Talking about how a year ago he propounded a strategic deal that we could and should cut with NASA–if NASA was going to invest in COTS and technology, and fund Centennial Challenges and buy suborbital rides, and reach out to New Space, then why not let them (instead of fighting with them) do Ares? Why fight about Orion, or capsules versus wings. If we could find a way to get enough money out of them over the next few years to do the things that we needed to get done, then go ahead and let them do what they were going to do to get to LEO, because we were going to beat them to the moon. He was not saying we should support Constellation, or Ares or Orion–he was simply saying, “Why fight it?”

He was wrong. Not that we should get into fights over designs, but he was wrong to think that NASA wouldn’t screw it up. But the way they seem to be going about it is internally logical and consistent, and predictable with the circumstances they face, but Orion and Ares are eating up many things in the agency, including the things we thought we hoped we’d get. So the truce is over.

Notes that it’s easily as much Congress’ fault. NASA had the original idea of letting a lot of people try a lot of things, but because Congress couldn’t figure out which district the money would get spent in, or when it would get spent, they didn’t understand, or have any interest in prizes. Their job is politics, and you pass bills based on getting 51%. Decisions are made on both substantive and political grounds, and when the appropriations committee doesn’t know who’s going to win the prize, they don’t know who’s going to come to the fund raiser. They don’t see the lobby. It’s hard to get federal funding for some set aside that someone might win or might not. He’s not a great fan of prizes as a cure-all, but they can be a useful mechanism. And NASA never explained to Congress that if the prizes work, there would be lots of jobs in lots of districts, and if NASA was seen to be responsible for this, it would make it easier for NASA to win support. And now NASA has stopped asking for money for them.

He’s concerned that NASA is more interested in cutting deals with foreign partners than nurturing commercial US industry, and they are setting themselves up for having station eat them alive because they won’t be able to afford to service it. They gave Marshall the easiest, low-tech rocket to design, and they gave JSC the easiest low-tech crew vehicle to design, and it’s going to take until 2015, and cost a lot of money. They have cut Advanced Capabilities, and don’t think they need it because they don’t seriously expect to do much research at ISS. But it also involved with coming up with better ways to do things in exploration. They are not designing any infrastructure to be commercially owned and operated.

NASA trying to rush Orion in order to get to ISS. The “gap” isn’t a national security gap, or a human spaceflight gap, or an American spaceflight gap. It’s simply a US government human spaceflight gap. Are we really so cynical about US capitalism and innovation that we don’t believe that private enterprise could do the job if given incentives? Griffin himself admitted there was no schedule pull for going back to the moon–the only schedule pull for political support was the gap. The notion was that Congress would care so much about space station that they would fund NASA to fill the gap. “If they wanted it so badly, why didn’t they just put out a few billion-dollar prizes to accomplish it”? Because they didn’t know where or when the money would be spent. Democracy is the worst form of all the others, but he’s not very happy with its results in space policy right now.

There are other bad ideas. Like United Launch Alliance. How could they let this past the anti-trust statutes? They’re adding additional oversight, and SETA contractors, and FFRDCs and other “powerpoint shops,” as though that would solve the problem.

Now that he has that out of his system, he feels better.

Now for the good news.

Dynamic leadership at the FAA that helped with the passage of the revolutionary legislation a couple years ago. AST is now a star in the FAA for the work they’re doing in nurturing this industry. There’s now ten million dollars in the airport improvement program this year that can be used to convert/expand airports to spaceports. Spaceport insfrastructure is now recognized as strategic and is funded by the federal government.

Operationally-responsive space is now getting attention from the Air Force, something we’ve been preaching for years. Transitioning from large, expensive infrequent satellites to small, cheaper, often satellites, with surge capability. And there’s a private industry that needs vehicles that can do this for their own needs (providing passenger transport). Even Congress has gotten on board, because they know that the war fighter in the field actually wants to have intelligence when he needs it, not months later. It could make sense to spend a few millions dollars on a Tascat/Falcon launch to get something into place that can make a difference in a battle, and the Chinese ASAT test woke them up, because these “gold plated satellites can’t be armor plated as well.” There’s now eighty million dollars for ORS, though the Air Force was fighting against having anything in their budget for it a few months ago. The relevant new chairman in the House recognizes the need to invest more in “PC” satellites and less in “mainframe” satellites. Cautions that we don’t know how successful this will be, but there are opportunities there.

Mike Griffin continues to fund COTS at half a billion, and he’s doing other things with other private entities, but Jim is afraid that it’s too little, and that Congress won’t continue to support it. Doesn’t know how things will turn out–not as good as he thought they would last year, but there are good things happening. This industry is encouraging, and despite his “downcast eye,” he is happy to see us, and happy to be with us and not in DC.

Ending on (what he thinks is) a positive note. One of the accomplishments that Mike Griffin has accomplished is that Shuttle will not fly much past 2010 or 2011. There are only tanks left for seventeenish more flights, and it costs four billion dollars a year. If they don’t end by then, they won’t get to the moon.

Jim Dunstan is giving a talk on acceptable levels of risk for various transportation modes. Case in point, we could reduce our forty-thousand traffic deaths but aren’t willing to pay the cost. We accepted significant loss of life for early aviation. It was recognized in developing the Warsaw Convention that we had to “do for law what the engineers were doing for machines,” which meant we needed a liability regime. Aviation has strict liability, with a cap per the convention. Space currently has an uncapped liability, driven by the 1967 Outer Space Treaty and the 1972 liability convention.

He thinks that he’s perhaps found a loophole in the liability convention for spaceflight participant, though it’s not clear whether “participant” means “crew” or “passengers” (or both). Unfortunately there’s enough wiggle room for plaintiff’s lawyers to have a field day.

He is still amazed that we won the battle a couple years ago in getting the FAA to keep hands off passenger safety regs for now, but the battle isn’t over. It established a “Informed Risk Regime” for spaceflight participants. Implication for this is that, since there is no federal tort law, it will be matter for state laws (at least in the states in which people operate, if not in all fifty, just to be safe). This is the “next frontier” for space lawyers. Gaol is to provide immunity for operators who have FAA licenses and have obtained “informed consent,” based on extreme sports, such as helicopter skiing.

Virginia has passed such a law, though it needs to have a governor’s amendment with help from the space lawyers, because original law was based on an agricultural tourism bill to protect farmers on historical farms. Tractors and spaceships aren’t quite the same thing, so they took the existing language and tied it back into the FAA regulations as much as possible. Virginia needed to do this early, because they have a spaceport at Wallops, and they also have a common law that says that citizens cannot waive right to sue in prospect. The law had to be amended to override this. It has been submitted to the governor, who accepted the amended language, and it’s hoped that it will be repassed in April. He is giving credit to Jack Kennedy to make this happen (in the face of opposition from the Trial Lawyers Association). Still problems with the bill–could be better from a clean sheet of paper, but it’s good enough for now.

Next targets–Oklahoma, New Mexico, and California (which might require a state constitutional amendment).

Another concern is if someone comes down with cancer after flying and attempts to blame it on the flight. Need to characterize environment of vehicles during testing to help fight this.

And somehow, it seems appropriate to point to this article that describes how lousy the human mind is at assessing risk. This may be one of the biggest problems with this industry.

[Update at 5 PM MST]

Jack Kennedy checks in in comments with a link to the latest version of the bill.

Jim Dunstan is giving a talk on acceptable levels of risk for various transportation modes. Case in point, we could reduce our forty-thousand traffic deaths but aren’t willing to pay the cost. We accepted significant loss of life for early aviation. It was recognized in developing the Warsaw Convention that we had to “do for law what the engineers were doing for machines,” which meant we needed a liability regime. Aviation has strict liability, with a cap per the convention. Space currently has an uncapped liability, driven by the 1967 Outer Space Treaty and the 1972 liability convention.

He thinks that he’s perhaps found a loophole in the liability convention for spaceflight participant, though it’s not clear whether “participant” means “crew” or “passengers” (or both). Unfortunately there’s enough wiggle room for plaintiff’s lawyers to have a field day.

He is still amazed that we won the battle a couple years ago in getting the FAA to keep hands off passenger safety regs for now, but the battle isn’t over. It established a “Informed Risk Regime” for spaceflight participants. Implication for this is that, since there is no federal tort law, it will be matter for state laws (at least in the states in which people operate, if not in all fifty, just to be safe). This is the “next frontier” for space lawyers. Gaol is to provide immunity for operators who have FAA licenses and have obtained “informed consent,” based on extreme sports, such as helicopter skiing.

Virginia has passed such a law, though it needs to have a governor’s amendment with help from the space lawyers, because original law was based on an agricultural tourism bill to protect farmers on historical farms. Tractors and spaceships aren’t quite the same thing, so they took the existing language and tied it back into the FAA regulations as much as possible. Virginia needed to do this early, because they have a spaceport at Wallops, and they also have a common law that says that citizens cannot waive right to sue in prospect. The law had to be amended to override this. It has been submitted to the governor, who accepted the amended language, and it’s hoped that it will be repassed in April. He is giving credit to Jack Kennedy to make this happen (in the face of opposition from the Trial Lawyers Association). Still problems with the bill–could be better from a clean sheet of paper, but it’s good enough for now.

Next targets–Oklahoma, New Mexico, and California (which might require a state constitutional amendment).

Another concern is if someone comes down with cancer after flying and attempts to blame it on the flight. Need to characterize environment of vehicles during testing to help fight this.

And somehow, it seems appropriate to point to this article that describes how lousy the human mind is at assessing risk. This may be one of the biggest problems with this industry.

[Update at 5 PM MST]

Jack Kennedy checks in in comments with a link to the latest version of the bill.

Jim Dunstan is giving a talk on acceptable levels of risk for various transportation modes. Case in point, we could reduce our forty-thousand traffic deaths but aren’t willing to pay the cost. We accepted significant loss of life for early aviation. It was recognized in developing the Warsaw Convention that we had to “do for law what the engineers were doing for machines,” which meant we needed a liability regime. Aviation has strict liability, with a cap per the convention. Space currently has an uncapped liability, driven by the 1967 Outer Space Treaty and the 1972 liability convention.

He thinks that he’s perhaps found a loophole in the liability convention for spaceflight participant, though it’s not clear whether “participant” means “crew” or “passengers” (or both). Unfortunately there’s enough wiggle room for plaintiff’s lawyers to have a field day.

He is still amazed that we won the battle a couple years ago in getting the FAA to keep hands off passenger safety regs for now, but the battle isn’t over. It established a “Informed Risk Regime” for spaceflight participants. Implication for this is that, since there is no federal tort law, it will be matter for state laws (at least in the states in which people operate, if not in all fifty, just to be safe). This is the “next frontier” for space lawyers. Gaol is to provide immunity for operators who have FAA licenses and have obtained “informed consent,” based on extreme sports, such as helicopter skiing.

Virginia has passed such a law, though it needs to have a governor’s amendment with help from the space lawyers, because original law was based on an agricultural tourism bill to protect farmers on historical farms. Tractors and spaceships aren’t quite the same thing, so they took the existing language and tied it back into the FAA regulations as much as possible. Virginia needed to do this early, because they have a spaceport at Wallops, and they also have a common law that says that citizens cannot waive right to sue in prospect. The law had to be amended to override this. It has been submitted to the governor, who accepted the amended language, and it’s hoped that it will be repassed in April. He is giving credit to Jack Kennedy to make this happen (in the face of opposition from the Trial Lawyers Association). Still problems with the bill–could be better from a clean sheet of paper, but it’s good enough for now.

Next targets–Oklahoma, New Mexico, and California (which might require a state constitutional amendment).

Another concern is if someone comes down with cancer after flying and attempts to blame it on the flight. Need to characterize environment of vehicles during testing to help fight this.

And somehow, it seems appropriate to point to this article that describes how lousy the human mind is at assessing risk. This may be one of the biggest problems with this industry.

[Update at 5 PM MST]

Jack Kennedy checks in in comments with a link to the latest version of the bill.

Henry Cate, who normally blogs about home schooling is also live blogging the conference. Just keep scrolling.

Michelle Murray of FAA-AST gave a presentation on what the office has been up to for the past year since the last Space Access meeting. In the process, she announced that Blue Origin had a successful test flight yesterday. She’s probably not at liberty to say much more than that, but perhaps they will have something at their site about it soon (they don’t yet). Then again, perhaps not.

Kerry Scarlott, an attorney who specializes in ITAR, will be talking on it. Following that, there will a panel on it, on which I’ll be sitting, so don’t expect me to blog it.

Introduction, saying it is what it is, rather than what we can do to change it. It is effective when talking about guns and bullets and missile technology, but it’s questionable whether it is with this community, and there is hope that it may change, but right now, it’s something we have to live with. Explaining some of the nuts and bolts of how it works, then put together the panel, where he can respond to issues that the rest of us bring up.

The acronym is the Advisory Committee on Entrepreneurial Space Access. Charles Miller, who is currently consulting to the Air Force Research Lab at Wright-Patt, is providing a status report on the progress in terms of developing means by which the DoD and the entrepreneurial space community can mutually interact, to focus on Operationally Responsive Space. One of the ideas was “a NACA for the twenty-first century,” hence the name. AFRL supports this concept. He’s been briefing many people on this, and there’s support from other elements of the DoD, and there may be a major meeting on this before the end of Fiscal 2007 (i.e., September).

Notes that we are vulnerable to asymmetric attacks in space. This isn’t new, but Iraq insurgency has taught much of the world that asymmetry works against the US, and China recently demonstrated that it could work in space, with their ASAR test, people are now taking it seriously. We are much more sensitive to this than the other guy–our entire force structure is now based on space. We become dumb, deaf and blind absent our orbital assets, whereas the enemy isn’t bothered at all. Solution is rapid relauch of assets, which capability could give an enemy pause because it reduces the value of attacking us. The systems needed to do this have other benefits, of reducing cost of space in general, reducing the cost of the satellites, commercial spinoff, etc. Need to break out of the cycle of complex, expensive long-lead satellites and more into a more responsive procurement and deployment environment. More from a vicious cycle to a virtuous one. Go with shorter-lived, smaller, more satellites, more consistently on the leading edge, with higher rates that bring down costs.

Describing what NACA did that made things happen, cost effectively, in aviation. Helped coordinate industry and government, helped mitigate disputes between Curtis and Wrights, early advocates for the airmail service. Performed technology development for aircraft that were generically applicable.

We currently have some coordinating bodies, but none that cross the boundary between industry and government. Need annual reports on what barriers are (technology, regulatory, etc.). Need to have internships and cross pollenization, perhaps through vouchers to industry, and stimulate ideas for new markets and perhaps

Commercial spaceplane day on July 19th, supported by AFRL, and a Reusable Access to Space Exchange will be in late August in Dayton.

Dana finished early, so an unscheduled speaker, Bruce Pittman, is giving a talk on the NASA Ames Space Portal, which was established by Pete Worden (Ames center director) to set up a way for private industry to more easily interface with NASA.

“If space is so great, why aren’t we using it more”? You’d think we’d be smarter than we are after fifty years. Held a series of workshops to figure out what’s missing to bring the full potential of commercial space to fruition. Time scales too long on research, space not routine enough, no clear demand model. Need to find more robust customer base. Also need to find business cases that will close in order to raise money.

They decided that this is actually a pretty good time to get into the space business. Helping support COTS (which is not a contract–it’s a public/private partnership via a Space Act Agreement). We should recognize that this is a very difficult thing for NASA, because they don’t like to relinquish control, and if they’re not doing as good a job of it as they can, be happy that they’re doing it at all, and hope that they get better at it. Pointing out the difficulties of NASA’s “visiting vehicle” policy, and need to make this easier, as well as making it easier to do things on the station itself.

They’re trying to learn from history, based on NACA (I think that Charles Miller will be talking about this as well, after the break). NACA formed to help regain the lead from the Europeans in aviation early in the century. We need a NACA-like entity for space, resurrecting the good things that NACA did right up until NASA was formed that created the aviation industry. In keeping with the National Space Act, but NASA has done a poor job of implementation.

Goal of the portal is to help NASA meet these legislative obligations, by helping build customer base for space services, and providing a “friendly front door” for the agency.

Working with NASA on COTS, looking for ideas for COTS follow ons. Working on Virtual Reality and simspace (working with Second Life) to see how to apply to the real space world. Commercial workshop results available on the web.

[Stuff coming too fast to capture–recommend going to Ames Space Portal web site for more information.]

Dana Andrews talking about the company (founded by his son). “Largest unheard-of aerospace company.” Now at seventy people, and growing fast.

Lot of work for a lot of people. Formed in 1999. Got started without investors, by doing small contracts for NASA and the Air Force. Double in size and revenue every year. Between fifteen and twenty million in revenue expected this year. They are hiring.

They have a system for going to the moon and Mars that would cost roughly half of ESAS. NASA’s Orion module that they show the press was actually built by Andrews, by removing their logo and replacing it with the meatball. Mix of old Boeing veterans with young “computer wizards” who are being mentored. Work NASA, commercial, DoD, split equally, with all three expanding. Woman-owned disadvantaged business (his daughter-in-law is CEO, and Korean–woman who raised Kistler’s first major funding).

Share a building with Paul Allen in downtown Seattle. Work well with both big and small companies.

One of the projects is Peregrin, a horizontal takeoff, horizontal landing rapid-response launcher, in which the recent Chinese ASAT test has aroused Pentagon interest. They supported both teams in CEV (firewalled off with different wings). Assisting ATK in Ares 1 first stage. Supporting RpK on COTS, capable of rapid prototyping.

They believe they now have the critical mass of people and resources to go out and design a system that can reduce cost of access to space. They’re just waiting for the right opportunity.