The wireless is up in the room. For now.

George Nield of FAA-AST is talking, and describing the new rules for human spaceflight.

Here is Jeff Foust’s first post from the conference.

I’m posting this from the lobby after lunch. In theory the wireless is supposed to be up in the room Real Soon Now.

Clark Lindsey has some stuff up from the proceedings so far. And more here.

At least for a Space Access conference. There’s no broadband in the rooms. There is a wireless connection in the lobby, from which I’m posting this. Michael Mealing is attempting to set up a wireless connection in the room in which the proceedings are occuring, so we can blog from there, but there’s a problem with the network connection to the router, and there will be no resolution before tomorrow morning. The restaurant took half an hour to take out orders, and an hour to deliver them, then screwed up the check. Not to mention that my linguini was spaghetti., and overcooked.

Other than that, everything is great. Hopefully better news on the morrow.

I was hearing rumors of this last night through the grapevine, but some news outlets are now reporting the Scott Crossfield‘s private aircraft is missing, possibly (and even likely) with him aboard.

Jeff Foust has started up (yet another) new blog on personal spaceflight. He’s come up with a very creative and descriptive name for it–Personal Spaceflight.

Bookmark it. I’ll be adding it to the blogroll.

Clark Lindsey reminds us that the Space Access Conference starts on Thursday. Hope to see some of you there.

Eric Hedman has a column in today’s issue of The Space Review on whether or not ESAS is a good approach, or at least a good enough one. His bottom line:

After reading over the ESAS, I

Eric Hedman has a column in today’s issue of The Space Review on whether or not ESAS is a good approach, or at least a good enough one. His bottom line:

After reading over the ESAS, I

Eric Hedman has a column in today’s issue of The Space Review on whether or not ESAS is a good approach, or at least a good enough one. His bottom line:

After reading over the ESAS, I

In “Human orbital spaceflight: the ultralight approach,”, Richard Speck looks at a cheap, light, low tech escape system and fleshes out the new rocket adage, “Be the escape system”.

In “The challenges of Mars Exploration,” Donald Rapp assesses the not-too-bright prospects of various technologies on the necessary timelines for Mars exploration.

There’s one I disagree with him on: in-situ lunar oxygen. In-situ oxygen extraction on the Moon need not be a major industrial process. The basic needs are a heat source and vapor recovery. Suppose you have an Earth imported high efficiency pump. Add a lunar glass bell jar and an Earth imported parabolic mirror (later, lunar made). If you make the bell jar big enough, the mirror can sit inside the bell jar. Set the whole thing on a flat piece of lunar glass to make a low efficiency seal.

Operation would be as follows:

1. Dump some ore on a flat piece of lunar glass.
2. Point your parabolic mirror at the ore.
3. Put the bell jar on top.
4. Turn on the pump.
5. Dump it out before the slag sticks to the glass bottom.
6. Repeat.

Some kind of airlock conveyor belt thing where the top layer of the ore is fried might be a more advanced version. It’s ore efficiency would be quite low, but there’s plenty of ore up there.