I sat in on a Boeing press conference on CST-100 yesterday morning, with several other space reporters, including Andy Pasztor, Ken Chang, Denise Chow, Todd Halvorson, Bill Harwood, and others. I’ll be incorporating some of it into a PM piece that I just wrote, but Pat Brennan at the OC Register has a story this morning.

[Update a while later]

Here’s Todd Halvorson’s story at FL Today.

[Update a while later]

Here are my notes from the presser:

4.5 meter, seven crew, pusher abort system flying in 2015. simplicity for safety/reliability. Space Act Agreement, fixed price, need low development risk, high TRL. Business case challenging. Need development funding/ISS market. Also need other markets. Keith: already started program under CCDev, just did IDR a couple days ago. Complete SDR in October. Pressure-vessel testing at Bigelow’s facilities. Doing drop tests, started a week ago, working on life support. Using rendezvous system from Orbital Express. Not viewgraph engineering.

Berger: Confidence that Boeing has in getting contract? Elbon: Watching that closely. NASA envisions process like COTS. Will have to assess probabilities as they move forward. Want to see commitment downstream so they have better idea of price.

Pat Brennan: Is this a Shuttle replacement? Crew only, can’t replace all capabilities of Shuttle. Will be able to stay for months.

Which authorization bill most favorable? Senate closer to the compromise they’d like to see.
What launch vehicle? Human rate Delta IV, what about hydrogen issue? Looking at Atlas, Delta, Falcon 9. Primary targets EELVs. Systems are human rated, not components. ULA working CCDev for FOSD. Don’t think that any major mods to rockets themselves. Big issues launch pad for crew egress.

Denise Chow: How did they settle on the shape? Good data base on Apollo design, don’t need much wind tunnel. Also good shape for land landing.
What have the biggest challenges been? Pusher abort.

Future for larger capsules in the future? Have to take it one step at a time. Get started with simple safe system and see how market develops.
Private individuals can fly, or just scientists? Hope to have broad markets — need destinations, not NASA only.

Harwood: Will the business model support multiple players? Even with Bigelow, is there enough? Elbon: More launches, lower prices. Working with KSC to find government assets, cost per use rather than having to own them. NASA wants at least two providers. Boeing hopes to get to market first, and see significant flight rate from Bigelow.
What is the order of magnitude of a ticket price? Will be competitive with Soyuz.

Halvorson: Test flight schedule? What vehicles? No vehicle selected yet, but ULA baseline. Late 2013, 2014 for abort tests and orbital flight tests. Pad abort test at White Sands, and rest out of the Cape.

Andy Pasztor: How much overall development cost? How much will Boeing spend? Less than numbers for CRV. How much Boeing spends depends on risk level, and what Congress/FAA/NASA do.

David Baker: What consideration being given to expanding market off shore? Ever launch on Ariane? Have to base business case on those things as upside potential, not baseline. Have considered that and will further develop down the road.
Any interest from Air Force? Not that I know of?

Chang: Anything beyond ISS/Bigelow? Hoping that other ventures will mature. Market is a chicken/egg thing.
Any chance of going forward without NASA business? Unlikely that biz case closes without it.
Bigelow not big enough market? Sees a lot of potential, but also a lot of risk.

Harwood: How reusable? Capsule reused up to ten times. Some parts get ejected (forward cone, base heat shield). Land at White Sands.

Halvorson: How many objectives and how many achieved in CDDev? 36 milestones (four per demo, four for design) completed 22, essentially done by end of year. About halfway to PDR. How long to PDR/CDR? Next spring, then end of year.

Brennan: What’s being done in Huntington Beach? For development, pressure vessel being assembled, base heat shield, AR&D sensors, tied into Houston simulators.

I had two questions. First, how did the pusher abort system work, did it have two different thrust levels, and was it liquid? Answer from Keith: it’s hypergolic (MMH/NTO, like the Shuttle) and has high thrust engines for the abort, and uses lower-thrust RCS for orbital maneuvering. I didn’t follow up on the operations implications for those propellants. The other question was whether or not it could be kitted, or if it was being scarred, for deep-space operations. The answer was no, that would be a different vehicle entirely. This one is for LEO only.

Chris Bergin has a lengthy discussion on a joint NASA/commercial propellant depot demonstrator to be flown in 2015, if it can survive the fools on the Hill (to paraphrase the old Sérgio Mendes song).

This is the key sentence:

A HLV – of any kind – is not listed in any current ULA or commercial documentation, with experts claiming such a vehicle isn’t required under the EELV and propellant depot architecture.

Don’t anyone tell Congress.

[Via Clark Lindsey, who has an interesting discussion going in comments]

The latest, from Henry Vanderbilt and the Space Access Society:

NASA Exploration Funding: An URGENT Call To Action

Background

We strongly support the new White House space exploration policy. We believe it can gives NASA a meaningful future, as opposed to the dead end the Constellation “Apollo on Steroids” program has become under any reasonably foreseeable budget. (See the Augustine Report.)

The core of the new White House space exploration policy is:
– Getting NASA out of the business of developing and operating its own (massively overpriced relative to both military and commercial vehicles) space transportation.
– Passing full responsibility for basic space access to the US commercial launch sector just as fast as the commercial operators can demonstrate they’re ready.

The several billion per year freed up by doing this, and by retiring Shuttle after this year (as planned since 2004) would be used to refocus NASA on developing new technologies for future space transportation and deep-space exploration (things that have been shorted at the agency for decades), to keeping Station (the nation’s sole and dearly-bought existing space outpost) operating beyond the former 2016 shutdown date, and (once the new more affordable deep-space capabilities are available) to conducting new exploration missions beyond low Earth orbit.

The last few months have seen an organized Congressional effort to derail the proposed NASA reforms, largely for reasons of short-term local political self-interest. The Congressional regional coalition accustomed to seeing NASA exploration funds flow regardless of results is fighting the new policy with everything they’ve got.

Various Congressional committees have voted to reduce the new commercial and research programs by various amounts, giving the money instead to continued NASA booster and crew capsule developments. Briefly, the Senate committee NASA Authorization version diverts roughly half the commercial and research funding to a new in-house NASA heavy booster plus continued NASA crew capsule development. The House committee NASA Authorization version is far worse, diverting almost all the commercial and research funding to in-house NASA booster and capsule work, while also imposing onerous restrictions on commercial efforts both orbital and suborbital. (We have not covered these committee votes in detail because after the first it became obvious the decks were stacked in these committees and we had little chance of affecting those intermediate outcomes.)

Now, however, the House NASA Authorizers are attempting to get their version approved by the full House in a last-second maneuver before the Congress goes on August recess starting Monday the 2nd. An attempt will probably be made to bring HR 5781, the House committee version NASA Authorization bill, to a floor vote tomorrow, Friday July 30th. (Other unrelated Congressional business could prevent this, but that’s not something to count on.) The attempt if made will be under “suspension of the rules”, a streamlined procedure that limits debate and doesn’t allow any amendments. The only choice is, up or down, pass HR 5781 or reject it.

We and many others think HR 5781 should be rejected. “Suspension of the rules” also requires a 2/3rds majority to pass a bill, so there is a good chance that constituent pressure (that’s you!) on Congressmen in general can either delay this attempt till after August if the votes aren’t there, or defeat it outright.

Action

If you are reading this before east coast close-of-business July 30th (the earlier in the day the better, before 9 am is best), please call your Congressman. If you know their name, you can call the House switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask for their office. (If you don’t know who your Congressman is, go to here and enter your home zipcode.) Once through to their office, let the person who answers know you’re calling about HR 5781, the NASA Authorization. They may switch you to another staffer (or that staffer’s voicemail) or they may take the call themselves. (If you’re calling after-hours or they’re getting a lot of calls, you may go directly to a voicemail.)

Regardless, tell them you want your Congressman to oppose this version of the NASA Authorization. Give one or two reasons briefly (e.g., that you support full funding for NASA Commercial Crew and full funding for NASA space exploration technology, that you are very much against any new in-house NASA booster development as very likely being a massive waste of taxpayer dollars, to support the US commercial launch industry, to enhance our national technological competitiveness, to support the President’s NASA policy, to address the NASA problems pointed out by the Augustine Commission and restore NASA’s ability to usefully explore, etc). Answer any questions they may have as best you can, then politely sign off.

We will likely be seeing more action on this as the year goes on. Keep an eye out for further Updates. Thanks for helping!

If you haven’t called yet, you can still do it tomorrow.

…from Alan Boyle.