The latest newsletter of the Space Access Society is out, and it has a long, but good rundown of the current situation in space transportation (at least that portion of the industry that actually promises to reduce costs and improve reliability).

We are seeing signs that this industry is growing up fast. One trend is specialization – rocketship builders are starting to differentiate from rocketship operators, something that happened to the air transport industry too around the time it was getting serious.

Another is that rocketship builders are beginning to access a novel method of finance for this industry: Paying customers, both government agencies wanting a mix of tech development and delivered payloads, and commercial operators wanting actual ships to fly.

And while most company finance in this industry is still via some variant of “angel investors”, aka wealthy individuals, there have been a number of signs that the venture capital industry may not be that far behind. First there’s all the positive press buzz of the last year, of course. Never underestimate the herd factor in investment trends.

There are also signs of a fundamental VC investment requirement firming up: The exit strategy. One time-honored way to cash out investment in an innovative startup is by selling out to an established player that wants a foot in the new door. Arianespace showed up at the X-Prize Cup’s Personal Spaceflight Symposium last fall “looking for possible connections” in this new industry. We’ve seen indications the US launch majors too are keeping a close eye on developments among the startups. Looking to eventually buy what they can’t foster internally? It wouldn’t be unprecedented.

I think we’re a long way off from a rocketcom bubble (that would be fun, for a while…), but it’s nice to see the money finally starting to flow.

It also announces the final date and location of the next Space Access conference, which is a must-go for people really into this subject.

Grant Bonin is having a debate on the appropriate launch vehicle size for exploration. My attitude is either use what you have, or if you’re going to spend billions of dollars developing new vehicles, focus it on something that actually reduces cost and improves reliability.

Wayne Eleazer has an interesting brief history of the US military space program at today’s issue of The Space Review. I was working at the Aerospace Corporation when some of the changes described were occurring in the early eighties. Clearly what they’re doing now isn’t working well, but I’m not sure that just going back to the SPOs is going to help. The problem is, as described, that space hardware (at least as historically developed and procured by the Air Force) is not like airplanes. Until they get some fresh thinking there, and try to make it so, I suspect that their woes will continue.