I have a piece up at Popular Mechanics about last weekend’s Space Access Conference.

I have a piece up at Popular Mechanics about last weekend’s Space Access Conference.

I have a piece up at Popular Mechanics about last weekend’s Space Access Conference.

It looks like the testing is going well. It seems to me, though, that this program could move a lot faster if they would commit to it now, instead of dithering around with decisions as to whether to move on the next phases. It’s exactly the kind of program that we need to mitigate the ASAT threat.

If you want a flavor of what we saw at the conference last week, Armadillo has put their latest videos on the web.

John Miller has some comments on the New Mexico Spaceport:

On the one hand, it sounds like a great opportunity for a rural area. On the other hand, why does an “all commercial” venture need a taxpayer subsidy? Isn’t that doubly true if private spaceports really are, as advocates say, “an idea whose time has finally come”? Private space travel is attracing big-time venture capitalists, such as Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos. Should the residents of “one of the poorest regions in the nation” subsidize their highly speculative businesses?

At least sports stadiums have a sure market. Even in Detroit.

Jeff Foust has a summary of the legal, investment and insurance panels over at today’s issue of The Space Review.

And since no one seems to have blogged it in detail (and it’s hard for me to live blog while on a panel, though maybe I should try it next year, but with a net…) here’s the story that I told at the beginning of Saturday night’s wrap up, that I think is an interesting view of the change in the investment climate for this stuff.

When we look from year to year at these things, progress seems measurable, but slow. It’s only when you look to the distant past that you can see how far we’ve come. Here’s a tale of two space entrepreneurs. Or rather, two tales of one space entrepreneur.

Back about a quarter of century ago, in the age of Joan Jett, the beginning of CDs and the useful PC, and Winchester hard drives, some of which were as large as ten whole megabytes, a few guys (named Jim Bennett, Phil Salin and Bevin McKinney) were up in Palo Alto looking for money. To build commercial rockets. They went up and down Sand Hill road, pitching their plan. One investor looked it over, looked them over, and said, “You know, you fellows look like you know what you’re doing, and seem like a good team. But I don’t know anything about this rocket stuff. How would you like to start a hard drive company?”

Well, to make a long story short, they found money somewhere else, started a couple rocket companies in the eighties, and Bennett got out after the American Rocket SET-1 failure in 1989, at which point he decided to go make a large fortune doing something else, which he could turn it into a small fortune building rockets, but at least without having to deal with investors. Internet companies were founded, and died, in the bubble pop and with 911.

But in 2006, with the economic (and tech stock) recovery, it seemed like a good time to resurrect the IT ventures. So he went out once again looking for money. He went up to Wyoming, where seldom is heard a discouraging word, and showed some people the business plan. They looked at it, and said, “You know, this seems like a pretty good team. And IT is good, and we could use more of it up here. But when we see your resumes, we were wondering. How would you like to start a space company?”

Thomas James writes that he was smarter than even he knew.

This is the last of my conference blogging, probably, unless I do a wrapup tomorrow. I’m on a conference-ending panel in a few minutes. You’ll have to read Clark to find out what happens.

This is a concept that Paul Breed and his son are developing for the Lunar Landing Challenge. Showing a video of servos and valves. Demonstrating igniters, have flightweight tanks and motors. Built a 650 lbf ablative motor, which is demonstrated. Uses composite cylindrical tanks, wound on flourescent light tubes, with tube caps at ends. Leaked at fifteen hundred psi, failed at nineteen hundred. Most weight in the end caps. Mass ratio of 6. Failure mode was shearing of aluminum pins, not plastic failure.

Valves initially based on Mikita cordless drill, hooked up to a ball valve. Ultimately ended up with UAV servos from Tokyo Hobbies in Japan. Have valves, tanks, built aluminum igniter, using ideas from Carmack’s blog.

Basic vehicle layout will have four modules in quadrants, legs laced together with rope that stretches for landing gear. Has built a test vehicle. Has a blog, if we want to follow progress.

Name based on quote by George Bernard Shaw.