My Popular Mechanics piece on propellant depots is up now.

[Tuesday morning update]

Jon Goff has related thoughts.

OK, I’m back in the ARES Torrance office, and I’ll be flying back to Florida tonight. Some conference thoughts:

This was a little disappointing, relative to last year. It seemed much more like a traditional AIAA conference (not that there’s anything wrong with that), but it had much less of a NewSpace flavor, for two reasons, I think. First, last year was sort of an anomaly, because it was up in San Jose on Ames’ turf, and it was really Pete Worden’s conference. He worked pretty hard to make it a NewSpace conference. Second, it was (let’s face it) a bad year for NewSpace. While there are some success stories (more on that in a minute), the explosion at Scaled put a damper on things somewhat, and RpK’s problems will haunt people raising money, though they had a somewhat unique situation. There was very little NewSpace presence, at least relative to last year.

On the other hand, Jeff Greason was on the first morning’s plenary panel, and was a refreshing new voice, in conjunction with the usual suspects from the Aerospace Industries Association and other usual suspects. As he noted himself, a few years ago, there wouldn’t have been even a slot on the panel for someone like him, let alone him personally. XCOR has come a long way, and seems to continue to do well.

He was also on a panel with Elon, in which “the Gap” was a topic of much discussion, and for some, consternation. This Wired article describes it (sort of). Why this is big news, I don’t know. There has been a “gap” ever since January 14th, 2004. It was intrinsic in the VSE announcement. All that’s changed is that it’s increased slightly, from four years to five. Stop the presses!

I hope that Elon can live up to his boast, and I suspect that Jeff does as well. I suspect that what he meant to say is that it won’t be closed with fully reusable vehicles in that timeframe (a statement with which I agree). I don’t think (as the article implies) that he was saying that Elon won’t be able to do it. Only the future will tell.

One other interesting (and concerning) bit of information. Though it wasn’t publicly announced there (because it’s not really an announcement), based on a reliable source, they still don’t know what caused the explosion in Mojave. The implications of that are troubling. I would think that it means that they can’t move forward on a nitrous hybrid system, and have confidence that this won’t happen again, until they know why it happened the first time. That implies that (assuming they don’t come up with an answer in which they have confidence) they will either have to change oxidizers (probably to LOX) or perhaps go to an all-liquid system (something I’ve long advocated, and speculated they might do).

This could be an opportunity for one of the engine companies (XCOR jumping first to mind), since it’s unlikely in the extreme (particularly considering what happened with the hybrid development) that Scaled would try to develop one on its own. That’s probably the only way to move forward fast enough for Virgin to start generating revenues in a reasonable amount of time.

If I wanted to cause trouble, I’d ask him about this at lunch tomorrow. As Anonymous points out in comments over there, there is zero evidence that China has a manned lunar program underway at all, let alone one that will get them there before 2020.

I don’t have Internet where I’m staying, and while I’ll probably have wireless for the next three days at the conference, there will be way too much going on to have any time for live blogging. I’ll try to provide at least some daily highlights, though, and live coverage if there is any breaking news, as there was last year.

[Tuesday evening update]

I don’t know whether it’s my computer, or the wireless in the convention center, but this is the first time I’ve been on line all day, when I got back to where I’m staying, with ethernet. Probably little blogging from the conference…

The Space Carnival continues, over at Flying Singer’s place.

Well, I knew what the new prize was going to be this morning, but didn’t upstage them, out of courtesy.

Also, frankly, it’s sort of a yawner for me. I just can’t get as excited about it as I was supposed to be, based on all the pre-announcement hype.

I’m just not that into space science, or robots on other planets. I was hoping that it would be something that would further drive down the cost of space passenger travel. But hey, it’s Google’s money. Anyway, if it ups Elon’s launch rate, that’s all to the good.

[Update a few minutes later]

I knew this would happen. Per comments, look, I’m not saying that it’s a bad thing. I’m not even saying that it’s not a good or worthwhile thing. I’m sure that there will probably be some good outcomes from it.

I’m just saying that if I had thirty million dollars, and wanted to put it toward a prize (or prizes) of some kind, this isn’t what I would have done with the money. And that I just can’t work up the kind of enthusiasm about it that many no doubt will.

[Another update]

Alan Boyle has more.

[A couple minutes later]

Wow. Alan’s comments section has certainly attracted a bunch of loons. In fact, sadly, they outnumber the sane ones.

[Another update]

A question in comments:

Do you find the search for habitable extrasolar planets to be an exception to your general lack of interest in space science?

Short answer: no.

Why would I? Barring some kind of FTL breakthrough, I don’t find habitable extrasolar planets an urgent issue. I think that it will be a lot easier to build habitats in the solar system than to go to extrasolar planets, for a long time, if not forever.

But I’ll repeat something I’ve written before. I’m not uninterested in space science. I just don’t find it any more fascinating than other kinds, and I don’t think that it can justify the amount of money that’s spent on it, relative to other kinds. That’s why I always say that it’s a dangerous argument for proponents of NASA funding to do it on the basis of “science” or “exploration,” because when the people with the money compare how much we’re spending on NASA relative to (say) the NSF, they may find themselves out on a breaking budgetary limb.

[Update again]

Bill White makes a good comment in comments, that I hadn’t considered. This is good for the people doing the Lunar Landing Challenge (Armadillo, Masten, et al). That ticks my excitement meter up a notch or two.

But it’s still down in the mud.

And it raises an interesting question. If the LLC is won this year (or next) will NASA fund a follow-on (higher, longer, etc.)? Or will this prize be the successor, in which the competitors for the prize bid for the services of the lander companies?

[Friday morning update]

Clark Lindsey responds to some naysaying from Popular Mechanics.

I definitely agree that Burt is irrelevant to this. I find all this Burt worship amusing. As I’ve written before, Burt isn’t God, and in fact there are many people who understand this kind of problem better than he does (something I’m sure he’d admit himself). The notion that if Burt is too busy to do something, it won’t get done, is ludicrous.

The reason that Burt won the X-Prize isn’t because he’s a genius who came up with the only way to do it. Burt won the X-Prize because his reputation allowed him to raise the money. There were lots of ways to skin that cat, and people who knew how to do it, but little funding for them.

[Update a few minutes later]

Jeff Foust attended the announcement, and has pictures.

Mark Whittington doesn’t seem to understand the differences between SpaceX and RpK:

Charles Lurio has an interesting explanation why Rocket Plane/Kistler couldn’t raise funding for its COTS space craft and is now in great jeopardy of imploding. it’s [sic] all NASA’s fault. Of course that doesn’t explain why Elon Musk’s SpaceX seems to have no trouble raising private capital for the very same COTS competition that RP/Kistler seems to have failed at.

Well, actually, it does. SpaceX has no trouble raising private capital because a) it needs a lot less money and b) it has an angel investor, named Elon Musk. SpaceX has not been raising outside investment to date, whereas RpK has to. In addition, SpaceX anticipates other markets than COTS (and would be continuing to move forward in its absence, just as it was before COTS occurred), whereas it’s not clear if RpK (at least the “K” part of it) has a business plan that closes without it. So, yes, obviously, if NASA appears to be potentially fickle about whether or not it will eventually purchase COTS services at all (which it has), let alone from RpK, it will scare off needed institutional investors.

The real concern, though, as Charles pointed out, is that this can have a wider negative effect on space investment in general, even though there may be no logical relationship between the RpK deal and others.

And this is more of his typical nonsense:

Nothing is quite to irksome [sic] than to see people who pretend to be big boosters of commercial space who expect NASA or the government in general to guarantee the success of each and every commercial space company.

As usual, he does not (because he cannot) provide an actual quote or citation to support the assertion that there is anyone who has any such expectation. Because the only kind of arguments that he’s capable of knocking down are ones that no one actually makes.

Well, apparently RpK isn’t quite dead yet–it’s only mostly dead. But as Billy Crystal noted, there’s a big difference between dead and mostly dead. Alan Boyle has the latest. Apparently, if the money is pulled back, it will be recompeted.

[Afternoon update]

Charles Lurio has some a thoughts on the potential damage that NASA’s COTS approach may have done to the industry in general.

Well, apparently RpK isn’t quite dead yet–it’s only mostly dead. But as Billy Crystal noted, there’s a big difference between dead and mostly dead. Alan Boyle has the latest. Apparently, if the money is pulled back, it will be recompeted.

[Afternoon update]

Charles Lurio has some a thoughts on the potential damage that NASA’s COTS approach may have done to the industry in general.

Well, apparently RpK isn’t quite dead yet–it’s only mostly dead. But as Billy Crystal noted, there’s a big difference between dead and mostly dead. Alan Boyle has the latest. Apparently, if the money is pulled back, it will be recompeted.

[Afternoon update]

Charles Lurio has some a thoughts on the potential damage that NASA’s COTS approach may have done to the industry in general.