A just published study (actually still in preprint) suggests that Earth like planets may be quite uncommon. I’m a little skeptical about the reasoning (based on the discussion in the link: I haven’t read the paper). It’s quite possible that the reason we haven’t found system’s like Sol’s is just that we don’t yet have the capability. The existence of systems which evolved in an entirely different way doesn’t really bear on the number of solar systems like our own except very indirectly.

SpaceToday reports that a Russian millionaire may be the next ISS tourist. The giggle factor for space tourism continues its death spiral.

Apparently some amateur rocketeer (though there’s rumor he was actually a fireworks maker) blew himself up in Denver. Sad for the family, potentially very bad news for amateur rocketry.

The University of Georgia has received a 5 million grant to study electromagnetic accelerators. The piece claims they can be used for launchers, but I’m extremely skeptical. Going hypersonic in the lower atmosphere doesn’t seem like a good idea to me. OTOH, for launch from the moon it could be just the ticket, but that’s a long time off.

Via Space Today, there is a press conference next Tuesday to make some announcements regarding X Prize developments. More than likely this will be Rutan’s official announcement. Brian Feeney of the Da Vinci Project will also be there. Let’s hope he also announces a prize shot. Nothing like a little competition to rev up the ratings.

Over at RLV News Clark Lindsey takes an uncharacteristicaly blunt swing at a particularly stupid article on SpaceDaily. I can’t say it any better than Clark, so go on over there and read his take.

There’s also a good item on the state of sounding rocket research (dismal). I’m a fan of sounding rockets since they offer a low cost means of doing simple space research. In science it’s often the simple experiments that have the most dramatic impact (in part because it’s harder to quibble about simple results, but that’s another post entirely). Unfortunately simple isn’t sexy, and sexy is what NASA is most interested in. Another point about sounding rockets that’s not generally well understood is that there’s a region of the atmosphere between about 50 km and 100 km which is too high for balloon research but to low for satellite research. There’s some important processes that take place in this region, and sounding rockets are really the only way to study them directly.

Over at The Space Review Sam Dinkin has a piece on scenario planning for suborbital companies. Some thoughts:

I think the most likely scenario is that the suborbital launch services industry will segment into three divisions. There will be the tourism oriented businesses, the earth observation (or reconaissance) businesses and the science oriented businesses. Obviously anyone with a vehicle can attempt to serve all three, but the requirements are not the same for the different mission profiles. Some of the science can be done on just about any vehicle, namely experiments which merely require a couple of minutes of microgravity. This covers a fair number of little experiments in materials science. Only time will tell if it’s enough to sustain a business alone (I suspect not), but it’s certainly enough to add a little to the revenue stream of any company willing to go after it. Other scientific missions require launch at specific locations in order to study the environment of near earth space. I suspect there’s a market for launches near the poles for plasma experiments, but again, that’s probably rather limited.

Earth observation requires a mobile launcher, since mobility greatly expands the number of sites that can be watched. This argues against horizontal takeoff or landing since that imposes limits. For earth observation a vertical takeoff, vertical landing vehicle like TGV’s MICHELLE-B or Armadillo’s Black Armadillo are most likely to be successful, though a mixed mode vehicle like Pioneer’s XP which has both jet and rocket engines can overcome at least some of the limitations on range imposed by the need for a runway.

Tourism imposes few requirements on the vehicle other than safety. Tourists can reasonably be expected to travel to the launch site, and the operator can have a significant fixed infrastructure without impacting the ability to serve the target market (though the infrastructure may be expensive). The real driver for the tourism market has to be safety. Losing a ship taking pictures or running some grad student’s PhD thesis experiment is bad, but it’s not necessarily a killer for the business. If, on the other hand, you lose a ship with a couple of tourists on board you significantly impact your ability to recruit future customers. This suggests that tourism oriented businesses ought to be as conservative as possible in their vehicle design, and should focus on passenger survivability to the exclusion of nearly all other factors. The lowest risk incremental path forward is probably horizontal takeoff/horisontal landing, keeping operations as airplane like as possible, which is the path taken by XCOR and Scaled. The dangerous part of the flight profile is near the ground. Having a vehicle with the ability to glide (basically prolonging the fall) makes a lot of sense from the standpoint of keeping failure modes as graceful as possible. There’s certainly an added appeal to VTVL from the thrillride standpoint, but from the standpoint of the operator of the vehicle keeping the passengers alive under a wider range of failure conditions probably trumps giving them the most exciting experience.

Tourism implies HTHL and earth observation implies VTVL is a little too tidy to capture the messy realities of the way the marketplace is likely to evolve. Nonetheless, the future evolution of the suborbital launch services market is almost certainly going to end up picking a prefered launch/landing mode with specializations depending on the business model of the operating company. In the very long term, when there is a large experience base of operations on VTVL ships, I suspect that the orbital vehicles that evolve from the suborbital vehicles of today will end up being DCX style tailsitters.

Over at RocketForge Mike Mealling has his RTTM trip report up. One line stands out, regarding changing perceptions: “What does work is creating value for a customer from their point of view and then slowly educating them through direct interaction with the product over time. But it requires the customer to have already made a decision to buy.”

This is an excellent point. Only after the purchase decision is made (which may be in a metaphorical sense) can you expect the customer to be sufficiently engaged to stick with a line of argument that may fly directly in the face of things they “know” to be true. As always, it’s not what people know that’s an obstacle to understanding, it’s what they know that ain’t so. Once you have buy in (either literally or in the sense of getting seriously interested) there is a possibility of getting people to change their view. It’s not just physical products that have this dynamic, it’s ideas too. In fact, I’d argue that in the case of a physical product it’s the idea associated with the product that’s important, not the product itself.

Unfortunately people tend to be very committed to their beliefs, usually without regard to how well supported they are. Everyone likes to be told stuff they already believe to be true. It takes active effort and a commitment to truth before comfort to actively seek out opposing ideas and to take them seriously. Unfortunately very few people choose that path.

Applications to RLV development, politics and anything else is left as an exercise for the reader. Bonus points for figuring out how to get the initial buy in to RLV development needed to start the process of changing perceptions. Hint: begins with “Sub,” ends with “Orbital” 🙂

Over at RocketForge Mike Mealling has his RTTM trip report up. One line stands out, regarding changing perceptions: “What does work is creating value for a customer from their point of view and then slowly educating them through direct interaction with the product over time. But it requires the customer to have already made a decision to buy.”

This is an excellent point. Only after the purchase decision is made (which may be in a metaphorical sense) can you expect the customer to be sufficiently engaged to stick with a line of argument that may fly directly in the face of things they “know” to be true. As always, it’s not what people know that’s an obstacle to understanding, it’s what they know that ain’t so. Once you have buy in (either literally or in the sense of getting seriously interested) there is a possibility of getting people to change their view. It’s not just physical products that have this dynamic, it’s ideas too. In fact, I’d argue that in the case of a physical product it’s the idea associated with the product that’s important, not the product itself.

Unfortunately people tend to be very committed to their beliefs, usually without regard to how well supported they are. Everyone likes to be told stuff they already believe to be true. It takes active effort and a commitment to truth before comfort to actively seek out opposing ideas and to take them seriously. Unfortunately very few people choose that path.

Applications to RLV development, politics and anything else is left as an exercise for the reader. Bonus points for figuring out how to get the initial buy in to RLV development needed to start the process of changing perceptions. Hint: begins with “Sub,” ends with “Orbital” 🙂