Space Access Update #111 04/05/05

Space Access Update #111 04/05/05
Copyright 2005 by Space Access Society
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Contents this issue:

- SA'05 Notes

- Low-Cost Launch: The Concept Is Spreading

- What We Want From NASA: Low Cost Hardware/Flight Demos
- Pay For Results, Not Process

- Industry News Roundup

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SA'05 Notes

First a few quick notes about our upcoming Space Access '05
conference,
April 28-30 in Phoenix Arizona:
- The latest SA'05 info will be posted from now till the
conference at
http://www.space-access.org/updates/sa05info.html
- Our $79 hotel room rate is guaranteed available through April
6th -
we'll very likely be able to negotiate extensions as the
conference
approaches, but book by the 6th to be sure.
- If you have trouble getting our rate or booking the type of
room that
you want, try calling our hotel (Four Points by Sheraton Phoenix
Metrocenter, 602 997-5900, mention "space access") between 8 am
and 4 pm
weekdays Mountain Standard Time (EDT-3) since outside those
hours calls
automatically get switched to the Sheraton national reservations
center,
which seems to have occasional problems with local hotel
details.
- If you still have any difficulty booking a room at our rate
for SA'05,
drop us a note at ASAP. Thanks! And now
back to
our irregularly scheduled Update...

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Low-Cost Launch: The Concept Is Spreading

It's a good thing this is America, where "may you live in
interesting
times" is still more blessing than curse. Kudos to the X-Prize,
Scaled
Composites and their subs, and Paul Allen - a lot of people are
now
aware that there are alternatives to the Government-Space
Industrial
Complex, paths off the planet that don't cost major slices of a
national
budget. The consequences have started arriving one after
another.

One we should get out of the way immediately: Watch your wallet,
the
quick-buck artists are here. The email we saw about the
Nigerian
astronaut stranded on the Space Station until we take our 15%
cut of an
international funds transfer to pay for his return trip (please
provide
our account info) was actually pretty funny, but we suspect that
the SEC
wouldn't be at all amused by some of the outfits that have
popped up
peddling stock lately. Caveat investor... Not that every
outfit around
before the field got hot was a good place to put money either,
but at
least most actually meant well. Thomas Olson, Paul Contursi,
and David
Livingston have a short article in The Space Review with eight
things to
watch for when you're thinking of investing in a space startup,
at
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/329/1. Strongly
recommended.

Another thing we've seen is multiple announcements of brand-new
conferences and/or newsletters. Our rule of thumb is, if all
the
promoters seem to know is "X-Prize", "Scaled", and "SpaceDev",
they
probably have a way to go before they're worth much attention.

One new entrant in the conference field we are paying attention
to is
Esther Dyson, of computer journalism fame, with her "Flight
School" one-
day new-aviation/new-space event, debuting last month tagged
onto the
end of her long-time influential "PC Forum" IT industry
conference. At
$1492 "Flight School" was a bit steep for our budget (though one
way to
look at that is that the price succeeded - it kept the riff-raff
out!)
but response we've heard has been positive - introducing her
field to
our field is generally seen as a good thing. Given Dyson's
reputation
as one of the sharper tools in the shed, her extensive
information
industry contacts, and her considerable resources, we expect
we'll be
hearing more from her.

One of the bigger space conferences around, the Space
Foundation's
National Space Symposium annual gettogether of everybody who's
anybody
in Big Aerospace (in Colorado Springs this week) this year
features an
"Entrepreneurial Spirit" panel with Courtney Stadd, Eric
Anderson of
Space Adventures, Jim Benson of SpaceDev, David Gump of T/Space,
and
George Nield of FAA AST, plus an appearance by SpaceX's Elon
Musk on a
New Directions In Launch panel. It's a good start. Also of
interest on
their schedule, a live broadcast on NASA TV of "The Vision For
Space
Exploration: Getting There From Here" (we wonder where that
phrase
percolated up from...) set for 11 am to 12:15 pm mountain time
on
Wednesday April 6th. (As conference organizers ourselves, we'd
advise
allowing for a bit of schedule slop if you're setting up to tape
it.)

Another major player that is starting to pay attention: NASA.
We don't
have much detail yet, but Explorations Systems Mission
Directorate,
ESMD, the large slice of NASA HQ tasked with making the Vision
For Space
Exploration happen, seems to be at least thinking about some
sort of
"non-traditional" Earth-To-Orbit development path in parallel
with their
main effort, the multi-billion dollar Crewed Exploration Vehicle
(CEV)
that is planned as the mainstay of post-Shuttle NASA manned
spaceflight.

No further detail of what ESMD has in mind available yet, but we
speculate this may have something to do with the schedule gap
between
Shuttle shutdown in 2010 and CEV operations start in 2014 - both
SpaceX
and Kistler (whose reorganization plan was just approved by the
bankruptcy court) plan on having suitably-sized
"non-traditional"
boosters flying well before 2010, and there are a number of
"non-
traditional" parties who are more than willing (and quite
possibly able)
to put basic crewed ships on top. Add in Bigelow's "America's
Space
Prize" ($50 million for just such a basic crewed ship) as extra
development leverage, and a plausible picture begins to emerge.
However
speculative it is at the moment, of course.

One thing we do know for su Rick Tumlinson of the Space
Frontier
Foundation arranged for David Gump of T/Space, Tom Taylor of
Lunar
Transportation Systems, and Jim Muncy of PoliSpace to brief
NASA's Lunar
Exploration Roadmap Committee last Thursday, and by Friday the
committee
had a new Commercial Subcommittee, consisting of those four
gentlemen
plus Jeff Taylor of the University of Hawaii. Our
congratulations to
all concerned - we expect they'll bring in some fresh ideas.

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What We Want From NASA:
Low Cost Hardware/Flight Demos - Pay For Results, Not
Process

On a related subject, something we'd like to see happening at
NASA (but
don't really expect out of Exploration Systems) would be a whole
series
of low-cost (a few hundred thousand to a couple tens of millions
max)
hardware and/or flight demonstration projects, from
non-traditional
vendors, done under a reduced-paperwork
pay-for-results-not-process
regime. We think this could usefully expand the repertoire of
known-to-
work engineering solutions available and on the shelf, and
usefully
expand the space industrial base of experienced vendors ready to
apply
those solutions for NASA and for the US space industry in
general.

Why don't we expect it out of Exploration Systems? To be frank,
because
ESMD already have their hands full developing CEV. Admiral
Steidle,
before he became ESMD's boss, did succeed in getting a flyable
Joint
Strike Fighter out of the established major aerospace
contractors via
the established defense procurement process, but we expect he's
very
aware that he's at NASA now, where the procurement process and
contractors makes DOD's equivalents look simple efficient and
reliable.

Anything that doesn't contribute directly and immediately to
meeting the
transportation needs of NASA's new space exploration program is
likely
to be seen as a distraction and a drain on scarce funds - funds
quite
likely to get scarcer in future years, while future year costs
all too
likely climb. The natural inclination is going to be for ESMD
to focus
primarily on its major objectives at the expense of lesser
projects.

We may already be seeing a symptom of this (necessary) focus:
Cries of
pain, public and private, over how thoroughly HQ is applying
traditional
NASA paperwork requirements to the smaller bidders. Whether
ESMD
actively wants the small outfits to just go away or merely lacks
the
time and attention to cut them the appreciable amount of slack
available
within the rules is moot - the effect is the same either way.
Small
companies end up taking NASA money to produce reports and
viewgraphs,
not testable hardware.

As for the viewpoint that if this level of paperwork is OK for
the
established majors, the startups should just suck it up and deal
with it
too, do we really want to foster new companies whose core
expertise is
dealing with NASA process, not delivering functional product
quickly and
affordably? Haven't we already got enough of those?

We suspect moving such minor industrial-base/engineering
repertoire
expansion efforts out of ESMD could be a good thing for all -
less
distraction for Exploration Systems, and steadier support for
the small
vendors involved. Looking around for a suitable home for such,
we
note that significant parts of NASA have considerable in-house
design-
support and engineering-test capabilities sitting around begging
for
customers - indeed, in danger of being shut down - and might
well be
suitable hosts for such work. We speak, of course, of the
various NASA
aeronautical centers - aeronautics is in fact a major element of
the
transit between ground and orbit we at SAS are primarily
concerned with.

This arrangement could have a number of benefits, among them
leveraging
of existing underused NASA resources and a built-in
Congressional
constituency separate from the major NASA space operations
centers. We
think the greatest advantage of all would be the competitive
aspects,
however. Nothing gets the creative juices flowing like a little
healthy
competition, whether between companies or between NASA field
centers.

But our bottom line is: NASA should be doing low-cost hardware
and
flight demonstration projects from non-traditional vendors under
a
reduced-paperwork pay-for-results-not-process regime,
*somewhere*, if
the agency is ever to break out of the high-overhead
low-flight-rate
high-cost cul de sac it's in now.

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Industry News Roundup

Enough editorializing - on to a quick sampling of some things
going
on recently in the industry.

Armadillo has decided to pursue bipropellant liquid oxygen
engines.
They haven't been able to obtain commercially the
high-concentration
hydrogen peroxide they'd need for acceptable monopropellant
performance,
and their pursuit of "mixed monopropellant" -
lower-concentration
peroxide premixed with fuel just before flight - ran into
problems with
limited engine catalyst-pack life. They could make the engines
perform
reliably, but only by rebuilding them far more often than
practical for
the sort of routine operations they're pursuing. Armadillo has
been
developing liquid oxygen preburner technology in parallel with
their
peroxide work for a while, and now they've announced they're
making
their main propulsion development path engines based on that
technology.

X-Prize has announced their planned X-Prize Cup rocket races and
Personal Spaceflight Expo, to take place annually in early
October at
the Southwest Regional Spaceport in New Mexico. The first
Personal
Spaceflight Expo will take place over four days this year, with
exhibition rocket flights added in 2006 and the first X-Prize
Cup rocket
races in 2007.

TGV Rockets remains reticent about announcing much publicly, but
they
have seen some government funding these last few years, and they
will
admit they'll be hitting some development milestones in the
coming
months.

Not directly related to our industry but an old friend of the
family,
Bill Stine, G. Harry Stine's son, is reviving Quest Aerospace,
his
educational model rocket company, shut down after a motor
manufacturing
accident several years ago. Kit manufacture will now be in
China,
motors in eastern Germany. The Stine family project to set up a
scholarship program and a library to house Harry's extensive
collection
of space books and papers is still in the works.

Len Cormier's PanAero is bidding on an NRO BAA for an
Operationally
Responsive Launch Vehicle, and is proposing the Space Van '09
concept
for it; he'll be telling us more at SA'05.

XCOR should have an interesting announcement sometime Tuesday -
look for
the press release at http://www.xcor.com.

There's a company in South Korea call C&Space working on an
LNG-LOX
engine for their Proteus suborbital ship - details are scant;
we've had
limited correspondence with them and their website
(www.candspace.com)
is in Korean. They tell us they've conducted ground firings of
a water-
cooled test chamber, and are working toward a ten-ton thrust
LNG-cooled
operational version. This does bear out something we've been
saying for
a long time - rocketry may involve high-performance engineering
but it's
no longer ultra high-tech; the rest of the world is catching up,
and may
well leave us in the dust if we don't start doing the things we
need to
do to move ahead again.

Dr. Jordin Kare has spoken at our conference several times in
recent
years about his relatively low-tech approach to laser launch,
using
commercially available semiconductor lasers and heat-exchanger
liquid
propulsion. He tells us that the technology needed to do this
is
essentially available off-the-shelf now, and he'll be telling us
about
his plans at this year's conference. (We really are into the
21st
century - we just typed the words "a relatively low-tech
approach to
laser launch" in complete seriousness!)

The Space Launch Amendments Act passed last winter with numerous
mandates for how FAA AST should regulate commercial
passenger-carrying
space transports. That was the easy part - now the FAA needs to
translate those broad mandates into detailed regulations. We're
working
with FAA AST to have someone at SA'05 to talk about how that
process
works, where it's gotten to so far, and what to expect down the
line,
plus we'll have feedback from various of the regulated parties
about
what they hope to see, and a talk from Tim Hughes, majority
counsel to
the House Science Committee and heavily involved in the drafting
of the
Amendments Act, on what the intentions behind various provisions
are.

Rocketplane Ltd got full funding for their Rocketplane XP
development
last year and are currently moving ahead building a practical
suborbital
transport around various existing aircraft components - to
oversimplfy
considerably, a Learjet fuselage, engines, and landing gear with
new
wings, thermal protection, and an Orbitec "Vortex" rocket engine
in the
tail. They're aiming at completing the flight test program in
'07, and
currently seeking funding for the passenger-carrying commercial
operations phase to follow.

We spoke with David Gump, President of the T/Space consortium
(Scaled
Composites, Airlaunch LLC, CSI, USL, Delta Velocity, and
Spaceport
Associates among others) about the report in New Scientist the
other
week that due to the massive paperwork burden, T/Space would not
bid on
the next phase of NASA CEV. David told us that he had discussed
the
merits of a low-overhead rapid-prototyping approach versus the
traditional NASA paperwork-intensive development process with
New
Scientist, but that T/Space has not yet made any final decision
on
whether they'll bid the next phase of CEV.

Scaled Composites is of course busy developing the suborbital
passenger-
carrying SpaceShip 2 for Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, with
passenger service schedule to commence in '07. Burt Rutan
punctuates
this routine by travelling to receive various (well-deserved)
awards.
Latest we hear is he'll be in DC to accept the prestigious
Collier
Trophy at the National Air & Space Museum April 19th. Rumor has
it, by
the way, that SpaceShip 2 may well use an all-EAC engine rather
than the
mix of SpaceDev fuel casting and EAC plumbing SpaceShip 1 flew
with.

Airlaunch LLC, Microcosm, SpaceX, and Lockheed-Martin are
competing in
the DARPA/Air Force FALCON small launch vehicle program and are
not
currently talking much. The next phase of the program, one or
more
contractors building flight prototypes, will be decided this
summer.

Meanwhile the Air Force ARES program, to build a reusable rocket
spacelift first-stage demonstrator, is getting underway. We'll
have a
briefing on FALCON and ARES at SA'05.

SpaceX meanwhile is still working toward first flight of their
Falcon 1
launcher - they've completed all structural testing, but are
still
working on main engine qualification. The latest delay now is a
matter
of site scheduling at Vandenberg AFB - the final Titan 4 launch
has
pushed them back to Q3 '05 at earliest, longer if the Titan
launch (as
has happened before) is delayed. SpaceX says they may consider
doing
their first flight out of a site being developed on Kwajalein
Atoll, if
the VAFB delay goes on long enough.

Blue Horizon meanwhile continues to reveal their plans very
slowly - the
latest new info is from a Jeff Bezos interview with the local
paper in
west Texas where he owns close to 200,000 acres of ranchland.
He plans
eventually to fly from that land, and what he'll be flying will
be
vertical-takeoff, vertical landing rockets - first a suborbital
ship,
then eventually orbital.

And that's only a fraction of what's been going on lately. The
best
single site for day-to-day coverage of this fast-moving field is
still
Clark Lindsey's www.hobbyspace.com "RLV News" section, but even
Clark
can't get it all. We also recommend Jeff Foust's
www.spacetoday.net and
www.thespacereview.com, Keith Cowing's www.nasawatch.com, and of
course
the Space News, Space.com, and Aviation Week sites all come up
with
good stuff. Over the last year Alan Boyle at www.msnbc.com has
written
a lot of good space pieces - Alan was responsible for MSNBC
cable's
coverage of the SpaceShip 1 flights being far more technically
informed
than the other networks there. Space coverage is showing up in
the most
unlikely places these days, though; it's impossible to keep with
it all.

Interesting times!
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"Reach low orbit and you're halfway to anywhere in the Solar
System"
- Robert A. Heinlein