This is a good example of how it’s easier to make your investments grow with small companies than big ones (albeit riskier). Just a few days ago at the ISDC, Jeff Greason was saying that XCOR’s sales had increased dramatically, to about three million per year in the coming year. I noticed that Jeff disappeared for a day after that announcement on Thursday, arriving back at LAX late Friday night. I suspect that this may have been the subject of that excursion. They just doubled their sales for this year again:

XCOR Aerospace announced today that it had won a $3.3 million contract with ATK as part of ATK

How can a man top the creation of X Prize, X Prize Cup, X Racer and Zero G Corporation, International Space University, Starport.com, Students for Exploration and Development of Space and Space Adventures?

As keynote speaker at the International Space Development Conference last night, he forecast that he would be making a major announcement this year about a private foundation to support spaceflight to Mars. His expectation is that he could privately raise $3 billion dollars from 10,000 people willing to commit $100,000; 1,000 people willing to commit $1 million and 100 people willing to commit $10 million. He thinks with the right fund managers, this could earn 15-17% returns and double every 5 years. Within 10 years, the money would be sufficient to finance two or more human Mars missions.

These people would then play a game to determine who would be in the 100 person astronaut corps. That corps would be rigorously trained and tested and down-selected into 12 colonists for the first crew. These crew would then undertake a one-way colonization mission to Mars.

Earlier would come private exploration missions. Later would come private pre-placement missions pre-placing supplies, power generation equipment and habs. Then a cycler would take colonists to Mars who would use a lander to get to their pre-placed equipment. The bulk of the mass would head back to Earth to be refurbished, resupplied and reused if economical.

He calls it the ‘Mars Citizenship Program’.

Peter, I said it last night. I am in for $100,000. I am also willing to run a game for you to select from 100,000,000 people putting in $10.

Continue reading Peter Diamandis Cooking →

I’m posting this a little after midnight, but May 5th was the forty-fifth anniversary of Alan Shepard’s historic flight. And I have to get to bed for about four hours sleep so I can catch a 6 AM flight to Detroit, where my niece is having her first communion this weekend. Blogging will be light. Thoughts about the conference upon return.

Dale wants me to comment on yesterday’s entertaining but unconstructive rant from the sage of Mojave. I know it will sound like heresy to some, but the post title is all I have to say at this time, for those commenters at his post who seem to think the opposite. He won the X-Prize because he got funded, not because he’s the only person who could do it, or even had the best way to do it. The fact that he doesn’t know how to get to orbit means nothing, except that he doesn’t know how to get to orbit. There are smart people who do, given sufficient funds, and there is more than one way to do it.

[Update a couple minutes later]

I just noticed that Sam had some other thoughts on one of Burt’s other unuseful and illogical comments.

Bill Hulsey and various other concerned Texans are forming the Texas Space Authority. We meet next week at University of Texas at Austin.

I found a couple of documents about Texas space plans. They are from 2003 and 2004. The Texas 2003-2007 strategic plan is here. Another is a 12 MB spaceport plan file. Email at dinkin@space-shot.com if you want me to share it with you on xdrive.

I’m not blogging the conference–I’m too busy schmoozing, and I’m not staying at the conference hotel, so it’s a PITA to haul a laptop around there. But Clark Lindsey has already built a page of links to his and others’ comments so far. I may have some thoughts on the conference early next week, after things have calmed down and I’ve had some time to gather some. Anyway, there are three days remaining (though I will only be attending today).

Posting has been light, because I’ve been busy helping someone help Mike Griffin get us Back To The Moon, And Beyond, but I’ll be heading over to the hotel tonight to schmooze with early arrivals at the conference. There should be quite a few, since the festivities start at 9 AM tomorrow.

One of the announcements at the Space Access Conference last weekend that I didn’t mention is the new private Teachers in Space initiative (boy, is that web site hard on the eyes…). Jeff Foust has the story at The Space Review today.

The most interesting addition to the Space Access crowd was Esther Dyson. Far from the outsider she was pilloried as when she set up Flight School last year, she has a healthy vision for how to take space travel, micro sat’s, space burial and the rest of “New Space” and shape it into a growing large industry.

She mentioned on a panel that she would like to see companies sharing their lists of investors. The purpose is to allow those investors to diversify. She is
“talking her own book” here as she has already invested in XCOR, Space Adventures, Zero G Corporation and Space Services, Inc. I hope that her comment that she liked the Rocketplane presentation translates into some money for them too.

Someone knowledgable about the inner workings of the New Space firms (whom I agree with) assures me that it will take a major cultural shift for these firms to share investor lists. But Dyson by telling everyone at Space Access her goal may encourage other investors to advertise their own interest in space investment diversification.

Dyson got into space because of her family. Her father, Freeman Dyson, designed the Orion spacecraft. Her brother is the historian at Blue Origin.

Following her around was a post-modern experience. She had many suiters and always seemed to have three conversations going at once. It took almost as long to talk to her as it did to talk to Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit. To talk to Glenn I had to fly to Atlanta and drive to Knoxville.

Talking to her was also thoroughly post modern. Conversations with Dyson jumped from electricity to food, to luxury goods reporting. She immediately grasped the concept of the Space-Shot.com game noting the single elimination tournament is a “binary tree”. She pressed me about my electricity auction history asking the single most thoughtful question on that topic I have ever been asked, “if you auction the electricity in advance, how do you assure the spot price is the right price?”

Spot prices in New Jersey are determined by a spot market and many of the large customers have to pay the spot price. In those cases, the forward auction merely determines the cost of the capacity. This piece is critical to why New Jersey and Illinois are different from California’s ill-fated experience with CalPX. Dyson got to live through the California electricity crisis. I bid to run the CalPX and lost. I could have averted that crisis.

Hopefully space in ten years will do as well as the Internet is doing now under her thoughtful guidance or electricity under mine.