Jim Benson is leaving SpaceDev, the company he founded, to form a new public space travel company. Looks like he’s starting a separate spaceline to use Dreamchaser.

Dennis Wingo has some thoughts on Anousheh Ansari’s excellent adventure.

Keith Cowing has been critical of the overhyping of all the firsts. In that context, he has an interesting posting to her blog.

Bravo.

[Via Robin, who is apparently managing Anousheh’s blog]

Keith Cowing has been critical of the overhyping of all the firsts. In that context, he has an interesting posting to her blog.

Bravo.

[Via Robin, who is apparently managing Anousheh’s blog]

Keith Cowing has been critical of the overhyping of all the firsts. In that context, he has an interesting posting to her blog.

Bravo.

[Via Robin, who is apparently managing Anousheh’s blog]

Dwayne Day has a good rundown on a conference I missed last week because I was attending one on the left coast.

Taylor Dinerman had an article in yesterday’s issue of The Space Review, but it doesn’t have the latest news about the OSC deal falling apart.

This experiment doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, if they’re really trying to understand what surgery will be like in weightlessness:

Whizzing above southwest France aboard a specially modified Airbus, strapped-down surgeons will attempt to remove a fatty tumor from the forearm of a volunteer in a three-hour operation.

The Airbus A300 Zero-G, based in Bordeaux, is designed to perform roller coaster-like maneuvers that simulate weightlessness. It will make about 30 such parabolas during the flight.

The problem is that you only get about twenty-five seconds of weightlessness at a time. In between, you get two or more gees as you do the pullup maneuver going in and the pullout on the way down. So in addition to probably making the surgeons nauseous, they’ll have to deal with tools being pulled down in the high gees (and any fluids will also be pooled, rather than continuously floating). I really don’t think that it will usefully replicate the problems of surgery in a continuous weightless environment (and it really is a problem). This is the kind of research that has to be performed on ISS, or some other orbital facility.

I also found this a little strange:

The patient, Philippe Sanchot, and the six-person medical team underwent training in zero-gravity machines, much like those astronauts use, to prepare for the operation.

What “zero-gravity machines” are they talking about? I’d like to get one.

Not to mention an astrophysics blogger.

I met Louise Riofrio last week at the conference in San Jose. She has a lot of posts, and pictures. And she likes to put herself in the pictures, for an “I was there” feel to it. Keep scrolling.

(Note to readers from the distant future–this is just a link to the blog, not a permalink, so you’ll have to dig into the archives for the date of this post.)

She’s also going on the blogroll.

This is interesting news: if this story is true, OSC is pulling out of the deal. I’m guessing they pulled a bait and switch on George French. When they made the original deal with RpK, OSC wasn’t expecting a CEV win for Lockheed Martin, but now that they’re on the Orion team, the COTS deal doesn’t look as good to them, so I’m speculating that they tried to renegotiate it.

It’s not clear what this means for the overall COTS deal going forward. I don’t know to what degree having OSC in the proposal was a factor in the NASA award. But if they can’t raise the money, they’ll have to get out of the game, and NASA will have to award another COTS contract to one of the runners up.

[Update a little before 5 PM EDT]

Just to clarify, per the first comment. Why did things change when Lockheed Martin won the Orion contract? OSC was hungry, and they committed to a ten million dollar investment in RpK in order to get a lot of the work on COTS. Once they had their plate full with the Orion work, it didn’t look like such a great deal to them any more. They pushed too hard for a do over, and RpK pulled the plug (partly, no doubt, because they didn’t want to do business with someone who would renege on a deal).

[Late evening update]

Here is a semi-official statement from RpK:

• In June 2006, Rocketplane Kistler and Orbital Sciences initiated discussions regarding a strategic relationship in which Orbital would have both a significant role in the development of the K-1 and a significant financial interest in Rocketplane Kistler.
• Rocketplane Kistler has been very pleased with the programmatic and technical interfaces with the Orbital personnel.
• However, in recent weeks, Orbital has conditioned investment in Rocketplane Kistler on changes to the K-1 Program that Rocketplane Kistler does not believe are in the best interests of Rocketplane Kistler and would be inconsistent with the goals and objectives of NASA in entering into a Space Act Agreement with Rocketplane Kistler.
• As a result, Rocketplane Kistler and Orbital have decided to terminate their strategic relationship.
• As part of its planning processes, Rocketplane Kistler has anticipated the possibility that one or more of its contractors may elect not to participate in the K-1 program. While the company regrets Orbital’s decision, the decision will not impair the ability of the company to meet its obligations to NASA under the SAA. Among other things, we are increasing near term RpK staffing plans for conducting SE&I related activities that were previously planned for Orbital. RpK is also continuing discussions with several potential industry strategic partners who have recently approached Rocketplane Kistler about participating in SE&I and other development and operational areas of interest on the K1. We anticipate completing those discussions in the very near future and finalizing appropriate agreements that will provide the best strategic and economic value to Rocketplane Kistler.