Jon Goff has the Powerpoints of Friday night’s propellant depot panel, including mine.
All posts by Rand Simberg
The New Space Race
Jeff Foust has a story today on the current real space race (as opposed to the fantasy one between the US and China)–the new race for customers in the suborbital market. It’s basically a compilation of last week’s XCOR press conference announcement and this past weekend’s Space Access conference, both of which I attended. This to me is the key point:
“Quietly, this has turned into a horse race,” said conference organizer Henry Vanderbilt during a wrap-up panel at the conclusion of the Space Access conference. “There are a lot of people who could be the first to fly a passenger to suborbit at this point. Two years ago I’m sure the money would have been on Virgin Galactic. It isn’t necessarily so at this point.”
“What struck me about the events of this week was that we have finally, with all due respect, broken the mystique of Burt [Rutan],” Rand Simberg, an aerospace engineer and blogger, said. “He has had setbacks”–referring to the engine test accident last July that killed three Scaled Composites employees–“and, this week, now he has a competitor.” The growing awareness of companies other than Virgin “is going to be very good for the industry.”
“This perception of a horse race is probably a really, really good thing for investment,” said Joe Pistritto, an angel investor. “Ninety-nine percent of the people who could invest in this industry don’t know about this industry” but may start to learn about it as the find out about these competing companies.
If it is a horse race, who will win the ultimate prize: not just the first vehicle to enter the market, but the one that wins the market in the long run? The diversity of technical approaches, from the takeoff and landing techniques to the number of passengers, makes any predictions difficult. “If there’s four different operators flying people into space, their offerings are going to be a little different,” said Pistritto. “So you see an actual segmentation of the market around the experience you want, how much money you have, and where you are.”
What I meant about the “mystique of Burt” was the notion that the winning of the X-Prize was some kind of fluke, enabled only because the most brilliant aeronautical engineer in the world applied his genius to it. Many have used this as an excuse to denigrate the efforts of others building suborbital vehicles, which hasn’t made it any easier to raise money for such ventures.
Many seem to believe that it really takes the genius of a Rutan to build a suborbital vehicle. As evidence of this proposition, they point out that no other suborbital vehicles have been flown since 2004.
But in so doing, they display a fundamental ignorance of the nature of the technology and the requirements. There is no “one way” to skin that cat, and never was. Burt’s design was clever, and perhaps intrinsically safer, but it was not necessary, and there are other, better ways to do the job that are safe enough. It’s not at all clear that the SS1 approach is the best one for a commercial application, and if one includes in that the hybrid propulsion, it’s already caused delays (though those are partly due to Scaled taking on a project outside their area of expertise–they’re an aircraft manufacturer, not a propulsion house) in their development program, and it’s certain to result in higher operational costs and increased turnaround time.
The real point is that if only Burt could win the X-Prize, it wasn’t because he was the only guy smart enough to design a vehicle to do it. It was because he was the only guy with the reputation of being smart enough to be able to raise the money to do it. When it comes to space ventures, the hardest part is always raising the money. The technical challenges generally pale in comparison.
So, with schedule delays in SS2, now comes XCOR. XCOR has a reputation of its own, hard won over the past eight years, of underpromising and overdelivering. So when they have a (rare, almost unheard of) press conference announcing that they have the design and the cash to build a suborbital vehicle, with an endorsement from the Air Force Research Laboratory, the world listens, and suddenly it’s a real race.
Evidence that the mystique has been broken is this CNBC story by Jane Wells from last week, after XCOR’s announcement, with the hed “Branson And Northrop May Be Backing “Wrong” Rocket Man!”
Burt is no longer God, other companies are getting serious attention from both business journalists and investors, and it’s been a very good week for the new space industry and space age.
The Evidence Continues To Mount
I remember when I first started blogging, over six years ago, it was considered quite controversial to state that being hit by extraterrestrial objects was a legitimate concern, and one in which we should invest resources to prevent. But over the past few years, evidence continues to accumulate that there have been significant events within historical times that, had the occurred today, could cause millions of casualties. For example, some researchers are now quite confident that if God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, He did it with an asteroid.
On the other hand, a half-mile-wide object would make a hell of a bang that should be pretty obvious from orbit today, so one has to be a little skeptical. I’d like to see how they arrived at that diameter.
America’s True Shame
I don’t often agree with Ezra Klein, but he hits this one out of the park:
Criminals aren’t sent to prison so they can learn to live outside of prison; they’re sent to prison to get what they deserve. And that paves the way for the acceptance of all manners of brutal abuses. It’s not that we condone prison rape per se, but it doesn’t exactly concern us, and occasionally, as in the comments made by Lockyer, we take a perverse satisfaction in its existence.
Morally, our tacit acceptance of violence within prisons is grotesque. But it’s also counterproductive. Research by economists Jesse Shapiro and Keith Chen suggests that violent prisons make prisoners more violent after they leave. When your choice is between the trauma of hardening yourself so no one will touch you or the trauma of prostituting yourself so you’re protected from attack, either path leads away from rehabilitation and psychological adjustment.
I think that we have a lot too many people in prison, but that aside, with the possible exception of rapists (for whom it might be an appropriate eye-for-eye punishment) no one should have to fear being raped in prison. I think that it’s shameful that our society tolerates this. If we want to be explicit and openly declare that we are sentencing drug offenders and others to be raped, then we should do that, but if not, then we should put an end to it. I accept no excuses from the penal community. If they didn’t want it to happen, they could stop it.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time someone has pointed this out, and sadly, it won’t be the last, either. I see no groundswell of support to do anything about it.
America’s True Shame
I don’t often agree with Ezra Klein, but he hits this one out of the park:
Criminals aren’t sent to prison so they can learn to live outside of prison; they’re sent to prison to get what they deserve. And that paves the way for the acceptance of all manners of brutal abuses. It’s not that we condone prison rape per se, but it doesn’t exactly concern us, and occasionally, as in the comments made by Lockyer, we take a perverse satisfaction in its existence.
Morally, our tacit acceptance of violence within prisons is grotesque. But it’s also counterproductive. Research by economists Jesse Shapiro and Keith Chen suggests that violent prisons make prisoners more violent after they leave. When your choice is between the trauma of hardening yourself so no one will touch you or the trauma of prostituting yourself so you’re protected from attack, either path leads away from rehabilitation and psychological adjustment.
I think that we have a lot too many people in prison, but that aside, with the possible exception of rapists (for whom it might be an appropriate eye-for-eye punishment) no one should have to fear being raped in prison. I think that it’s shameful that our society tolerates this. If we want to be explicit and openly declare that we are sentencing drug offenders and others to be raped, then we should do that, but if not, then we should put an end to it. I accept no excuses from the penal community. If they didn’t want it to happen, they could stop it.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time someone has pointed this out, and sadly, it won’t be the last, either. I see no groundswell of support to do anything about it.
America’s True Shame
I don’t often agree with Ezra Klein, but he hits this one out of the park:
Criminals aren’t sent to prison so they can learn to live outside of prison; they’re sent to prison to get what they deserve. And that paves the way for the acceptance of all manners of brutal abuses. It’s not that we condone prison rape per se, but it doesn’t exactly concern us, and occasionally, as in the comments made by Lockyer, we take a perverse satisfaction in its existence.
Morally, our tacit acceptance of violence within prisons is grotesque. But it’s also counterproductive. Research by economists Jesse Shapiro and Keith Chen suggests that violent prisons make prisoners more violent after they leave. When your choice is between the trauma of hardening yourself so no one will touch you or the trauma of prostituting yourself so you’re protected from attack, either path leads away from rehabilitation and psychological adjustment.
I think that we have a lot too many people in prison, but that aside, with the possible exception of rapists (for whom it might be an appropriate eye-for-eye punishment) no one should have to fear being raped in prison. I think that it’s shameful that our society tolerates this. If we want to be explicit and openly declare that we are sentencing drug offenders and others to be raped, then we should do that, but if not, then we should put an end to it. I accept no excuses from the penal community. If they didn’t want it to happen, they could stop it.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time someone has pointed this out, and sadly, it won’t be the last, either. I see no groundswell of support to do anything about it.
Back In LA
I took a little longer to drive back from Phoenix because I did two things that I’ve never done, in all the times I’ve made that trip over the past thirty years. I stopped at the Colorado River in Blythe and walked across, and I stopped and did a quick tour of the Patton Museum at Chiriaco Summit. I’d show the pictures, but I don’t seem to have my card reader with me. I might pick one up at Fry’s tomorrow.
The latter was more impressive than I expected, considering that it’s private, not official. More so on the interior than outside, though. They have a number of tanks out there, in various states of decrepitude and disrepair, and no signs to provide any useful information about them. Still worth a visit, though, for anyone interested in military history.
Heading Back To LA
Had a decent night’s sleep for the first time in over a week. I’ll be driving back through the desert to what looks to be a chilly and damp Los Angeles. See ya later.
Wrap Up
Joe Pistritto: We have a couple teams (Virgin and XCOR) that are planning to fly in a couple years, about the same time as the Shuttle is retired. At that point, the NewSpace industry will be the only way that Americans can get into space, and in that first year more people may fly into space on the new vehicles than have flown in space to date. At that point everyone in the country will have a better idea what this new industry does.
Henry Vanderbilt: Also, they’ll see that there is a horse race. A year or two ago it was assumed that Virgin would be first to market. That’s no longer the case.
Joe: There are going to be different types of experiences at different price points, and as the horse race becomes more clear, it will expose the business to a lot of potential investors who haven’t been paying attention up to now. This is good not just for investment, but for creating a supply chain of suppliers that are needed. Still thinks that this is an individual investor market. Venture funds can’t justify this investment in the current business environment. Can do it with their own money, but not someone else’s. For someone with their own money, there’s no industry that is more exciting than this one.
Henry: Not important who comes in first. Emphasis needs to be that there is competition and that we’re in for exciting times.
Muncy: Difference between spaceflight participants (passengers) and Russ Blink strapping on an oxygen tank and flying out of the atmosphere on an Armadillo vehicle. Markets are wonderful magical things. We have no idea what the possibilities are (who knew that someone would program Doom eventually when Bill Gates said 640K would be plenty). Smart guys in the military might figure out what to do with these things once they’re flying. NASA may want to replace the T-38s now that they’re not flying the Shuttle any more (I think he means Gulfstream), or they might want to practice lunar simulations.
Challenge is to figure out how to get customers interested beyond the tourist flights. It will be different flying in the back of SpaceShipTwo than flying in the cockpit of the Lynx. We’ll see what the market wants. Lord willing the market will want both, and other flavors. The good things about markets is that if you offer something out there of value, it will be rewarded. Thinking about package tours of all the vehicles: Grand Slam of rockets.
[Update]
At that point, I got pulled up to join the panel by Muncy, so I couldn’t blog it.
Anyway, another conference is history. More thoughts later.
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