Great tweet of Max Vozoff's comment there:"Max Vozoff of SpaceX kicks off pm session. Says he feels like a bit of impostor here, but then, first 3 Falcon 1's were suborbital #nsrc"
Vozoff: will roll out first Falcon 9 to the pad as early as tomorrow. #nsrc
/-- Administration proposing a $15M per year program for suborbital space research with the new vehicles./-- Southwest Research Institute, where Alan Stern works, plans to spend $1M of its own internal funds for suborbital space transport rides.Panel press conf.:/-- Video of the press conference/-- jeff_foust Sirangelo: adding educational affiliates to Comm'l spaceflight Federation./-- jeff_foust Mealling: Masten Space sponsored student payload competition, will fly winning payload./-- jeff_foust Press conference is about to start. Participants include Sirangelo, Worden, Mealling, Stern, Greason, Attenborough. /-- jeff_foust Stern: it's not the duration of the experiment but the quality of the data that matters. /-- jeff_foust: Stern: transformative part of comm'l suborbital spaceflight is ability to fly experiments frequently./-- jeff_foust Worden: suborbital may be key in studying "ignorosphere" (upper atmosphere) and impacts on climate change./-- jeff_foust Mealling: by late 2011 to mid 2012, spaceports will be struggling to keep up with flight rates companies planning. /-- jeff_foust Greason: if we don't have the (high) flight rate, we don't make money./-- jeff_foust Sirangelo: adding educational affiliates to Comm'l spaceflight FederationBlue Origin:/-- Blue Origin makes one of its first public presentations but still keeps a lot of secrets./-- Blue Origin's vehicle is designed for human crew and passengers but can fly unmanned for tests./---- Separate booster and capsule section. Can return separate or together./-- Aiming for very fast turnaround with small ground crew./-- Have external mount options for experiments./-- jeff_foust Lai: most of lessons learned from Goddard flights has been in operations. Won't talk about New Shepard schedule./-- jeff_foust Lai: no price point in mind for flying payloads yet. Want to be competitive./-- jeff_foust Lai: New Shepard microgravity environment planned to be 0.001g or better for about 3 minutes./-- jeff_foust Lai: flight experiments selected for initial New Shepard flights will go for free; will provide feedback on process to help company./-- spacecommerce New Shepherd In beta tests for user GUI/-- jeff_foust Lai: Goddard experimental vehicle they developed is not necessarily what New Shepard looks like./-- jeff_foust Lai: New Shepard vehicle designed to carry 3 or more astronauts to 325000 ft routinely. Rapid turnaround with small ground crew.Virgin Galactic:/-- jeff_foust: Attenborough: up to about 350 customers now for Virgin Galactic, $44-45M in deposits./-- jeff_foust Attenborough: hope to get to SS2 drop tests by 3rd quarter, and powered test flights by the end of the year./-- jeff_foust Attenborough: SS2 finishing up ground testing, 1st captive carry flight w/WK2 by end of this quarter./-- jeff_foust Attenborough: WK2 performing "exceptionally well" during flight tests to date.XPC project:/-- Heavy-Lift Suborbital - Transterrestrial Musings/-- spacecommerce XPC pod concept that hangs off of an ATlas V to add payload capability for suborbital apps/-- jeff_foust Capabilities of XPC impressive: up to 700-800Kft, 10 minutes of micrograv, 1200 cu-ft volume, up to 5000 lbs payload. /-- jeff_foust Tatro: shift in philosophy at NASA HQ, more willing now to utilize excess launch capacity for payloads like this./-- jeff_foust Tatro: XPC capability will not compete with comm'l suborbital vehicles; can't do the flight rates that they're promising.
NASA Nurtures New Ideas for Near OrbitPosted by Tom Kalil on May 25, 2010 at 05:07 PM EDTOne of the exciting new NASA programs supported by the President’s budget is the Commercial Reusable Suborbital Research (CRuSR) program. CRuSR will help foster the development of commercial reusable transportation to “near space,” a step along the path to providing the Nation with much lower-cost and more reliable access to orbital space. The overall goal of CRuSR is regular, frequent, and predictable access to the edge of space at a reasonable cost with easy recovery of intact payloads.Thanks in large part to the $10 million Ansari X Prize, a new generation of commercial suborbital spacecraft has been under development by entrepreneurs like Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos, John Carmack, David Masten, and Jeff Greason. CRuSR—one of several innovative priorities for NASA’s new Chief Technology Officer, Bobby Braun—is building on that momentum. Starting next year, NASA will invest $15 million per year to support a wide range of technology demonstrations, educational experiments, and science payloads on these new vehicles.This program will leverage significant investment by the private sector to provide quick, routine access to the edge of space. NASA will work with this new industry to develop flight data standards and payload procedures that maximize the amount of data retrieved from each flight.It will also give undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity of a lifetime. They’ll help design and build new hardware, work side-by-side with rocket scientists to integrate the experiments into the vehicles, and analyze the data once each experiment has been completed. There may even be opportunities for middle and high school students, who could travel to the nearest spaceport to see their science experiment blast off into space.With its mix of technology development, public-private investment, and educational potential the program a tribute to CTO Braun’s creativity and a perfect example of President Obama’s charge to NASA—to “inspire wonder in a new generation, sparking passions and launching careers.”Tom Kalil is Deputy Director for Policy in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
