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I've been way to busy to blog lately but this one just seemed to important to pass up. Apparently the Robotic and Human Lunar Exploration Strategic Roadmap Committee has been considering four different proposals for how to go to the moon.

Options A, B, and C are extremely underwhelming, doing nothing more than specifying a flight timeline. No context for ensuring sustainability or for creating any infrastructure. But Option D, on the other hand, is extremely interesting:

Now, I'm not exactly sure how to go about lobbying that group to make the right decision. But I could do something fun so that others might, plus, it makes for good conference wear when your at ISDC or Space Access:

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Life is a wee bit busy due to the startup. But after prodding from others I finally put the twiki back up. See the block on the left under “Twiki Links” for the main entry points. The twiki was the entry point for the defacing I was hit with a few months ago so you can imagine my reluctance to bring it back up.

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I'm sure most of you have seen some form of Henry's email about HR 5382 passing the Senate yesterday. In case you haven't Rand Simberg has a much better wrap up than I could do.

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Commercial Space Launch Bill Nears Final Test In Senate

 Urgent - Call Or Fax Both Your Senators Before Monday 12/6/04! 

When last we saw HR 5382 (The Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act,

which does useful things for would-be private space passenger carriers)

it had just been approved by the House of Representatives. (See

http://www.space-access.org/updates/sau106.htm for details.) (By the

way, thanks again for your efforts! 5382 needed a two-thirds majority

to pass the House under the streamlined procedure used in the last-

second Congressional rush, and got it, barely - chances are good you all

made the difference in that one.)

At the time, we told you that the Senate might also pass HR 5382 before

this 108th Congress gives way to the newly elected 109th (at which point

all unfinished 108th business simply goes away) but we were a little

short on details, and asked you all to stand by.

Alas, we're still a little short on details, but the time has come to

act. HR 5382 does still have a long-shot chance to pass, we know that.

This Congress will be back in session one last time early next week,

mainly to once again try to pass two major bills, the huge catchall

“omnibus budget” spending measure and the “9/11” intelligence agencies

reorganization. The situation is complicated - more about it in the

“Background” section below - but what you can do to improve 5382's odds

is simple:

Between now and the beginning of next week, contact both Senators from

your state and ask them to support HR 5382. The mechanics of this

should be familiar by now, though given that we have a bit more time

(Monday December 6th is the earliest the Senate might look at HR 5382

again) you have some options:

Phone Call

If you don't have the phone number of your two Senators' DC offices

handy, log on to http://www.vote-smart.org and enter your nine-digit zip

code in the Find Your Representatives box, and scroll down to

“Senators”. Then phone both Washington DC offices (the area code 202

numbers) and tell whoever answers that you're from [your hometown], and

you're calling to ask Senator [your Senator's name here] to support HR

1. If they ask you for more info, do your best to provide it (take a

quick look at “Background” below - the short version is “because it's

important for the success of the new commercial space flight industry”)

then thank them for their time and ring off. If you get answered

directly by a voicemail (more likely over the weekend) give the same

basic short pitch.

Fax

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 little weight. If you want to

write, fax it if you can.)

                           Background 

EVERBODY reading this who votes in the US needs to do this - every

Senator counts, as the only way the Senate will consider HR 5382 in the

very short time remaining in this Congress is under “unanimous consent”

rules - meaning all it takes is one Senator to put an (anonymous by

Senate custom) “hold” on HR 5382 and the bill is dead.

Our information is that when HR 5382 came up the week before last,

several Senators did so - but we don't know anything useful about who,

or why - all we have is rumor and speculation.

Our estimate of the situation is that any attempt to do precise

targetting or message-tailoring would likely do more harm than good.

Our best shot is to contact the entire Senate and make the positive case

for HR 5382 to each and every Senator. If we're lucky, the combination

of constituent interest, information, and possible persuasion from

fellow Senators who've also been hearing about it will sway all the

holdouts. As we said, it's a bit of a long shot - but every last one of

you can help improve the odds. As soon as we've sent this out, we're

going to go look up the numbers and make the calls - you do it too!

For more info on the history and content of HR 5382, see

http://www.space-access.org/updates/sau105.htm and

http://www.space-access.org/updates/sau102.htm.

(HR 5382 is the latest hard-fought compromise version of HR 3752, which

in turn started out life as HR 3245.)

                   Our Brief Supporting Pitch 

This new commercial space passenger industry has huge promise. It's

appropriate to have the FAA stringently regulate risk to uninvolved

bystanders from the start, but the technology is still brand new and

there's a lot yet to learn about the best most reliable ways to do

things. 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 took generations of accumulated aviation

experience to get.

    Some Points From The Chair Of The House Science Committee 

This bill concerns the commercial space flight industry, an industry

that is now of interest only to entrepreneurs and daredevils and should

not be regulated as if it were a commercial airline acting as common

carrier…

The bill does give FAA unlimited authority to regulate these new

rockets to ensure that they do not harm anyone on the ground and to

ensure that the industry is learning from any failures. The bill also

gives FAA additional authority after 8 years by which time the

industry should be less experimental.

[SAS note - this new compromise provision has caused some confusion -

our understanding is it allows FAA AST to regulate only specific

matters that have caused actual problems for passenger/crew safety for

the first 8 years.]

[Aircraft industry-style “mature technology” regulation] would be the

equivalent of not letting the Wright Brothers test their ideas without

first convincing federal officials that nothing could go wrong.

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Space Access Society's sole purpose is to promote radical reductions

in the cost of reaching space. You may redistribute this Update in

any medium you choose, as long as you do it unedited in its entirety.

You may reproduce sections of this Update beyond obvious “fair use”

quotes if you credit the source and include a pointer to our website.

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Space Access Society

http://www.space-access.org

space.access@space-access.org

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As some of you may know, my day job is with VeriSign R&D. Over the past year or so most of my work has been focusing on standards development and product deployment within the EPCglobal Network framework. Essentially its all about the confluence of RFID and Internet based B2B standards for frictionless supply chain management.

Well, I've decided to go off and do my own consulting and software startup that will target the smaller companies out there that have never been able to take advantage of the supply chain management techniques that Wal-Mart and P&G use to remain competitive. But it's not about EDI. It's about using the Internet as a platform for providing radically cheaper solutions that will disrupt the current supply chain management marketplace. The company is called Refactored Networks, LLC and will be open for business around January 1.

I'm still doing space stuff in my spare time though! And I'm still parttime at Masten Space Systems.

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Things are slowly coming back together after being hacked last week. Rocketforge is back and the wiki should be back later this evening. This is the default postnuke theme which I'll change soon.

I hope the deepest level of hell is reserved for those who crack and deface websites…

*Update: * Apparently they got in through the twiki. I received the security notice yesterday which does me a fat lot of good now. Oh well, live and learn….

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Update From James Muncy:

bq.

The House Leadership just announced that there would be no more votes tonight. The House of Representatives will convene at 9am on Saturday morning to consider outstanding votes plus the Omnibus approps bill, etc… so phonecalls, faxes, and emails to House Members, especially House Democrats, should continue until at least mid-morning Eastern Time on Saturday. Remember: HR 5382 is a bipartisan bill that was developed as a compromisebetween the House-passed HR3752 and the Senate Commerce CommitteeÂ’s DemocraticStaffers. So nobody should think it is a partisan issue or a pro-Republican bill.

Oberstar's number is (202) 225-6211

DeFazio's number is (202) 225-6416

bq.

Friday, November 19, 2004

Dear Space Advocates & Correspondents:

   This afternoon the House of Representatives had a 40 minute debate on

legislation designed to advance the U.S. commercial human spaceflight industry. It was a good and spirited debate, with bipartisan supporters speaking in favor, and two partisan Democrats speaking against HR5382.

Unfortunately, the opponents' arguments reflected the same misunderstanding of this issue that so many people have. Their presumption is that the federal government needs to set standards to protect the safety of the early adventurers who wish to buy a risky ride into space. Even before the vehicles that would fly them are designed, let alone built and flying. Frankly, Mr. Oberstar and Mr. DeFazio, the Ranking Minority Members of the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee and its Aviation Subcommittee, seem to believe that we need to regulate spaceflight as if it were just another approach to Aviation.

   But rockets are not airplanes, and the Commercial Space Launch Act and the U.S. commercial space transportation industry are not under the jurisdiction of the Aviation Subcommittee.  Space is a new sphere of economic activity, and the House's experts on these issues are members of the House's Committee that is focused on America's future, the Science Committee.



   More importantly, the House worked for several months with the Senate to develop a compromise version of the original HR3752, which was passed by a vote of 402 to 1 in March of this year.  It is important to note that HR3752 told the Secretary of Transportation to promote and license the carrying of "space flight participants" for compensation, i.e. to make money, under an "informed consent" regime.  In other words, the rocket company had to tell the passenger how likely it was they might crash, and then the passenger could choose to take the risk or not.  All regulation was focused on making sure the rockets didn't hurt anyone on the ground.  The Secretary was not given any authority - and has none under current law - to regulate in order to protect people riding on the vehicle.



    And I might just point out, Mr. Oberstar and Mr. DeFazio both voted for HR3752 in March, along with every other Democratic member of the Transportation Committee who showed up to vote.  (The only vote against HR3752 in March was by a libertarian Republican who didn't think the government had any right to regulate rockets at all !)



    So today's choice on HR5382 is a choice not between one level of safety and another.  It's between Congress telling the American people they have a right to go into space and an expectation that, over time, it will become more affordable and more reliable to do so... and saying "we can't be bothered to write legislation to help enable this new industry".  Fortunately, the American people *already* have the right to go into space.  And the American free market will make it ever-more-affordable and ever-safer, even without the help of federal regulators.  But it would be a good thing if this bipartisan legislation were enacted into law to help accelerate the process.



    Ironically, the two members speaking in favor of higher safety today

will actually leave the industry free to do whatever it wants under current law, with no process by which the Secretary could, let alone would, start to set safety standards. So perhaps they are more committed to stopping legislation - and a new industry - than safety, after all.

James Muncy

Consultant to several Commercial Human Spaceflight companies

703-370-4539

james.muncy@polispace.com

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Yep. I got hit by that defacement contest that's currently running. I'll be recovering over the next day or so. Stupid kiddies…..

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Leonard David has an article on space.com about Bigelow's “America's Space Prize”:

bq.

a spacecraft capable of taking a crew of no fewer than five people to an altitude of 400 kilometers and complete two orbits of the Earth at that altitude. Then they have to repeat that accomplishment within 60 days.

While the first flight must demonstrate only the ability to carry five crew members, the winner will have to take at least five people up on the second flight.

And one more thing. They have to do it by Jan. 10, 2010.

Some other details include:

• limited to American companies/individuals only
• in addition to the $50 million, Bigelow is also prepared to offer $200 million in “conditional purchase agreements for six flights of a selected vehicle” to non-first place finishers that, due to various reasons, may have a highly qualified product but just had bad timing or bad luck
• an additional $800 million in options contracts for 24 flights will be available over a period of about four to 4.5 years, Bigelow said.
• the conditionals include a) if the government regulates it to impossibility and b) if Bigelow doesn’t have anything to launch to.

Go read the whole thing.

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HR 3752 Current Status

(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!

Space Access Society's sole purpose is to promote radical reductions in the cost of reaching space. You may redistribute this Update in any medium you choose, as long as you do it unedited in its entirety.You may reproduce sections of this Update beyond obvious “fair use” quotes if you credit the source and include a pointer to our website.

Space Access Society

http://www.space-access.org

space.access@space-access.org

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