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This is purely personal and not related to space at all: I setup the wife's blog a few weeks ago and she has posted her first entry today. She's at Kathys Corner and she likes comments. Treat her nicely!

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Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) has an article in the Washington Times: Not just moonwalking that supports the President's new direction in space. I particularly like this section where he discusses the fact that the moon is profitable: bq. Finally, the profitability of a lunar presence must be understood. The moon is the appropriate staging site for future space explorationandnear-Earth space activity. It is an easier launch platform than Earth and is a source of raw materials. Due to the lower gravity, the cost of space flights originating on the moon is significantly less than for Earth. Much of the hardware for living on the moon and for the exploration can be made from raw materials mined from the moon itself.

My real concern is that these efforts will be caught up in election year “whatever the other guy says, its bad” kind politicing we're seein these days. Is there a pro-space, private enterprise Democrat out there we can talk in to defuse the politics before they ruin the good stuff along the way?

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Found via Instapundit: A Washington Times article, New age of exploration, suggests that the President's new space policy will lead us into a period of expansion into space similar to our expansion into the New World during the 1700s. The article suggests several potential problems: new vulberabilities, new competitors, and high costs. Given the potential of the payouts that might happen, could we please have these problems? Some problems are good to have. Citing them is sort of like complaining that your massage was to long at your private resort.

As I'm sure it is with most of you, the most fundamental, indeed, the most core dream of my life is to be able to see humans expanding across the solar system and beyond. But whether or not President Bush's policy shift is the beginning is something I'm still not convinced of.

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The President's Commission on Moon, Mars and Beyond is holding its second meeting today, starting at 1:00 PM. Rocketforge is going to attempt a realtime discussion by sending comments directly from the #arocket IRC channel to the ArocketIRC wiki page. So, if you're interested in commenting on the meeting as its broadcast, stop by the #arocket IRC channel on irc.freenode.net and help us out. Once the meeting is over we will edit the wiki page into one coherent 'blog' entry of the meeting.

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Just FYI: the #arocket channel on freenode.net is getting a small, regular crowd now. So if you want to talk to people about things like JP Aerospace or upcoming space conferences, drop by!

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CP Technologies Propellant Class Enrollment

February 17, 2004

Web posted at: 2:04 PM EST

(ROL Newswire) – CP Technologies has opened enrollment for their next solid rocket motor design class. It runs three days and starts on April 16, 2004.

The class costs $195 and includes the “How To Make Amateur Rockets” 2nd Edition bookset, all motor/propellant materials and lunches. A $30 discount is given to students who already own the 2nd Edition bookset. Students do not have to be US citizens and do not have to be members of any rocketry organization.

After students learned how to design a composite solid rocket motor, the class instructor assigns each student a maximum peak chamber pressure and pressure-time curve goal. The students design a rocket motor to meet that goal and then mixed and cast the propellant as well as make the motor parts. The motors are static fired on the last day of the class at Wickman Spacecraft & Propulsion Company facilities. In the previous classes, no student has had a motor failure or failed to come close to the design goal.

People interested in the class should sign up as soon as possible as class size is restricted to seven students. More information on the class can be found here

Source: ROL Newswire Service

[ posted by iz ]

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The International Assocation of Space Entrepreneurs just sent out this quarter's newsletter. You can sign up on their front page. The newsletter includes information about this years list of speakers and events as well as columns from entrepreneurs, investors, and service professionals. The March event blurb: bq. Please join us for the kick-off of IASEÂ’s 2004 Speaker Series with two very special guests: Eric Anderson, Co-Founder and CEO of Space Adventures, and CNN Anchor/Correspondent Miles OÂ’Brien.

During a unique “live onstage interview” by Miles, Eric will talk about the entrepreneurial challenges of “Building a New Company While Building a New Industry.” He will share his lessons learned from years in the space tourism industry and apply them to other markets, such as bioinformatics and nanotechnology.

The newsletter is worth it. Go sign up. Now.

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The President's Commission on Moon, Mars and Beyond held its first public meeting yesterday. While there are no transcripts, the video archive is available. Here is some other coverage: Space.com, HobbySpace, Florida Today, Voice of America, etc.

I can usually tell what I'm going to write about when I find myself talking back to the TV. Three seemingly unrelated topics got me going: 'political sustainability', 'inspiring education as a goal', and the almost dismissive nature of the commercialization question during the press conference. The recurring theme of the meeting was how to ensure the vision is sustained through almost 10 election cycles. I'll quote the VOA article since it's the most succinct:

bq.

Mr. Tyson says history shows that huge national expenditures, whether for pyramids or cathedrals, Columbus' voyage to the Americas, or development of nuclear weapons, are sustained only if linked to economic return, defense, or praise of royalty or deity. He notes that the promise of scientific exploration has never driven major national programs and doubts that it would sustain interest in Mr. Bush's new space policy.

“While we need to make sure science and exploration are part of any discussion, in the end, learning from history, the public will have to be convinced of the truth of the space program in our lives, and that is the actual role it plays in driving our economic strength,” he said.

But a witness before the president's moon-Mars commission disagrees. “If all we do is talk about our own industrial base and how great this is for jobs, I don't think this mission gets furthered in any way,” he said.

Mark Bitterman is with the U.S. business promotion group the Chamber of Commerce. He believes the public is interested in space exploration for itself and cites the wide attention to the Mars rovers and the Hubble Space Telescope.

“There is a lot of excitement out there,” he said. “I think once the possibility of these new discoveries begins to become clear and they are discussed in the schools, kids get excited about it, that's what I think will really matter.”

Wrong. (Click the Read More link below to see why) Dr. Tyson is correct that large projects funded by national expenditures happen only because of greed, fear, king or god. But that assumes that our goal should be building cathedrals. Bazaars are much more sustainable. Of the four motivators Dr. Tyson cites, only the first builds sustainable economies and industries that can outlast presidents and congressmen. Fear only works while there is an enemy. King or god isn't relevant anymore and if it were it would only relevant to priests (sounds like NASA to me!).

And this is where Mr. Bitterman makes his mistake. It was typical of what happened during the Dot Com bubble. He mistakes hits/eyeballs with purchases. As companies like CMGI found, the typical Internet user is a a fickle thing. Sure, the Mars rovers are getting lots of hits. But so did Janet Jacksons bare chest. At least she has a prayer of monetizing that in the form of record sales. There is novelty with the current rovers. But what happens when there are twenty rovers and they're all returning the same pictures? Its the same thing that happened with Apollo: when the pictures started to look the same it became routine. Boring. That didn't mean it actually was boring or routine. Just that the viewer perceived it that way. It's the same reason men who are married to super models still have affairs.

So sustainability justified through web site hit rates is a dead end. Case in point: CMGI is currently trading at 2.74.

This brings me to the goal of inspiring kids to go into science, math and engineering fields. Here in Georgia there is a recurring question of how to move the state up in the ranks of high tech 'corridors' (the valley, northern Virginia, etc). This always generates platitudes like “we need a first rate education system!”, “we need mentoring!”, “we need technology showcases!”, etc. None of these works. They are symptoms of an underlying cause: the availability of equity, the ability to get silly rich while you're still young enough to enjoy it.

People emulate what they see as success. If you see someone in Atlanta driving a hot sports car or wearing really expensive clothes, the odds are that he/she is either a professional sports star or a rap musician. So when kids see that they learn early on that the easiest way to get the wheels or the threads is to do what they see. If you see a hot sports car in the valley the driver is most likely to be a technology entrepreneur. As a result, the number of students in math, science, engineering and business is much higher. The point is this: if you want to bring kids into math and science oriented fields you have to figure out how they can get rich doing it.

Lets put it another way. A friend teaches in an MBA program and as a result is often visited by dignitaries from other countries that are attempting to learn why America is so successful. In this particular case they were trying to understand their brain drain. Their best and brightest were going to school in America but they weren't bringing that education back home. My friend told them the basic solution was to make sure these students had the resources back home to make them and their families very rich, that the only motivator worth mentioning was wealth. One of the visiting dignitaries became incensed at this. He asserted that these students should come back home for the glory of the motherland and sacrifice themselves by teaching others for a government stipend. One of the other dignitaries then apologized to the MBA professor for the fact that his friend was stuck in the Napoleonic era.

Are we going to base the future education of our children and the viability of our economy on Napoleonic concepts of motivation? Our system, indeed, the American Dream itself, is based on the basic motivation of improving ones life through economic freedom.

If you want children to be motivated to go into high tech careers such as engineering and aerospace then you need to figure out how to get large numbers of current engineers into sports cars. Figure out how to make the aerospace industry look like the computer and Internet industries and we'll have large populations living on Mars in our lifetimes.

And that brings me to the last item. I realize that commercialization wasn't on this meetings agenda so I may be overly critical. But the fact that even one meeting went by without commercialization being the core agenda item means that we are still stuck in the Napoleonic era. Every meeting should have that at its core. When asked specifically about commercialization, Aldridge dismissed it as for a future meeting. Dr. Tyson elaborated by reiterating his point about the role of guaranteed mail delivery for early passenger aviation. But then he went on to say that the long term sustainability of the program shouldn't be dependent on an unproven and currently non-existent private, commercial space sector.

Given history, psychology and the system that we've built here in the United States that has made us the most powerful economic force in the world, I assert that the only way to ensure long term sustainability of the goal is through commercialization at the very core of this undertaking. To do anything else is Napoleonic and will continue to cause our space industry to be the economic equivalent of a third world country.

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or “How I stopped worrying and learned to love the end-to-end model”

Doc Searls and David Weinberger, co-authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto, have put together a 10-part guide that details the end-to-end model from an economic/networking/socio/political viewpoint as an attempt to educate those that want to turn the Internet into either television or an FM radio.

This concept is tired directly to Metcafle's Law and the idea of disintermediation and is the direct cause behind things like Amazon and Ebay.

The question for us is to find a way to apply these methods to getting our asses into space while we all get rich in the process. With CNC processes becoming cheaper is it possible to remotely 'print' rocket parts? I.e. moving the fabrication of aerospace hardware to the edges? What components of the resources we need for launch can we commoditize and make 'stupid'?

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Robert Roy Britt (Space.com) has an interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson. Its mostly harmless. I particularly like how he downplays the lack of a modern day Carl Sagan. I loved Cosmos as a kid. As a kid. Its to bad he, like many scientists, ignored economics. But the part that stood out was this:

bq.

Tyson: I like to take a broader view. Early pilot-engineers, who invented or designed their own airplanes, were supported by the government in the form of a guaranteed load of airmail. That enabled these people to be more and more innovative, to be more competitive to try and get the government contract. What emerged from this were airplanes that no longer required the government support because they could then fly paying passengers.

In developing all the technology necessary to go to Mars, stuff is going to get invented. Look at the government investment in the Global Positioning System (GPS). It was initially a military utility, but now there are commercial GPS receivers in cars and even in wristwatches.

These are whole industries that have been spawned and given unto private enterprise to then make money and create jobs.

If it means we can one day get into space so cheaply that you can set up a hotel, fine, let it be so. If it's a hotel with a zero-g theme park, fine. Business will go wherever it thinks it can make a buck. Right now space is kind of expensive, so only governments can do it.

The emphasis is mine. If governments keep doing it then it will always be expensive. I have a bottle of champagne ready for when Burt Rutan, John Carmack, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Dennis Laurie, Kistler Aerospace, and Walt Anderson prove him wrong.

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