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.

This should be a barn burner. I can’t imagine he’s very happy with NASA and Mike Griffin. As Jim Muncy said yesterday, the truce may be over. Talk starts in a few minutes.

Thanks Henry, says this is his favorite conference. Opens with a quote from T. E. Lawrence about dangerous dreams. Says that the people here are “dreamers of the day.”

It’s an interesting field right now, and he decided to get involved with a company called Orbital Outfitters, which is leasing space suits to the startups. Of all the things he’s been involved with in the not-for-profit industry, he enjoyed them, but he finally realized why they called it not-for-profit. Having the time of his life as an entrepreneur, and never has been as scared in his life. Has a holding company called Extreme Space, of which Orbital Outfitters is the first one. Suits are “get-me-down-alive” suits. Hope they’re never used, but they have to work. IS-3 “Industrial Orbital Spaceport.” First thing he learned starting a company was that he didn’t know a damned thing, but he’s hiring people who do, and are training him.

Press release coming out next week, hiring Jonathan Clarke, who’s a world expert in survivability (his wife, Laurel, died in Columbia).

Not exactly Levis to the miners, but there are niches out there. A second entity will manage human factors and physiology. A third one will be announced this summer. General Genius, which will handle legal issues, and others.

End of talk about his company. Next words are just Rick Tumlinson’s opinion.

Laying out a paradox. Best hope for humanity is opening up space. Worst enemy of that is the US government and its policies.

Chart says that NASA is killing US Space. Bureaucracies, tokenism, culture of broken promises, lack of understanding of “commercial,” Powerpoint Pioneering replaced Real Exploration. When cash gets short because they blew what they sold it yesterday. We are not going to the moon. That is done.

Getting tired of hearing we need to put together a NACA model. Wants to see someone do something about it. NACA Reformation Act of 2009, to be ready for the coming collapse. Long chart with lots of bullets. Going by too fast to capture. Points out absurdity of NASA’s latest offer of station for commercial. “What does that do to Bigelow?”

Wants to remove ITAR restrictions with closer allies, create White House Space Council, other ideas (I’ll try to get copies of the charts). Says that we need “commitment,” with long quote to that effect. Wants to start wikis about why and how to reform NASA. Sorry, just can’t type fast enough to transfer the firehose output to keyboard.

Applause.

If you want to lease a suit, rick@ricktumlinson.com