zero-g movement before they actually lauch.

They'll be giving participants 5 minutes of weightlessness.

They're asking their initial customers lots of questions to try and characterize the needs and expectations of the market segment:

Their first concern is “when it is going to happen”. They're answer is Spring 2008.

Apparently we would all recgonize a lot of the names in the customer list.

All of the passengers expect a training period but it can't last longer than a week.

The WhiteNight version 2 will b ecalled “Eve” after Richard Branson's mother.

Adrian Reynard (moder expert on composites) is one of their customers.

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Elon Musk spoke at lunch and announced that the hot fire test is going to happen tomorrow and that they still expect to launch in the first half of August.

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Brian Chase, VP of Washington Operations, Space Foundation

The Honorable Robert S. Walker, Chairman, Wexler & Walker Public Policy Associates

Brett Alexander, VP of Government Relations, Transformational Space, LLC

So far Brian Chase is saying that while some of what the Commission said is going forward but other things need help. The things that need help:

Outreach

Interfacing to industry

Entrepreneurial engagement (apparently the top is committed to this but not clear if the leadership can instill that into the agency below it)

Cost accounting has improved under O'Keefe but still has a way to go.

Sustainability, no solid grasp on politicla sustainability.

Space Exploration Steering Council, no progress.

Separate research agency (DARPA for NASA), no progress.

Field Centers, no progress and none expected.

Bob Walker: Perspective on what the committee members were thinking so you can determine if the direction is right. “We have a new leadership at NASA that is intently focused on the President's Vision.” He has made it clear that the Vision is where is going and that Bob Walker thinks this is a good direction.

Bob Walker thinks its a positive step forward to accelerate the CEV. The committee didn't feel it had the ability to say “move the timeframe forward” because that was set by the president. The whole effort of the committee was to do it in the existing budge constraints. So he is somewhat concerned about trying to do new vehicle development while you're still flying shuttle. It potentially conflicts with the goal of enabling and using the entrepreneurial community because that community is saying we can develop it faster than you can. [ed. but Griffin says he can't wait] And if you accelerate it that means going with a big Prime and that Prime is going to lobby against an entreprenurial parallel effort.

Also, by moving CEV forward you're going to impact existing programs (i.e. aeronautical). The committee suggested moving the centers to FFRDCs because they weren't getting the infrastructure resources. By moving to another economic source you can do that. If you don't there isn't going to be money to upgrade their infrastructure. So you can either BRAC 4 bases or find alternative money locations.

You can't do the President's Vision with old space policies and techniques. You have to have a space industry that is broad and deep. The Commission said its possible but only if there is a space economy that it exists inside.

Brett Alexander is recalling the tiime after Columbia when he was fighting for the Vision and for “human space flight”. But what made this vision different than SEI, etc:

Bold, powerful, intuitive

Sustainable, affordable over generations, not decades

Create a frontier

Private sector must play a role

Vision is to make space part of our “economic zone”

What should NASA do?

Moon, Mars and Beyond

Traditional development and contracting framework is fine in the main

Exploration is a proper role of government

LEO

Unlock the frontier

Pursue services to get out of the operations business

Cargo to the station

But that's only one customer

Crew - higher payoff

Significant public market if you get the ticket price low enough

Makes exploration sustainable and gets NASA out of the LEO business

Ways that NASA can be non-traditional now:

NASA “picks a winner” that meets a NASA need but in a way that enables capability that the private sector can use.

NASA pays for development cost so that resulting cost to the consumer is low enough

IP/hardware stay with the private sector, NASA buys a service along with others

Other non-traditional means: rapid prototyping, hardware milestones, and fixed price contracts done for 10% of the cost of traditional Primes.

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Esther Dyson, Release 1.0, Former ICANN Chair

David Anderman, COO Constellation Services

Pat Bahn, CEO, TGV

Rich Pournelle, Director Investor Relations, XCOR

Brian Feeney, Team Leader, da Vinci Project

Chuck Lowry

Jim Benson

Esther wants to help do with space what happened with the Internet and computing in general. She's doing this by questioning each panel member:

Right now each panel members is giving an overview of their company: Space Dev, Constellation Services International, Rocketplane, TGV, and XCOR.

Nothing new so far if you've heard the standard marketing pitch from all of these guys.

Esther is trying to get some of these guys to say they have revenue but so far none have except for XCOR.

I'm off to a meeting so I'll have to post more details later….

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I'm at the International Space Development Conference and wireless has just started working so I'm going to try and get most of what's been happening down here:

NSS awarded Burt Rutan the Von Braun Award during thi s mornings plenary. Burt then did his usual spiel and had a blast lambasting NASA. Most of the speakers since then have incorporated some response to Burt in their talk.

Admiral Steidle gave a talk during lunch that discussed some “non-traditional” procurement methods but didn't give any details.

Brent Sponberg anounced a new Centenial Challenges prize for lunar ISRU development. The first team to produce a device that produces 5kg of oxygen wins $250,000.

Right now I'm listening to Patricia Grace Smith, Associate Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation, FAA talk about recent developments.

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