Author Topic: Space Access '11 Live Blog  (Read 35381 times)

Offline simonbp

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Re: Space Access '11 Live Blog
« Reply #80 on: 04/10/2011 01:44 am »
Final Event:

Panel: "NASA Reform: The Art Of The Possible" - Jim Muncy, Rand Simberg, Henry Spencer, Henry Vanderbilt

Vanderbilt: After Apollo, NASA assumed that the drop in funding was temporary, and thus tried to "keep the team together", and stayed too big. NASA experience is invaluable, but should be used to support industrial base, rather than replace it. Bureaucrats tend to relax to lowest possible energy state.

Spencer: Faster, Better, Cheaper gets a bad rap: Mars Pathfinder was success, MPL and MCS were disasters. Was so because everyone thought it would fail and the old guard avoided Pathfinder, but then killed it with MPL and MCS. Concern that CCDEV will be taken over by old guard and thus fail.

Simberg: Problem isn't NASA, it's on the Hill. Need to get people on Beltway thinking about space to make it important.

Muncy: As long as Space Policy is Space Policy, space is not going to be a salient issue. Where it is important, it's important for the wrong reasons. Congress only think about it as saving/preserving jobs in their districts.

Vanderbilt: Talk to your congressmen, rather than specific committee members. Long term approach, gradually educate congressmen and their staffers. Constellation was an "Apollo Cargo Cult", aping the Apollo program.

Simberg: Budget cutting tea party may be an opportunity.

Muncy: Can't have a single horse that carries the whole load. Gotta be many avenues to commercial space.

Spencer: You don't turn a dinosaur into a mammal by explaining the advantages of fur.

Muncy: NASA already has enough authority to promote prop depots.

Spencer: Outer Space Treaty requires USG to regulate any US prop depots, and FAA is most logical.

Offline simonbp

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Re: Space Access '11 Live Blog
« Reply #81 on: 04/10/2011 01:45 am »
Conference is over, lots of fun, time for the bar!

Offline robertross

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Re: Space Access '11 Live Blog
« Reply #82 on: 04/10/2011 01:48 am »
Vanderbilt: ... Bureaucrats tend to relax to lowest possible energy state.

HAHA. Nice line.

Offline robertross

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Re: Space Access '11 Live Blog
« Reply #83 on: 04/10/2011 01:48 am »
Conference is over, lots of fun, time for the bar!

Have fun, and have one on me. Thanks so much for the coverage!

Some very interesting notes there.

Offline jongoff

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Re: Space Access '11 Live Blog
« Reply #84 on: 04/10/2011 02:22 am »
Thanks for the coverage too Simon!  It was nice finally having a face to go with the name.

~Jon

Offline WulfTheSaxon

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Re: Space Access '11 Live Blog
« Reply #85 on: 04/10/2011 02:24 am »
No, he was saying that NASA, being a government program, focuses on putting a lot of money into adding only a modicum of safety.

That’s a bad thing? As has been mentioned before, after Apollo 1 and Challenger, everybody pushed for more focus on safety. Then they forgot about them, and started complaining that NASA wastes too much money on safety. I thought we’d learned our lesson after Columbia. Perhaps not.   =\

Echoing an argument made earlier in the conference, companies don't make money killing people (especially if they are a start-up), so the free market does tend towards efficient (rather than showy) safety systems.

The history of commercial aviation seems to show otherwise.


P.S.
Thanks for the great coverage.
« Last Edit: 04/10/2011 02:24 am by WulfTheSaxon »

Offline savuporo

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Re: Space Access '11 Live Blog
« Reply #86 on: 04/10/2011 02:27 am »
Orion - the first and only manned not-too-deep-space craft

Offline Danderman

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Re: Space Access '11 Live Blog
« Reply #87 on: 04/10/2011 02:54 am »
Rich Pournelle on NanoRacks

Developed as racks for experiments on ISS. 4x4 Cubesat form factor. $25 k for 30 days on station, without return. More for return. Flys in space-qualified camera bag. About 50 payloads so far. 1U, 3U and 4U sizes. All-commercial system; great relationship with NASA. Open source standard.

Sounds good to me!  ;D

Offline MP99

Re: Space Access '11 Live Blog
« Reply #88 on: 04/10/2011 11:52 am »
Gwynne Shotwell, President of SpaceX
...
Falcon 1 program is inactive until at least early next year.

FH core almost (but not quite) full when boosters separate.
...
Production rate of 12 F9s by 2013.
...
Might have redundant engines on second stage in future!
...
Elon driving for reusability; continuing work on both first and second stage recovery.

Merlin 1D on test stand now. Still really want to build a F-1 class engine.
...
FH: C3=3 km2/s2 -> 12 tonnes, C3=90 km2/s2 -> 3 tonnes. Still optimizing trajectories for FH.
...
Did look at Falcon 1e Heavy to chase Minotaur IV; trading with manifesting on F9. Orbcomm moved 1e payloads to F9, and that put 1e on hold.

Falcon 5 is hard to control; not worth it.

5.2 meter faring on FH. Bunch of little payloads on first FH flight.

Plan is crossfeed on FH from start.

Few (very few) people still working on Raptor.

Well, that really answers most of the rampant questions / speculations on SpaceX.

Still surprised they're going for cross-feed on first FH flight.

F5 / F6 would be an obvious way to continue F9 block I performance with M1D. Glad to see that one put to bed (as much as it would be simpler for them to concentrate on just F1 & F9 cores anyway).

Nice also to see M2 and Raptor still on the long-range horizon, but off table medium term (should have been pretty obvious anyway with recent M1D / FH announcement).

Super coverage all around. Many, many thanks.

cheers, Martin

Offline Space Pete

Re: Space Access '11 Live Blog
« Reply #89 on: 04/10/2011 01:12 pm »
Rich Pournelle on NanoRacks

Developed as racks for experiments on ISS. 4x4 Cubesat form factor. $25 k for 30 days on station, without return. More for return. Flys in space-qualified camera bag. About 50 payloads so far. 1U, 3U and 4U sizes. All-commercial system; great relationship with NASA. Open source standard.

I read via another site that NanoRacks announced at the conference that they are looking to develop an external payload site on ISS!

Do you recall anything being said about that? Thanks.
« Last Edit: 04/10/2011 01:13 pm by Space Pete »
NASASpaceflight ISS Editor

Offline robertross

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Re: Space Access '11 Live Blog
« Reply #90 on: 04/10/2011 03:18 pm »
Rich Pournelle on NanoRacks

Developed as racks for experiments on ISS. 4x4 Cubesat form factor. $25 k for 30 days on station, without return. More for return. Flys in space-qualified camera bag. About 50 payloads so far. 1U, 3U and 4U sizes. All-commercial system; great relationship with NASA. Open source standard.

I read via another site that NanoRacks announced at the conference that they are looking to develop an external payload site on ISS!

Do you recall anything being said about that? Thanks.

Is there something wrong with Japan's EF, or is just the commercial aspect of it?

Offline Space Pete

Re: Space Access '11 Live Blog
« Reply #91 on: 04/10/2011 03:21 pm »
Rich Pournelle on NanoRacks

Developed as racks for experiments on ISS. 4x4 Cubesat form factor. $25 k for 30 days on station, without return. More for return. Flys in space-qualified camera bag. About 50 payloads so far. 1U, 3U and 4U sizes. All-commercial system; great relationship with NASA. Open source standard.

I read via another site that NanoRacks announced at the conference that they are looking to develop an external payload site on ISS!

Do you recall anything being said about that? Thanks.

Is there something wrong with Japan's EF, or is just the commercial aspect of it?

What I mean is that NanoRacks want to mount some small payloads outside ISS, either on the JEF or on an ELC. I don't mean develop an entire new platform - just develop something that attaches to the existing platforms to accommodate small payloads. :)
NASASpaceflight ISS Editor

Offline robertross

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Re: Space Access '11 Live Blog
« Reply #92 on: 04/10/2011 03:29 pm »
Rich Pournelle on NanoRacks

Developed as racks for experiments on ISS. 4x4 Cubesat form factor. $25 k for 30 days on station, without return. More for return. Flys in space-qualified camera bag. About 50 payloads so far. 1U, 3U and 4U sizes. All-commercial system; great relationship with NASA. Open source standard.

I read via another site that NanoRacks announced at the conference that they are looking to develop an external payload site on ISS!

Do you recall anything being said about that? Thanks.

Is there something wrong with Japan's EF, or is just the commercial aspect of it?

What I mean is that NanoRacks want to mount some small payloads outside ISS, either on the JEF or on an ELC. I don't mean develop an entire new platform - just develop something that attaches to the existing platforms to accommodate small payloads. :)

Oh okay. Thanks for clarifying that.

Offline rickyramjet

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Re: Space Access '11 Live Blog
« Reply #93 on: 04/10/2011 03:58 pm »
Rand Simberg on Competitive Space Task Force
[snip]
Focus on safety over cost[…] Don't spend billions having evacuation systems for South Pole station.

Is he saying that cost is more important than safety? If not, those 2 statements seem to be rather contradictory. (Then again, a lot of what he says never seems to make any sense.)

Dude, you're taking shorthand notes from simonbp (already short of context) and snipping out the parts that could have provided you that context, namely:

"Created a NASA that wasn't pro-enterprise. Focus on safety over cost."

shows that "Focus on safety over cost" clearly refers to NASA, and "Don't spend billions having evacuation systems for South Pole station" refers to a non-NASA practice (and the model he thinks NASA should be following).

I don't agree with Rand on many issues, but your post is ridiculous.

Is it really necessary for you to insult people publicly for the way someone prepares a quote?  It was obvious to me, and probably everyone else, that WulfTheSaxon was probably just trying to save a little space by not quoting the entire original post.

Online ugordan

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Re: Space Access '11 Live Blog
« Reply #94 on: 04/10/2011 04:34 pm »
Is it really necessary for you to insult people publicly for the way someone prepares a quote?  It was obvious to me, and probably everyone else, that WulfTheSaxon was probably just trying to save a little space by not quoting the entire original post.

His question was phrased in such a way as to make it entirely non-obvious that he meant what you think he meant. I certainly got the same impression as Jorge.

Oh, and as far as insulting people, FWIW from what I've seen Jorge is probably the least insulting industry insider around here.

Offline WulfTheSaxon

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Re: Space Access '11 Live Blog
« Reply #95 on: 04/10/2011 05:08 pm »
Is it really necessary for you to insult people publicly for the way someone prepares a quote?  It was obvious to me, and probably everyone else, that WulfTheSaxon was probably just trying to save a little space by not quoting the entire original post.

His question was phrased in such a way as to make it entirely non-obvious that he meant what you think he meant. I certainly got the same impression as Jorge.

Oh, and as far as insulting people, FWIW from what I've seen Jorge is probably the least insulting industry insider around here.

Every board has its own conventions*, but from the ones I’m most familiar with it’s generally assumed that somebody’s already read the rest of the thread. So, I was just providing part of the quote as a reminder…

Guess I’ll quote more fully here in future.

* On one hand, there are some forums where my post would have had “@simonbp on 2011-04-09 11:58” and no quote at all; on the other hand, there are some where I’ve seen quoted replies 20 layers deep (I tend not to frequent the latter).

Online ugordan

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Re: Space Access '11 Live Blog
« Reply #96 on: 04/10/2011 05:14 pm »
I’ve seen quoted replies 20 layers deep (I tend not to frequent the latter).

The thing that annoys me most about this forum is some people's tendency to quote the entire post they're replying to (which around here can frequently be well over one screen long) just to add an "I agree" to the last sentence, or some other one-liner.

But we digress...

Offline simonbp

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Re: Space Access '11 Live Blog
« Reply #97 on: 04/10/2011 10:06 pm »
The history of commercial aviation seems to show otherwise.

Epic linking. :)

But I think the point wasn't that failure wouldn't happen; remember three people (at Scaled) have already died in pursuit of commercial suborbital flight. It was more that the initial regulation shouldn't be overly restrictive, because without real data, it just doesn't increase safety (though it does make the barrier to enter the market much harder). This was a general theme that several people said in several different ways, especially in the context of continuing the "experimental/data-collection" period defined in the Commercial Space Act.

Offline simonbp

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Re: Space Access '11 Live Blog
« Reply #98 on: 04/10/2011 10:09 pm »
I read via another site that NanoRacks announced at the conference that they are looking to develop an external payload site on ISS!

Do you recall anything being said about that? Thanks.

I don't recall anything specifically, but since I knew next to nothing about NanoRacks beforehand, I could have missed it.

Someone did ask if any customers had requested a rack to be "tossed out" the airlock of station, and Pournelle said no, not that he was aware of.

Offline simonbp

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Re: Space Access '11 Live Blog
« Reply #99 on: 04/10/2011 10:11 pm »
Have fun, and have one on me. Thanks so much for the coverage!

You're welcome, and I did. Several times. :)

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