He’ll be starting in a couple minutes.

Two topics today, second one a short rant.

Eight years ago companies in the industry and Dennis Tito started to get Congress to create a clear regulatory regime for personal human spaceflight. Some vehicles looked like airplanes and some looked like spaceships, and some like using experimental aircraft certificate route, but set one up for regulation as a common carrier in aviation, which is more burdensome than launch licensing. Culminated in Space Launch Amendments Act in 2004. Industry now lobbying for changes in the act and additional congressional direction/authority that will enable industry growth. Had been avoiding touching act until necessary, but there is a provision that expires next year that they want extended (moratorium of FAA regulation on spaceflight participant safety).

Head of FAA-AST has authority to not only regulate but also to promote the industry (rest of FAA lost this second charter after Valuejet crash in the nineties). Must don’t understand that the moratorium doesn’t stop FAA from writing regs today. Regs can be based on actual observed data (fatalities, casualties, series of incidents, that indicate a problem that could lead to fatalities or casualties). FAA is not mandated to regulate participant safety, but can in the event of events.

In the early twenties, the industry actually asked Dept of Commerce for regulations, to weed out bad actors. This is a similar situation, but regulations have to be based on observed data. In 2012, FAA could write regs based on hypotheses, guesses, analysis, etc,. if they think it will promote the health of the industry, and bureaucracies tend to push the limits of their authority.

Idea in 2005 was that we’d have raised money and flown vehicles for revenue, and getting data about what works and doesn’t, and would have a basis for regulation. Things happened more slowly than desired, and the Commercial Spaceflight Federation is going to Congress and requesting a restoration of the original eight-year learning period, in which FAA learns, industry learns, and we gather data before FAA starts regulating based on no data. Working to reset it to eight years from first flight of commercial provider, to ensure actual period of time of learning, to follow aviation precedent.

House Science, Space and Technology committee will be holding one or more hearings in April/May and mark up legislation that may include this, and that the majority substantively agrees with this provision. If people have other ideas of things that should be included in this legislation, based on challenges or problems they’ve encountered, contact him ASAP.

Also liability issues. Can Congress stipulate that laws of state from which you launch will be the ones that guide any litigation, or will litigants be able to venue shop (e.g., launch from Virginia or Florida, sue in Mississippi?).

Begin rant:

Last year was a blur because he was living in Never-never Land, apologizing for any weirdness last conference. He is former Republican White House and Congressional staffer. Barack Obama proposed to create a broader role for the commercial sector in space, and Republicans in Congress said “No, we don’t trust the private sector — we want a public option.” And his head exploded. Spent a lot of time trying to improve the policy, saving technology budgets, helping commercial crew, did what he could to keep Senate bill from being as disastrous as it was. But supported it, as imperfect as it was in the fall, because it established commercial crew and other things.

For NASA having things to do on the edge of the frontier, just opposed to them operating a trucking service on the near frontier. Orion is a new spacecraft, not in competition with commercial crew. It will have to be tested, and SLS will not be available in time, and Lockheed took risk by spending their own money as a down payment for a Delta IV (they’ve also put on their web site ideas for exploration in 2016/2017 that don’t need heavy lifters). Not competition because NASA doesn’t have enough money to launch Orions on Delta IVs to ISS. Using Orion with Delta or Atlas or Falcon Heavy could allow exploration in this decade, but people in NASA won’t tell Bolden this because they want to build a heavy lifter. Bill doesn’t require that NASA build one — only if “practicable.” Goal is to buy time until it becomes clear that it isn’t, and it won’t take long. It is possible and necessary for commercial space and NASA coexist. It is essential that we engage and show them how commercial helps them and that they know what their opportunities are. Beyond insane that the senators representing KSC where launches are happening and JSC where they are planned and operated, are willing to wait for another center in Alabama that has not successfully developed a launch system in decades. Commercial isn’t just about commercial crew — it’s about commercial approaches for supporting exploration, propellant depots, and getting NASA exploring sooner rather than later. Coalescing around Shuttle derived is short-term way of supporting exploration, and the administration failed last year in failing to connect the dots. They actually read the Augustine report and actually followed recommendations.

In response to a question, a certain senator had a staffer who tried to get commercial crew cut in the final budget, and we won’t know what is in the bill until this week. He thinks that everyone agrees that Senator Shelby’s language will be released in the CR.

Max Vozoff is giving another talk after lunch on the business issues with commercial crew.

His first job at SpaceX was writing the COTS proposal, and he then ran it for three and a half years. Very concerned that “commercial crew” will be much less commercial than it is crew.

NASA needs transportation to and from ISS. Also needs safety. Shuttle has set a low bar in this regard, and there is a desire to set a much higher one for future systems. Needs to be dependable, reliable (technical and programmatic). Hard to beat Soyuz in this regard. But we also need domestic US spaceflight capability and industrial base. Also want some sort of commercial investment to sustain it, maintain ground infrastructure, incorporate innovation (traditionally very difficult in space activities), increasing safety and improving efficiency, and expanding scope and capability so not stuck decades from now with what we have today. Finally, want to make spaceflight available for other users.

Religious battle over last year is whether the market is NASA or others. If Bigelow and Space Adventures meet their goals, they have a bigger market than NASA. When a non-NASA employee flies, what has been called “human rating” becomes marginalized. Expect to see a lot more people in the astronaut office quitting and joining the private sector in the next few years.

Any program that lasts more than eight years is likely to be canceled, so question is: what can you do in eight years? NASA has a lot of expertise in analyzing and flying human spaceflight systems, and should take advantage of it. There is a model that works, that’s easily adaptable to the problem. Why not use COTS, and why are we doing it differently, with different people. Just talked to people at NASA who were unfamiliar with a Space Act Agreement and how it works. SAA’s provide much more flexibility with much less overhead for both government and industry, allows industry to operate by its own best practices, and allows the procurement of government employees by industry where needed. Establishes milestones and success criteria, and payments are met when milestones are achieved. Low cost risk for government, with industry eating cost difference in overruns. If milestone is unmet, government can terminate and take possession of IP, or renegotiate. SpaceX ended up spending more than they anticipated, but it came out of their profit, not the taxpayer.

Broad performance goals, not detailed specifications — what, not how. Contractor retains IP, as long as they don’t default, which is crucial for a small company. Investors need to know what IP a company has, and if government is involved, generally queers the deal.

COTS was about delivering cargo (CRS is the service contract for this). Commercial partner much provide sufficient insight to allow government to assess whether milestones have been met. One exception in COTS was ISS safety. Benefits — lower non-recurring costs, recurring also lower. Government acts as early customer, but doesn’t retain ownership. Expands industrial base. COTS was a high-risk pilot project, originally designed to play lip service to commercial, but has been surprisingly successful.

Essential ingredients: clear government need, cost efficiency should trump any design solution, multiple viable commercial competitors, reasonable likelihood of commercial applications beyond government need. No significant technical risk, or industry won’t invest. Solution must be plausible and well bounded in time and cost. All these are present in commercial crew.

Mining the moon good model for cost-plus contract. Commercial crew, not so much.

Need to state goals and requirements, and make human-rating requirements draft only, not final. Can’t set requirements with such a disparate range of systems (example of how to stitch a parachute). COTS learned how to do this, but there is no discernable knowledge being fed forward from C3PO to CCDev.

Thinks a phase A could be done for $20M, with a result of knowledge of requirements, as a funded Space Act Agreements. Over time, neck down to a couple favorites, based on Phase A plans. End point is a certified transportation services. Then compete for basic requirements of X number of people to ISS per year. IDIQ of ay least one award. Big wild card is when other customers come along, which will drive cost, reliability, operations, etc. Goal is to have people investing, competing, marketing, creating real commercial enterprises.

Thinks that we’re on the cusp of this happening. Knows we’ve been talking about it for decades, but really thinks it can come soon, but we have to change the procurement environment, and we have to adapt to it ourselves. COTS is a good model, and reiterates concern tht C3PO is not involved.

I’ve started blogging over at the Washington Examiner. My first post over there is about Elon’s announcement this week.

Hitting the road in a few minutes for Phoenix, so no more posts until this afternoon or evening.

[Late afternoon update]

Just got to the conference. Gwynne Shotwell, president of SpaceX, is scheduled to speak in a few minutes. It will be interesting to see what she has to say about Tuesday’s announcement.

[Friday afternoon update]

For those wondering about Gwynne’s talk, Clark Lindsey has some notes, as does Doug Messier.