The Guardian is talking seriously about property rights on the Moon.

The Chair Force Engineer has a lot of good stuff over the past few days, including commentary on the SpaceX lawsuit against BoLockMart, NASA’s architecture plans, and many pictures of the recent X-Prize Cup exhibition in New Mexico.

Jeff Foust has a good wrapup of the current state of play in the space activist community over the proposed exploration architecture, from this past weekend’s Space Frontier Conference, over at today’s The Space Review. Bottom line, to quote Bob Zubrin, is that it “sucks.” Those in the community who (unlike Space Frontier and Space Access) aren’t saying so officially are doing so only to be polite, and operating on the principle that if you haven’t anything good to say about it, say nothing at all.

Unfortunately, as Jeff points out at Space Politics, the sophistication of the debate on space policy in Washington is less than informed or reasoned. It’s very easy to confuse criticism of NASA’s chosen means of executing the vision with the vision itself. Nonetheless, if NASA has chosen a hopeless path for our goals (which in fact they have) we must state that. There’s little point in supporting a program that will once again end in tears, after many more billions of taxpayer dollars and more wasted years just because it is ostensibly a “space” program.

And speaking of debate style, Jeff was overtactful in characterizing Bob Zubrin’s as “contentious,” in which he repeatedly interrupted anyone who disagreed with him, shouting “stop, stop,” “it’s impossible!” “stop.”

This heavy-lift issue is one that needs a vigorous, informed (and civil) public debate, since it’s not at all clear that it ever received one in the workings of the exploration team at NASA. Cyberspace, and the blogosphere, would be a good place for it.

[Update a few minutes later]

Clark Lindsey points out an Aviation Week article that indicates that many are in agreement that the “all eggs in one basket” approach is potentially disastrous (and does little to advance our abilities as a spacefaring nation), and asks:

What is going to happen to the lunar program when (1) there is the inevitable long delay in the development of the HLLV and (2) when a HLLV fails and destroys a really big collection of lunar exploration hardware, and (3) the HLLV is then grounded for a long period?

Hey, Clark, didn’t you get the memo? We’re not supposed to ask those kinds of questions.

[Update at 7:40 AM PDT]

Clark has further thoughts:

…NASA’s plan is already under considerable stress due to budget restraints.

This further emphasizes the need for NASA to focus on lowering space transportation costs significantly rather than on getting to the Moon by a fixed date with a straight-forward but very costly and impractical system. With cheaper space transport, NASA can still reach the Moon within a budget that probably won’t grow and may even shrink.

Michael Mealing is chairing a session on various brief presentations of potentially interesting technical concepts.

First up is fellow Transterrestrial blogger Sam Dinkin, who is talking about Spaceshot, his new company that is making a skill game that will offer a prize of a ride on Rocketplane. The game will be a non-dexterity skill game. Tickets will be less than five dollars, the flights will start in 2007, and they will also provide money to pay taxes for the flight. Not a game of chance (poker, lottery drawing). Examples of skill games are tennis or chess. Idea is to increase demand, and offer space travel to the less well heeled (nine billion dollars spent on Halloween each year–wants to tap that kind of money).

Someone from Frontier Astronautics (didn’t get the name) is up now. He recently quit Lockheed Martin to form his own company with three or four other people. They’re selling attitude control systems and rocket engines. Their first customer is Masten, to whom they’re selling attitude control. Still looking for a first customer for their rocket engine, 7500 pounds of thrust, liquid oxygen and kerosene.

Alex Bucolari (sp?) is a student at Dartmouth, and is working on beamed propulsion systems. Planning to beam vehicles to orbit from the ground, either with thermal rocket or pulsed ablation (they’re working on the former). High specific impulse , about 800 seconds (Nerva class) and hydrogen propellant. Using a 1 kW System with cylindrical resonance chamber. Working with Kevin Parkin at JPL/Caltech. Plans to build clustered array for orbital system.

Berin Szoka has developed a public policy think tank to reduce regulatory roadblocks to space, and will be dedicated to do this in Washington. He’s a lawyer with a background in the DC policy world. He thinks that this community needs a professional organization, like Cato, to deal specifically with these issues. Still looking for funding to get it going, and wants feedback on our priorities. Focus now is on ITAR but will work other issues. Will not lobby, but will provide intellectual ammunition for the foot soldiers on the Hill and in the administration.

Phil Chapman points out three recent developments in SPS development: methane hydrates (enough to meet all the world’s energy needs for at least a thousand years) which will put a ceiling on the price of electricity (SPS will have to beat $.04/kW-hr); artificial thin-films of diamond are turning out to be easy to make as thermionic conversion devices, which may make for cheap and light SPS; they have a design for an SPS that is isoinertial, allowing easy pointing at the sun as it goes around the earth.

Steve Harrington of Flometrics is talking about his pistonless pumps, which will reduce cost, weight of engines, and increase reliability. He has a demo in the exhibit area, and he used one to pump a low-concentration alchohol-based rocket fuel (also known as margaritas) at the Space Access conference. He’s going to do it again tonight. I will attend the demonstration.

James Schulz of Space Resources, Inc. is talking about his company, which is looking at building large-scale platforms in LEO for commercial uses. They are looking at a three-phase approach: customers first, then transportation, then construction. Expecting it to be customer-driven concept that will lead to large amounts of in-space construction, because best way to stimulate business in orbit is large-scale habitable platforms and labs. Need to start now to be ready when vehicles are ready. Looking for people who share the vision. He doesn’t see himself as in competition with Bigelow–sees his timeframe as farther out. Expects developing customer base will take three years, and transportation will take several years beyond that. Market is envisioned to be corporate users. Analogy is building a shopping center, and they’re indifferent to what business occupy it.

Alliance for Commercial Enterprise In Space (ACES) by Bruce Pittman. Addressing demand (in biotech area). Biotech needs throughput, and they don’t like dealing with NASA. Looking for mechanisms in public-private partnerships that can help show how NASA can work (started with Ames, but also working with other NASA centers, including manned spaceflight centers) Four pillars that ACES supports: supply, demand, capital, and public policy.

Manny Pimente has a company called “Lunar Explorer” completing the development phase of a virtual reality simulation of the moon. Looking for high fidelity. Want to shrink the moon so that it fits into a computer at home. Allows people to “walk” along the surface. Modeling Apollo and other landing sites. Trying to extract more value from data gathered in the past by programs like Clementine, particularly for kids. They’ve raised $300K to date and are looking for more money.

Alan Crider working with Tom Taylor and Lunar Outpost will provide labs on the moon, for NASA and private enterprise (Lunar Base Systems). Uses both inflatable technology and retrofitting existing technology, to land bases anywhere on the moon. No data on weight of the base (guessing about a hundred tons).

Steve Knight (sp?) is looking at non-traditional corporate approaches to avoid middle management. Started thinking about it after Challenger, in which a pyramid of information flow restricted knowledge at the top and made for bad decisions. Started using internal contracting and decision markets a year or so ago as a new way of building high-tech knowledge infrastructure to build high-tech companies. Will have more case histories to show us next year. Casting a wider net to find people interested. Says to keep an eye on trac.t7a.org for updates in the coming weeks.

Joe Caroll, of tether fame, had developed a new interest, and thinks that most of the people buying seats will be tourists. Has new passenger vehicle designs, but doesn’t want to be a big company, so is offering his ideas (patentable) to people who want to see a tourism-oriented practical vehicle happen.

Derek Shannon, finishing up masters at USC, and working on urban transit program (very spacy) and a renewable energy project–an alternative to the DoE Tokamak program. Not cold fusion, but an interesting new approach.

Day’s sessions are almost over, and I need to take a break.